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A military airport in Syria has come under missile attack, the country's state media has reported. Its air defence system was activated, the reports said. Syrian TV said loud explosions had been heard near the T4 airfield in the city of Homs in the early hours of Monday. Details are still emerging and the reports have not been independently verified.

For a while, Turkey and Israel were the unexpected couple, the increasingly Muslim state buying the Jewish state’s weapons and Israel offering Turkey a potentially strategic gas and oil pipeline. That all changed when Israeli commandos raided the so-called Gaza Freedom Flotilla in May 2010 in international waters of the Mediterranean. Nine activists were killed, including eight Turkish nationals and one Turkish American, and many were wounded. That was a turning point in the relations between the two countries. But three years later, the two sides appeared to mend relations. But as the Syrian civil war spiraled out of control...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize the mass murders of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman government in 1915 as genocide. In the past, the Foreign Ministry had assessed that such a move was likely to lead to the expulsion of Israeli Embassy staff in Ankara and the recalling of TurkeyÂ’s ambassador from Israel. While Turkey denies that the mass killings constitute genocide, some 29 countries and 48 of the 50 U.S. states have officially recognized them as such. ErdanÂ’s call to recognize the Armenian genocide follows a war of words between Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, in...

French special operations troops have moved into two US Syrian bases, Manbij and Remelin, as the US boosts its lines against Turkey. While US President Donald Trump was saying Tuesday, April 3, that he would “decide very quickly” to remove US troops from Syria, our exclusive military sources report that US Marines were heading toward the northern Syrian town of Manbij as reinforcements against Turkish inroads. They took up positions along the Sajur River, one of the three tributaries that feed the Euphrates River in Syria from sources in Turkey. This action blocked the Turkish army’s land access to Manbij,...

Russia's envoy to the U.N. on Friday warned long-term ally President Bashar al-Assad over his vow to retake all of Syria, saying he faced dire consequences if he did not comply with Moscow over the peace process. 'Russia has invested very seriously in this crisis, politically, diplomatically and now also militarily,' Vitaly Churkin told Kommersant newspaper, referring to an international agreement to cease hostilities sealed in Munich last week. 'Therefore we would like Assad also to respond to this,' he said, adding that the Syrian leader's stance 'is not in accord with the diplomatic efforts that Russia is making.'

In a wide-ranging conversation, Prince Mohammed bin Salman also recognized the Jewish peoples’ right to “their own land.” This much, at least, can be said for Mohammed bin Salman, the putatively reformist crown prince of Saudi Arabia: He has made all the right enemies. Among those who would celebrate his end are the leaders of ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas, as well as Yemen’s Houthi rebels, and the entire clerical and military leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a bonus, there are members of his own family, the sprawling, sclerotic, self-dealing House of Saud, who would like to...

Mohammed bin Salman wants the U.S. military to maintain a presence in Syria, despite President Donald Trump’s declaration that American forces will be pulled from the war-torn country in the near future. “We believe American troops should stay for at least the mid-term, if not the long-term,” he told TIME Thursday in a wide-ranging interview. Bin Salman said the American troop presence inside Syria is the last effort stopping Iran, Saudi Arabia’s arch-enemy, from continuing to expand influence with regional allies. U.S. forces inside the country also allow Washington to have a say in Syria’s future, he said. Iran, through...

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, aka Gerry Rivers before being Hispanic was fashionable, is out peddling his memoir, titled The Geraldo Show. On the Fox News program The Five, he was asked if he regrets any news story he reported, and his answer was shocking, particularly in the light of the border storming currently underway in Gaza. Aaron Klein at Breitbart reports his comments: I regret in 2002 backing down from backing the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel. The Second Intifada. Because I saw with my own eyes how. And I know how this is going to resonate very...

The British government last year gave £20 million to Palestinian schools teaching a curriculum that a watchdog group says embraces jihad, omits references to peace agreements with Israel, and encourages martyrdom, the Sunday Times reported. A review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found that study material from the Palestinian Authority textbooks “exerts pressure over young Palestinians to acts of violence.” Among the ideas taught to pupils are the physics behind slingshots used to hurl rocks at Israel soldiers, the glorification of martyrs, and images that infuse ideas of war. “The curriculum exerts...

An excellent update that should not be missed for anyone following the current scene at the Israeli border with Gaza, and also, even more important, a spot-on discussion of America's involvement in Syria. The UN's always anti-Israeli take on things, the Israeli F-35 surveillance flights over Iran, the Saudi reaction to Trump's comment on "soon" removal of troops from Syria, and more. The Easter teaching comes tomorrow and promises to be a beautiful one. Can't wait. Happy Spring Holidays to all, in my new PC vocabulary.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday over his criticism of Israel's resonse to the protests on the Gaza border over the weekend. "The most moral army in the world will not be lectured by someone who for years is bombing civilian populations indiscriminately," Netanyahu said in a statement. "Apparently that’s how they mark April 1 in Ankara." Erdogan said in Istanbul on Saturday that he “strongly condemns the Israeli government for its inhumane attack," referring to the killing of 15 Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border on Friday. “Israel will imprison Palestine under its...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday lashed out at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the two exchanged accusations over Palestinian and Kurdish civilians killed by the two countries respective armies. “The most moral army in the world will not be lectured by those who have indiscriminately bombed civilian populations for years,” Netanyahu said, seemingly referring to Ankara’s decades-long military campaign against Kurds in Turkey and now those in Syria. “Apparently, this is how April Fool’s Day is celebrated in Ankara,” a statement by the Israeli PM’s office on Facebook read.

The Hamas-affiliated newspaper Felesteen reported that the head of the UNRWA workers’ union in Gaza, Amir al-Mishal, said in his speech to the demonstrators that “the people who gathered here came to express their right to return.” He added that “rights are not received with supplication, but must be obtained by force.” Mishal called on the international community to assume its legal, moral and humanitarian responsibility for UNRWA until the return of refugees to their land, homeland and homes. He praised the Palestinian Arabs who will participate in “peaceful” demonstrations on Friday and in the so-called large-scale “March of the...

Palestinian officials say at least 16 people have been killed by Israeli forces and hundreds more wounded during protests at the Gaza-Israeli border. Thousands had marched to the border at the start of a six-week protest, dubbed the Great March of Return. The Israeli military said "rioting" had broken out at various places along the border and soldiers had opened fire "towards main instigators". Later, Israel said it had targeted sites of the Hamas militant group. Palestinians have pitched five camps near the border for the protest. They are demanding that refugees be allowed to return to homes that are...

President Trump has not been as soft on Russia as the media would have us believe. In fact, he has been tougher than most of his recent predecessors. This week he expelled 60 Russian diplomats in response to the early March attack on a former Russian spy in England. On March 15 came the announcement of the long-awaited sanctions in response to Russia’s tampering in the 2016 election and cyberattacks that infiltrated the nuclear, energy, commercial, water, aviation and manufacturing sectors. A total of 19 Russians were specifically cited as were five Russian companies, including the Internet Research Agency, which...

The Egyptian Parliament issued a warning that methods of annihilation and exile Turkey utilizes in Afrin are reminiscent of the Armenian Genocide. The Egyptian Parliamentary committee on the matters of Arab countries issued a statement and stressed that the invasion of Afrin is “an ethnic cleansing”. The statement warned against an ethnic cleansing against Kurds in Rojava and Southern Kurdistan and stressed that Turkey’s attacks against Afrin and Shengal are attacks against the independence of Syria and Iraq. The statement also pointed out the massacres and exile involved in the invasion of Afrin and said the events are reminiscent of...

Germany’s new foreign minister has urged the Palestinians “not to tear down bridges,” an apparent reference President Mahmoud Abbas’ contentious relationship with the U.S. and political rival Hamas. Heiko Maas spoke Monday, after meeting with Abbas and the Palestinian foreign minister. Maas says the new German government remains committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Trump administration has refused to make such a commitment. …

"The IDF warns against incidents in which civilians are called to 'demonstrations' that serve as cover for damage to security infrastructures and attempts to harm Israeli civilians or IDF soldiers. The Israel Air Force struck a terror target in the southern Gaza Strip late Saturday night in response to several Palestinians infiltrating Israel to damage an engineering vehicle building Israel’s underground barrier with the Hamas-run enclave. “The incident that took place last night, damaging the security fence and an attempt to set fire to engineering vehicles, is another serious incident in a sequence of events in the fence area,” the...

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Several rockets were fired from Gaza at communities in southern Israel. The firings triggered at least ten different Code Red rocket warning sirens on Sunday night in Sderot and the regional councils of Hof Ashkelon and Shaar HaNegev. The Iron Dome anti-missile system reportedly intercepted several of the rockets. The Israel Defense Forces are reported to have retaliated immediately following the attack, firing on several military positions in Gaza from tanks.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Thursday it would be ‘‘really insane’’ for him to trade classified information with presidential son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, or try to use Kushner to promote Saudi aims within the Trump administration. Having that kind of relationship ‘‘will not help us’’ and does not exist, he said. Speaking in a meeting with Washington Post editors and reporters, Mohammed denied U.S. media reports that he had claimed Kushner was ‘‘in his pocket,’’ or that he had sought or received a green light from Kushner, when the two met in Riyadh in October,...