Free Republic

Is the Israeli Mossad behind the Arab Spring? According to a play which recently aired on Egyptian television, the answer is yes. The anti-Semitic play, entitled “The Spy,” recently aired on the Egyptian Al-Hayat TV channel. It was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). The play displays anti-Semitic stereotypes and portrays Mossad officials preparing “for a huge operation of espionage and sowing disunity” which targets the entire Arab world. …

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s suggestion that NATO forces be deployed in the future Palestinian state is not well-received by his rivals, the Hamas rulers of Gaza. A spokesman for Hamas said Friday that the faction would regard any international military presence within a future Palestinian state as "occupation" forces, reported the Ma’an news agency. During a rally in southern Gaza, spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that any international forces stationed in “Palestine” as a result of a peace agreement with Israel would be treated the same as “the Israeli occupation.” Abu Zuhri called on Abbas to withdraw from...

Gaza’s Hamas rulers say they will oppose any international force in a future Palestine—adding a new complication to U.S.-brokered peace efforts. […] Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for the Islamic militant group, said Sunday that Hamas will deal with any international force “in the same manner it uses with Israeli occupation forces.” Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis in years of conflict. …

Compensation for Jews pushed out of Arab lands may become yet another issue MUCH as Palestinian refugees and their offspring remember the orange groves and cinemas they lost in Jaffa when Israel was born in 1948, Jews who once lived in Iraq recite the qasidas—lyrical Arabic poetry—and recall the time when most of Iraq’s banks and transport companies were run by Jews. “Iraq has gone downhill since they forced us out,” sighs a professor at a gathering of academics of Iraqi origin at Or Yehuda, a Tel Aviv suburb, slipping into Arabic. “Mubki, lamentable.” American officials are unclear on the...

<p>Egypt is continuing its crackdown not only on Sinai terrorism but on Gaza’s Hamas rulers as well.</p> <p>The Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency reported that Egyptian border forces destroyed 10 tunnels and seven homes in the Sinai on Saturday, as part of new campaign to create a buffer zone along the border with Gaza that would extend 500 meters in some places.</p>

A speech in Knesset Wednesday given by the head of the European Union Parliament caused outrage, and ultimately sparked a walk-out. Several MKs expressed upset as EU parliament president Martin Schulz, who spoke in German, repeated as fact Palestinian Authority claims of Israeli discrimination regarding allocation of water in Judea and Samaria, and of a “blockade” on Gaza. Schulz condemned Israeli “settlements” east of the 1949 armistice line as “an obstacle to peace,” and claimed, “The blockade of Gaza creates despair and extremism.” …

Israel to build moat on border with Egypt By Inigo Gilmore in Jerusalem (Filed: 18/06/2004) Israel has announced plans to build a saltwater moat along the Gaza-Egypt border in a move greeted with shock and bemusement. The moat is intended to deter the smuggling of weapons through tunnels under the frontier from Egypt into Palestinian areas. Israel's defence ministry published a request for bids after the cabinet approved, in principle, a Gaza pullout plan, under which Israel would keep a narrow corridor on the Egyptian frontier pending possible security arrangements with Egypt. The moat will be 2.5 miles in length,...

A man died in an apparent car explosion on Sheshet Hayamim Street in southern Tel Aviv on Saturday evening. Two men were killed in a car bomb explosion in Petah Tikva last week. The explosion was not a targeted mob hit, but rather the two men were transporting the bomb when it detonated prematurely – what’s known as a “work accident.”

Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com) - U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts on Tuesday told an audience at the liberal Take Back America conference that he was sorry for voting to authorize the war in Iraq, calling the entire mission "a mistake." "We were misled, we were given evidence that was not true," Kerry said. "It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote [for it]." Kerry, who led an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2004, said it was necessary to admit mistakes because "you cannot change the future if you''re not honest about the past." He criticized supporters of the...

ormer Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Friday that if talks he held with Palestinians in 2008 had produced a peace deal, it would have forced tens of thousands of Jewish settlers to leave their homes in the West Bank. If a deal had been reached at the time, it would also not have included an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, Olmert said. More than five years on, the fate of the Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley, along with recognition of Israel as the Jewish national homeland, are key sticking points in the ongoing Mideast peace talks brokered...

The Jordanian parliament declared on Saturday that it was against Israel’s demand that the Palestinian Authority (PA) recognize it as Jewish state. In a statement carried by the Jordanian Petra news agency, the Lower House of the Parliament outlined its “fundamental position on the Palestinian issue” and said it was rejecting Israel’s demand for being recognized as a Jewish state. The statement emphasized the need to establish an independent and fully sovereign Palestinian state along the pre-1967 borders, with eastern Jerusalem as its capital. …

The US State Department issued a travel warning Monday on Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, strongly warning US citizens against travel to the Gaza Strip. The advisory was updated due to what the State Department said was the complex security environment in the region.

After a rocket was fired at Eilat by Al Qaeda-inspired Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem) Friday night, and shot down by Iron Dome, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz warned Saturday that at the current rate, Israel will soon have to once again enter Gaza to destroy Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group which currently controls the territory. “In the last year or two there has been an improvement in the security situation, fewer rockets have been fired at Israel and fewer Israelis have been injured,” noted Steinitz. “But if the trickle of rockets from Gaza continues, we’ll have no choice but...

The Iranian regime’s Press TV accused Saudi Arabia and Israel of planning to replace the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount with a Jewish temple.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Press TV reported, via Religion of Peace: Saudi Arabia is supporting the Israeli regime in its plan to replace the holy al-Aqsa Mosque with a temple, an analyst tells Press TV in an interview. Saab Shaath was talking to Press TV on Saturday, one day after Israeli Minister of Housing and Construction Uri Ariel called for the construction of what he called “the Third Temple” to replace the holy site. “Al-Aqsa Mosque is currently in place...

January 27, 2014 Stockman returns from official State Department tour, backs Israel, exposes media bias by Donny Ferguson ‘The United States have no greater ally in the Middle East than Israel’ ‘You must be conservative when you’re meeting with the media and the media claim they can’t find you’ Reporters knew of trip but claimed otherwise, ‘We decided to hold out and see how long reporters would pretend they didn’t know I was on official business’ HOUSTON – Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX 36) returned Monday from a ten-day official congressional delegation to Egypt, Israel and Russia with State Department officials. ...

Does John Kerry understand the world he inherited? Is he in denial? Consider. At Davos, Switzerland, Kerry called it a "myth" that America is withdrawing, and "the most bewildering version of this disengagement myth is about a supposed U.S. retreat from the Middle East." Is he serious? How else does Kerry describe Obama's pullout of all U.S. troops from Iraq, and from Afghanistan by year's end? Syria is "someone else's civil war," says President Obama. If we do any strikes there, promised Kerry, they will be "unbelievably small," and rest assured there will be "no [U.S.] boots on the ground."...

Palestinians would kill Jewish Israelis left under their rule, Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday, continuing a campaign against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ostensible willingness to leave Israeli settlers under Palestinian rule under a future peace agreement. Bennett also outlined his own plan for the West Bank — which he has largely been mum about since joining Netanyahu’s government — under which Israel would annex most of the territories. “Do you know why? Why Jews cannot live under Palestinian rule? Do you know why? Why Palestinians can’t rule over Jews?” Bennett said in an address at the...

In a shocking declaration on her 1 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell asserted that one of America's fiercest enemies was actually a friend to the U.S. before George W. Bush came along: "Up until that moment, Iran was cooperating with the United States on the border of Afghanistan, it was post-9/11, Iran was more or less an American ally. By being included in the Axis of Evil, it turned the Iranian government in a completely different direction." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] The topic came up when The Washington Post's...

In a greeting to the Iranian people on the occasion of the traditional New Year (Nowruz) holiday last week, Secretary of State John Kerry exposed a secret that journalists and academics have been agonizing over for the past six weeks: the fact that his daughter has married an Iranian-American who has extensive family ties to Iran. “I am proud of the Iranian-Americans in my own family, and grateful for how they have enriched my life,” Kerry said in the official statement.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Thursday at the Davos World Economic Forum that investing in the Israeli economy is a way to facilitate peace in the region. In a speech that largely focused on the strength of Israel as a hub for innovation, as well as research and development, Netanyahu said that the advancement of the Israeli economy would help Israel's Arab neighbors, specifically the Palestinians. The prime minister stated that "Israel is not what's wrong in the Middle East, it is what's right with the Middle East."