Free Republic

There is a growing consensus in the United States and around the world that the way to end the Israel-Gaza war is to disarm Hamas. President Obama seems to be the only hold-out. On July 24, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a resolution calling on the Obama Administration to make the disarming of Hamas a central part of any cease-fire proposal. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, is spearheading this effort together with Democratic Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Ben Cardin of Maryland. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed on July 15 to...

A rocket fired by Palestinians from Gaza last night landed between Ashdod and Gedera, in the first such attack after a two-month period of quiet. Sirens sounded in Ashdod and nearby communities and residents were told to enter protected rooms and shelters. There were no injuries. Since the terrorist attack on the Egyptian border near Eilat that killed eight on August 18, the Gaza border has been relatively calm with only a few rocket launches, most directed at small communities near the Gaza Strip. Last night's rocket, fired around 11:10 p.m., landed in a field. It seems to have been...

The bad news? This will undo any bit of goodwill we might have earned by siding with the people against their governments during the Arab Spring. The good news? The next big apology speech O gives in Cairo is shaping up to be a doozy. Palestinian officials have so far enlisted the support of at least six or seven members of the 15-member Security Council in their bid to gain United Nations recognition as a sovereign state, a senior official said Tuesday…For any decision to pass in the 15-member Council, nine affirmative votes are needed, as well as no veto...

From Israel to New York - Jews, Christians Protest Hamas Led Palestine UN Vote By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency New York --- September 20, 2011 .... Thousands of Jewish and Christian protesters are taking to the streets in Jerusalem and in New York to protest a UN vote on the creation of a Hamas led Palestine. Just south of the UN, Rabbi Avi Weiss and 50 other demonstrators protested the PA's request to the UN for unilateral statehood. The protest was sponsored by AMCHA - Coalition for Jewish Concerns. Six people were arrested and charged by NYPD with disorderly...

NEW YORK -The Obama administration insisted Monday there was still time to avert a divisive showdown over Palestinian statehood, ignoring President Mahmoud Abbas' defiant pledge to take his government's case to the United Nations and reaching out to Western allies in the hopes of a last-ditch compromise. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. was engaged in "extremely intensive" diplomacy with Israel, the Palestinians and the other governments gathered in New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting. A statement from the U.S. and other key Mideast peace negotiators on a possible path forward appeared to be...

“The main, immediate beneficiaries of what is known as the ‘Arab spring’ are Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai reported on Ynet the other day. His and similar reports haven’t attracted much attention, and perhaps it’s understandable. There’s been a mass murder in Norway, and, in Israel, raucous public protests over housing prices. But the deterioration in Gaza is surely worthy of note, and, for Israelis, likely to be more significant than the cost of flats. Ben-Yishai, noting the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt since Mubarak’s downfall, says “the group’s influence...

A couple weeks back I joked about the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ being more reminiscent of ‘Springtime for Hitler’. I should have known that the Arab world is beyond parody. Considering that Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are perennial best sellers in Egypt, it is no wonder that the new party is having little trouble attracting members.

CAIRO – Egypt will open its only crossing with the Gaza Strip this weekend, the Cairo military government announced Wednesday, significantly easing a four-year blockade on the Hamas-ruled territory but setting up a potential conflict with Israel. Egypt's official Middle East News Agency said the Rafah border crossing would be opened permanently starting Saturday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day except Fridays and holidays.

PLEASE COPY AND PASTE BELOW AND E-MAIL OR FAX Speaker Boehner http://www.speaker.gov/contact/ FAX- 202-225-5117 Email:speakerboehner@mail.house.gov __________________________________________________________ Speaker Boehner, This is a plea for you to exercise your responsibility to control our rogue Administration and it’s arbitrary decision to use U.S. planes and arms against Khadaffi in Libya. The sixty days for Congressional approval have ended. The implications here are monumental and disastrous for our democratic republic. Our president, who is showing clear signs of becoming a traitor, has used his own simple judgement to turn the might of our military against another country, Obama’s enemy du jour. He does not...

House members side with Netanyahu House lawmakers from both parties are siding with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over President Obama in their differing approaches to the Israel-Palestine border dispute. Obama last week called for Israel's 1967 borders to mark the "foundation" for renewing stalled peace talks between the two sides – a concession to Palestine that Netanyahu has bluntly rejected, including in remarks to a joint meeting of Congress Tuesday. "The vast majority of the 650,000 Israelis who live beyond the 1967 lines reside in neighborhoods and suburbs of Jerusalem and greater Tel Aviv," Netanyahu told lawmakers in his...

Definition of CONTIGUOUS 1: being in actual contact: touching along a boundary or at a point -- of angles : adjacent 2 3: next or near in time or sequence 4: touching or connected throughout in an unbroken sequence "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state," President Obama told American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) attendees on Sunday. The...

Egypt girded for a day of massive protest Friday, firming up army positions around demonstrators occupying central Cairo's Tahrir Square and slapping new restrictions on journalists.

Wednesday, Feb. 2, President Barack Obama delivered an ultimatum to Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman and the army and security chiefs: Mubarak must be removed in the coming hours or else US aid to Egypt will be cut off, debkafile's Washington sources exclusively report. Pressure on the Egyptian armed forces to oust the president forthwith was further applied by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who called Vice President Omar Suleiman, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates who called Egyptian defense minister Mohamed Tantawi, and US armed forces chief Adm. Mike Mullen in a telephone call to the Egyptian chief of staff...

For the first time, a U.S. government supports granting a government role to an extremist Islamic organization: the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. snip This caveat does not significantly alter the new American approach, which is very different than that of the previous Administration, in which George W. Bush pushed Mubarak for democratic reforms but never publicly accepted a role for Islamists.

President Obama is signaling the Egyptian opposition that their time has come. In a terse statement last night, Mr. Obama announced a “moment of transformation” had arrived in Egypt, “the status quo is not sustainable” and a new government must begin to form “now.” An administration official later reiterated, “the key part of the statement was ‘now.’ ” Today the formerly peaceful protests in Egypt turned violent. It turns out that words do have consequences. Egypt is at a crossroads, a time of suspense when change could come gradually and peacefully, or quickly with maximum instability. The White House has...

The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Ramadan was invited to teach at the University of Notre Dame in 2004 but the George W. Bush administration revoked his visa, citing a statute that applies to...

Two of the nine mortar shells fired from the Gaza Strip at southern Israel on Tuesday were actually phosphorous bombs, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed. Militants in the coastal territory also fired two Qassam rockets into Israel, yielding an Israel Air Force strike in response that led to the death of one Palestinian working in a smuggling tunnel on the border with Egypt.

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon says that while PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) talks peace in Washington, his men encourage terrorism back at home – and Gazans celebrate terrorism by giving out candy. Ayalon decried the fact that the PA minister for prisoner affairs recently visited the Abu Hamid family, four sons of which have been sentenced to life for murdering Israelis. The official, Isa Karaka, shared the Ramadan break-fast meal with the family, and praised the mother for the way in which she has contributed to the struggle for independence. Karaka also visited the home of suicide terrorist...

Processions of joy took place at a number of locations in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, after the shooting attack near Hebron, which left four Israelis dead.