Free Republic

Barack Obama's real thinking about Israel and the Middle East continues to be an enigma. The words he chose in an address to AIPAC create a different impression than the composition of his foreign policy advisory team. Several advisors have evidenced a history of suspicion and worse toward Israel. One of his advisors in particular, Robert Malley, clearly warrants attention, as does the reasoning that led him to being chosen by Barack Obama. A little family history may be in order to understand the genesis of Robert Malley's views. Normally, one should be reluctant in exploring a person's family background...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

A Coptic Christian was killed by a stray bullet during an overnight gunfight between Christians and Muslims in a town in southern Egypt, a security official said on Saturday. A Christian and a Muslim were also wounded in the shooting, which took place in Al-Tayeba, near Minya, some 230 kilometres south of Cairo. According to AFP, the dead man was identified as Yeshua Gamal Nashed, 28. The cause of the violence was unclear, but the official said it appeared to be linked to reports that a Christian woman in the village was selling a property to a Muslim. Al-Tayeba, 75...

Obama Song Brings Back Memories By Nonie Darwish FrontPageMagazine.com | 10/3/2008 I was born and raised as a Muslim in the Middle East and lived for 30 years in oppressive dictatorships and police states. I remember the daily bombardment on Arab radio of praise and songs of adoration of the Egyptian dictator president Gamal Abdel Nasser. ‘Ya Gamal ya Habib Al Malayeen, ya Gamal,’ that is Arabic for Gamal beloved by millions and the song goes on to say, we are following you in your road and mission. Day in and day out songs like that was chanted by Egyptian...

Several times NGO and human rights defenders are interrupted and fought at the UN when they dare criticize the conditions of minorities and women in the muslim world. Here is a video of how a NGO speaker was fought several times by Pakistan and Egypt who hijacked the discussion at the UNHRC.

A group of European tourists who were kidnapped by armed bandits in the remote deserts of southern Egypt have been freed after a raid that left half of their captors dead, Egyptian officials said yesterday. A force of 30 elite Egyptian troops, accompanied by Italian and German special forces, raided the kidnappers’ camp to release the five Italians, five Germans and one Romanian who were abducted with eight Egyptian guides while on a 4x4 vehicle safari of the desert near the Sudanese border. The hostages were flown to Cairo for medical examinations and emerged from their military flight smiling to...

Excerpt - CAIRO, Sept 29 (Reuters) - All 11 Western tourists and eight Egyptians taken hostage by gunmen in a remote border area of Egypt more than a week ago have been freed and are in good health, state-run Egyptian television said on Monday. ~ snip ~

Slavery still stalks the American consciousness, its wounds yet festering in many hearts. If Barack Obama were to set his mind to it, he could heal much of the damage this peculiar institution wrought on our national soul. This great and tragic error that must be given justice. Obama is the best person in the world who can recognize, remember and honor the deaths of 125 million and the enslavement of tens of millions of people. His unique qualifications can be found in his names. Until he was 20 years old, he went by the first name Barry. Then he...

Making Egyptian Aid Conditional   By Daniel MandelJewishPolicyCenter.org | Wednesday, September 24, 2008 Dear Mr. President,The United States has an important relationship with a foreign country that permits its territory to be used for the purpose of smuggling lethal and increasingly sophisticated weaponry to groups designated as terrorists by our State Department.This same country has repeatedly promised your predecessors that it will introduce multi-party democracy, but instead has cracked down on democrats and reformers. Meanwhile, it grants free rein to Islamist groups in tightly controlled and manipulated elections.This same country has played a leading role in blocking American efforts...

The Chinese are not coming; they're already here. They have injected themselves in our daily everything, including, during this holy month, the very traditionally Egyptian Ramadan lanterns. So pervasive have Chinese products and the Chinese people who make them become in Egypt that a Chinatown could well be built here in a few years. And many Egyptians are familiar with the door-to-door Chinese salesmen and women who embark on journeys far from their country to ask in Egypt to "buy Chinese" at relatively low prices. And now, Chinese education has come to town after Minister of International Cooperation Fayza Abul-Naga...

Eleven European tourists have been kidnapped along with eight Egyptians while making an off-road tour of southern Egypt. Five Italians, five Germans and a Romanian were taken along with eight Egyptian travel guides and drivers. Reports said the abduction, near the Gilf al-Kebir plateau, was carried out by tribesmen or bandits.

YouTube - aljazeera channel is an example of racism in the ARAB WORLD...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p94t2YkoGQo This Arab admits on video that: "the Arabs are the most racist people in the world".  

How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

ROME (Reuters) - A group of foreigners, including five Italians, was kidnapped in Egypt. This was announced by the Foreign Ministry, without giving other details on the exact place where the abduction took place. "The foreign minister, Franco Frattini, in flight to the United States, follows closely with the crisis unit of the Ministry of kidnapping cases in Egypt by a group of foreigners, among whom there are five Italians," you law in a note. "The minister - continues the note - has provisions to enable the full cooperation between the countries concerned, and the foreign ministry at this...

EGYPTIANS have long excelled at putting a good face on things. Four millennia ago they built temples whose towering façades and grand doorways hid dark and cramped interiors. Relief carvings depicted giant pharaohs smiting dwarf-like enemies, and showed the Nile teeming with fish and waterfowl. In reality, ancient Egypt was often invaded. Ruinous famines punctuated its years of plenty.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt seek new attack, utility helicopters By Craig Hoyle Two Middle Eastern nations have requested purchases worth a combined $774 million to boost their inventories of US-sourced utility and attack helicopters. Saudi Arabia wants to buy 12 Boeing AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters and related equipment worth up to $598 million, with the aircraft to join 12 A-model Apaches already in its inventory. Announced by the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency on 9 September, the request also covers the provision of General Electric T700-701D engines and Lockheed Martin Arrowhead modernised target acquisition designation sight/pilot night vision sensors, plus...

Thirty years ago Jimmy Carter tried to change the world by getting the leaders of nations to agree. The result, in September 1978, was the Camp David Accords. Did it work? Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, the respective leaders of Egypt and Israel, did reach some basic agreements and since then Egypt has stopped trying to drive Israel into the sea. After four wars in twenty five years, the Arab-Israeli wars stopped. The accords are universally considered the highlight of an otherwise dismal presidency, perhaps the only good thing that Carter ever did. But the accords also failed. Establishing an...

Abu Qatada, wanted by Jordan for involvement in terrorist attacks, strolls down a London street, carrying groceries paid for by the British taxpayer. Beside him, on a mobile phone, apparently acting as a go-between, is Yasser Al-Sirri, wanted by Egypt for aiding an assassination attempt in 1993 of the then Prime Minister with a car bomb, which instead killed a young girl. Both these men despise the country that is sheltering them. [...] Supported by state benefits, Qatada began preaching in local mosques his blood-thirsty anti-Jewish and anti-Christian messages and calling for Muslims to kill non-Muslims. Because of a toxic...

By telling her mother’s unorthodox story on film, Egyptian director Nadia Kamel has recently embarked on an exceptionally controversial endeavor that brought into question the taboos shaping the Arab perception of Israelis and dug deeper into the animosity between the Arab world and the Jewish state. Delving into sensitive political and emotional terrain, Kamel documented the story of Mary Rosenthal, an Italian of a Jewish decent who converted to Islam and married an Egyptian Muslim more than five decades ago. Like her husband, Rosenthal joined the ranks of the Egyptian communist opposition. This conviction forced her to sever ties with...

CAIRO, Egypt — An Egyptian lawmaker and business tycoon was arrested Tuesday in the death of a Lebanese pop singer, Egypt's chief prosecutor said, accusing the man of paying a former police officer $2 million to kill her. Hisham Talaat, a lawmaker from the ruling party of President Hosni Mubarak, is accused of ordering the death of 30-year-old Suzanne Tamim, who was found decapitated in her Dubai apartment in July, chief prosecutor Abdel-Maguid Mahmoud told The Associated Press. The death made waves in Egyptian media in early August and prompted a media ban in Egypt last month, following reports that...

Egyptian archaeologists have uncovered the burial chamber and coffin of King Senusret II who was believed to have ruled Egypt from 1897 BC to 1878 BC, it was reported today. The burial chamber was found in Al Lahun, the town built by Senusret which became Egypt's political capital during the 12th and 13th dynasties, and where the king built his pyramid. "The coffin is made of pink granite and the burial chamber is lined with red granite," said Ahmed Abdel Aal, head of antiquities in Fayum, south of Cairo. The team also discovered "corridors and passageways inside the pyramid built...

Egyptians have a saying: "He who drinks from the waters of the Nile will return to drink her waters yet again." This is a pleasant saying which also dovetails with another Egyptian aphorism - "Egypt is the mother of the world." But as someone who lived and studied in Egypt, the waters of the Nile are not always great for one's health, and the land of the pyramids might not just be the center of the universe, even for a would-be "master-of-the-universe" like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert, who once voted against the peace treaty with Egypt, is now seriously...

Our Islamic "allies" continue to show their true face to us. The centuries long persecution of the Coptic Christians of Egypt continues, but Muslims do not say a word about it. They only want to silence those that do speak out against this persecution. As for our leaders.....Bush, Condi.....any comments? I thought not. At the end of the article I have posted a video showing just how badly the Christians in Egypt have it.

CAIRO (AFP) — Egyptian police used violence earlier this month to prevent villagers from repairing the only church in their area, a rights group said on Monday, warning of a rise in sectarian tension as a result. On August 17, "a policeman assigned to guard the Archangel Michael Church in Deshasha (Beni Soueif province south of Cairo) hit three women while they were taking sand into the church to fix the floor which was cracked as result of water collection underneath," the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) said in a statement. After the incident rumours spread in the village...

CAIRO: Head of the Doctors’ Syndicate Hamdy El Sayed refuted claims made by human rights activists that the proposed organ transplant law discriminates between Muslims and Christians. The draft law that would regulate organ donations and transplants limits the practice to family members and bans it between people of different religions or different nationalities. This would restrict trade in human organs, the syndicate had said in previous statements. Without any regulation, Egypt has struggled with the problem of organ trafficking for years. Poverty and desperation have led many to be manipulated into selling their organs with little knowledge of the...

CAIRO -- In a Muslim country where the numbers of women wearing the veil are rising, and so -- by most accounts -- are incidents of groping and catcalls in the streets, the message in ads circulating anonymously in e-mails here in Egypt is clear: "A veil to protect, or eyes will molest," one warns. The words sit over two illustrations, one comparing a veiled woman, her hair and neck covered in the manner known to Muslims as hijab, to a wrapped candy, untouched and pure. The other picture shows an unveiled woman, hair flying wildly and hip jutting, next...

Cairo, Aug 22, 2008 / 10:42 am (CNA).- The Doctors’ Union of Egypt, led by the “Muslim Brothers,” a extreme faction of Islam, has decided to prohibit the transplant of organs between those who profess the Islamic faith and Christians, generating a series of protests and unrest in both communities. According to the EFE news agency, a spokesman for the Coptic Church said in response to the decision, “We all have the same Egyptian blood, and if the purpose of the measure is to prohibit the traffic of organs, we reject it because that could occur as well among the...

A predator drone being built by an engineer on Long Island sparked a large counter-terrorism investigation across the New York area, officials tell WNBC.com. Police said they had stumbled upon overnight testing of the drone at a little-used airstrip in Calverton, Long Island. The investigation began in February of last year, when investigators first learned testing of the drone was underway. Officials said the drone was being designed to carry more than 600 pounds of explosives. "It could be in the air for 8-10 hours and there's potential harm if it is carrying a large amount of toxic material," NYPD...

Open letter to President Obama Change we can believe in is needed as much at the international level as at the US national level, writes Hassan Nafaa* -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Mr President, I am aware that the presidential campaign is not over and that surprises are to be expected, but I have no doubt that, all things being equal, you will be the future president of the United States of America. My reasons for saying so are many, and I do not need to go into them in detail here, as I did just that in an article entitled, "What if?"...

Hamas officials this week accused Egypt of trying to reassert its control over the Gaza Strip after Cairo presented a proposal to insert an Egyptian-led Arab peacekeeping force into the troubled coastal territory. The proposal was drawn up by Egypt and Jordan, and has won the backing of Hamas’ rivals in the Palestinian Authority government of Mahmoud Abbas, according to Arab media.

Excerpt - CAIRO (AFP)--Helicopters and fire trucks had to be called to the Egyptian senate on Tuesday when a blaze threatened to engulf the building and left 13 people requiring emergency medical help after inhaling the smoke. ~ snip ~

<p>CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Fire ravaged a 19th century palace used by the upper house of Egypt's parliament Tuesday, with flames bursting through windows as helicopters scooped water from the Nile River to douse the blaze.</p> <p>Flames soared upward from the top floor of the three-story building, and much of the interior appeared gutted. While firefighters focused on one corner of the building, the blaze burned heavier on a second corner, spreading to the second floor.</p>

A hospital director in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria says a woman has successfully given birth to septuplets... The babies' weights range from 3.2 pounds (1.45 kilograms) to 2.8 kilograms (6.17 pounds). (AP, so no large excerpt; see article at link, and first comment below.)

Hundreds of Hamas supporters demonstrated Sunday at the Rafah border crossing in protest against the continued closure of the terminal. The demonstrators called on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to reopen the terminal and condemned the Arab countries for failing to work toward lifting the blockade that was imposed on the Gaza Strip more than a year ago. Egypt dispatched about 700 border guards to the Egyptian side of the terminal to foil any attempt by the protesters to infiltrate. The tough security measures, as well as warnings by top Egyptian government officials, apparently deterred the Hamas supporters from breaching the...

Hamas supporters are planning to storm the Rafah border crossing with Sinai on Sunday to protest against the continued closure of the terminal, sources in the Gaza Strip said over the weekend. The move was aimed at "embarrassing" the Egyptians and forcing them to reopen the border crossing, the sources added. For 12 days, beginning on January 23, hundreds of thousands of Gazans breached the border and poured into Sinai, seriously embarrassing the Egyptians and sparking tensions between Cairo and Hamas. The decision to send Hamas supporters to the border on Sunday comes amid renewed tensions between the Islamist movement...

TEL AVIV -- Israel and the United States have submitted a plan to tighten security on the notoriously porous border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. On the eve of the visit by an Israeli visit to discuss the proposal, Egypt reported the discovery of 20 tunnels to the Gaza Strip as well as the seizure of thousands of gallons of fuel. Four smugglers, said to be laying an 800-meter underground pipe to transfer fuel from Sinai to Gaza, were also arrested by Egyptian police on Aug. 7. Under the proposal, Egypt would build an advanced technology barrier that would...

MEMRI: Special Dispatch | No. 2014 | August 5, 2008Egypt/Antisemitism Documentation Project Members of the Egyptian Unique Moustache Association: We Respect the Moustache of Hitler Because He Humiliated the World's Most Despicable SectFollowing are excerpts from an interview with members of the Egyptian Unique Moustache Association, which aired on Egyptian TV on July 11, 2008.To view this clip, visit www.memritv.org/clip/en/1829.htm.Interviewer: "I'm sure many people have pressured you to shave off your moustache, saying, 'What is this? Enough of that.'" Association head Fathi Ahmad Mahmoud "Moustache": "My personality forces people to treat me with respect." Interviewer: "Didn't your friends, relatives, your...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

CAIRO — A monastery was ransacked in January. In May, monks there were kidnapped, whipped and beaten and ordered to spit on the cross. Christian-owned jewelry stores were robbed over the summer. The rash of violence was so bad that one prominent Egyptian writer worried it had become “open season” on the nation’s Christians. Does Egypt face a sectarian problem? Not according to its security officials, who insist that each dispute represents a “singular incident” tied to something other than faith. In the case of the monastery and the monks, officials said the conflict was essentially a land dispute between...

GAZA CITY: A tunnel under the Gaza-Egypt border collapsed, killing at least five Palestinians and wounding 18, Palestinian security and hospital officials said Saturday. The tunnel collapsed late Friday, near the Gaza border town of Rafah. A wide network of tunnels runs under the border and is used to bring supplies into Gaza. Israel says Hamas' rulers use the tunnel to bring in weapons and cash, and has urged Egypt to do more to stop the smuggling.

Egypt's top archaeologist said Tuesday that two Egyptian citizens were rewarded for turning in two pieces of antiquities they found while each was redecorating his house in the northern Menoufiya governorate. "The Egyptian Ministry of Culture decided to give each citizen five thousand Egyptian pounds (970 US dollars)," said Zahi Hawass, Head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA). Hawass stated that the two pieces belong to Ancient Egyptian King Ahmose of the 26th dynasty. After asserting the authenticity of the pieces, the SCA took the pieces to start their restoration process. Hawass added that both pieces are made of...

The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces from another pit in 1954 and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in the afterlife. Starting Saturday, tourists were allowed to view images of the inside of the second boat pit from a camera inserted through a hole in the chamber's limestone ceiling. The video image, transmitted onto a small TV monitor at the site, showed layers of crisscrossing beams and planks on the floor of the dark pit... Experts will begin removing around 600...

Egypt has banned a book by a British journalist about Egyptian politics and society entitled "Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution," the author said on Wednesday. "According to my publisher, The American University in Cairo bookstore ordered 50 copies of Inside Egypt a few days ago, only to cancel the order a few hours later after being informed by Egyptian government censors that the book is banned in Egypt," John R. Bradley said. The book's New York-based publishers Palgrave Macmillan confirmed the book had been banned in Egypt. The book "examines the junctions...

Egypt Shuts Iranian TV Station Office in Cairo July 24, 2008 Reuters Cynthia Johnston CAIRO -- Egypt, irritated with Iran over a film on the assassination of President Anwar Sadat, shut down the Cairo offices of an Iranian television station that it said was not properly licensed, security sources said on Thursday. The sources said police closed the offices of Iran's state-owned Arabic Al-Alam television on Tuesday because it did not have a broadcasting licence, and confiscated computers and photo equipment. They gave no further explanation for the move. But the closure came weeks after Egypt summoned the head of...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

I was privileged this week to preview, before its release to the public, what may well prove to be a masterpiece of the documentary film-making art—a new look at the Biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt in the light of contemporary archeology and politics in the Middle East. Filmmaker Tim Mahoney´s "The Exodus Conspiracy",[1] due to be released within a few months, seeks to demonstrate the historical accuracy of the Biblical narrative of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt on the basis of recent archaeological discoveries and geographic explorations. A secondary thesis of the film is...

CAIRO: Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and a majority say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey showed yesterday. The forms of harassment reported by Egyptian men, whose country attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, include touching or ogling women, shouting sexually explicit remarks, and exposing their genitals to women. “Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis,” said the report by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights. Egyptian women...

Nearly two-thirds of Egyptian men admit to having sexually harassed women in the most populous Arab country, and most say women themselves are to blame for their maltreatment, a survey shows. The forms of harassment reported by Egyptian men, whose country attracts millions of foreign tourists each year, include touching or ogling women, shouting sexually explicit remarks, and exposing their genitals to women. "Sexual harassment has become an overwhelming and very real problem experienced by all women in Egyptian society, often on a daily basis," said the report by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights. Egyptian women and female visitors...

Egypt crackdown on African migrants hits Eritreans Thu 26 Jun 2008, 11:14 GMT By Cynthia Johnston CAIRO, June 26 (Reuters) - When 17 Eritrean migrants crept down from a hillside to a central Egypt highway, after slipping undetected into the most populous Arab country, security forces quickly swept in to pick them up. The Eritreans, including a baby whose mother died on her journey to Egypt, were snared in a growing Egyptian crackdown on African migrants that has seen up to 1,000 Eritrean asylum seekers deported since June 11 despite U.N. objections. ... he Eritreans include Pentecostal Christians fleeing religious...

Archaeologists have uncovered ancient wooden coffins in what appears to be a royal burial ground near the necropolis of Abydos in southern Egypt, the state-run MENA news agency reported on Saturday. The agency said that the discovery, made by a team from the Supreme Council of Egyptian Antiquities, could be dated back to the Old Kingdom (3,000 B.C.) -- the golden age of pyramid building in ancient times. The team "has found what could be a royal complex of 13 tombs of different shapes and sizes that could have belonged to high officials from that period or people who contributed...