Free Republic

The paychecks of the Hamas members, which were being paid through financial aid by Qatar, were passed on in suitcases in a heavily guarded vehicle. Palestinian protesters pelted the convoy of Qatar’s ambassador to the Palestinians, Mohammed Al-Emadi, with stones Friday as he came to observe the weekly demonstrations along Gaza’s border fence with Israel, according to The Jerusalem Post’s sister publication Maariv. Gazan media reported that those leading the attack against Al-Emadi were from the Palestinian faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. PFLP members had earlier refused to take part in the meeting with the...

An Arab newspaper reported on Saturday that Israel and Qatar are hammering out a deal that would allow Hamas to operate a sea crossing between Gaza and Cyprus. According to the Lebanese Al Akhbar, the prospective seaport is part of a wider Egyptian-brokered cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. While Hamas demands that the crossing be monitored through video cameras, Israel wants both Israeli forces and international elements to monitor the seaport to prevent weapons smuggling. The report comes as a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas appears to be gaining traction. A central part of the deal has been Qatar's...

At least four Kouros-type statues from the Archaic era were among four unearthed during excavations in October by the ephorate of antiquities of Fthiotida and Evrytania in the wider area of Atalanti in central Greece. Archaeologists commenced digging in the area after a landowner in Atalanti reported that he found the trunk of a naked male statue as he was tilling his field. Kouros is the name given to free-standing ancient Greek sculptures representing nude male youths. They first made their appearance in the Archaic period. Their figures began to appear in Greece about 615-590 BC. While many aspects of...

FULL TITLE: EU votes for total ban on organizations opposed to mass Muslim migration, thought police to be created “The Parliament is concerned by the increasing normalisation of fascism, racism and xenophobia and calls on EU states to ban neo-fascist and neo-Nazi groups.” The problem with this is that the EU labels as “neo-fascist” and “neo-Nazi” all those who oppose their agenda of mass Muslim migration and want to preserve European states as free societies. “MEPs argue, that there is a legal laxity towards ‘right-wing organisations’ in some member states and that this is one of the reasons behind the...

World War I ended with the Ottoman Empire vanquished and facing imminent collapse, its doomed alliance with Imperial Germany costing hundreds of thousands of Ottoman lives and dealing a death blow to the already creaking empire. But 100 years after the surrender of the Ottomans to the Allied powers at Mudros on October 30, 1918, the Great War is in no way seen as a pointless waste or even a defeat by modern Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Rather than focusing on the four years of devastating conflict that ended in the capitulation and eventual dissolution of the empire,...

Archaeologists have found what they believe to be the world’s oldest intact shipwreck at the bottom of the Black Sea where it appears to have lain undisturbed for more than 2,400 years. The 23-metre (75ft) vessel, thought to be ancient Greek, was discovered with its mast, rudders and rowing benches all present and correct just over a mile below the surface. A lack of oxygen at that depth preserved it, the researchers said. “A ship surviving intact from the classical world, lying in over 2km of water, is something I would never have believed possible,” said Professor Jon Adams, the...

The Greek Culture Ministry announced that five additional vessels have been discovered in the ship graveyard off the coast of the Fourni Islands, bringing the total number of ships found there to 58, according to an Associated Press report. The area in the Aegean Sea, at the junction of two main shipping routes, is known for its treacherous waters, and contains wrecks dating from the fourth century B.C. through the nineteenth century A.D. The newly discovered ships rest in shallow waters and show signs of damage from fishing nets and plunderers, but the archaeological team, assisted by local fishermen, found...

The ancient mythical Greek island of Lesbos is today better known as anchorage ground for human traffickers and the problems and conflicts that have arisen in connection with the boat traffic. It is now reported that a large cross monument on the Greek Orthodox Christian island has been levelled to the ground. This after a group claiming to promote intercultural coexistence argued that the cross could be perceived as offensive to the predominantly Muslim boat migrants. The cross monument was built on the cliffs of Apellia, beneath the castle of Mytilene, in memory of people who have died in the...

Last night, we returned from a two week trip to Greece. We visited Athens, Crete, and Thessaloniki. Athens and Crete are familiar American tourist destinations. Thessaloniki is not, and for good reason. It’s interesting, but not interesting enough to cause many American tourists to visit it. We went because it’s where my wife’s father was born. At that time, in the early years of the last century, Salonika (as the city was called) was one of the most fascinating cities in the world. My wife and I arrived 100 years too late. Thessaloniki, Greece’s second most populous city, is located...

An intact tomb from the early Mycenaean era (1650-1400 BC) has been unearthed by archaeologists in the region of Nemea, southern Greece. According to the Culture Ministry, the tomb is among the largest ever found in the region and is set apart by the short yet wide path leading to its entrance along with other features that place it in the early phase of the Mycenaean civilization. It was found in a Mycenaean cemetery in Aidonia. The Mycenaean civilization, with its palatial states, urban organization, sophisticated art and writing system, flourished in Greece in the 17th-12th centuries BC.

Turkey will defend its sovereign rights in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday in Ankara’s latest warning against hydrocarbon exploration off the coast of Cyprus. “We have a duty to protect [our rights],” Erdogan told a meeting of party officials, adding that standing up for its rights has given Turkey its existing “political, economic and social stature.” “We have been able to achieve this not only by taking action against certain people at home but also by standing up to the world’s biggest economic and military powers,” Erdogan said. Asked about...

While uncovering an impressive destruction level dating to the second half of the ninth century B.C.E., when Gath was the largest of the five cities of the Philistines and perhaps the largest city in the Land of Israel during the Iron Age, excavators found an exceptionally well preserved horned altar reminiscent of the Israelite horned altars described in the Bible (Exodus 27:1–2; 1 Kings 1:50)... But why does this altar have only two horns, when we know from the Bible and excavated examples that the altars of both the Israelites and, later, the Philistines, typically had four horns? The fact...

Emory University and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University completed a summer of excavations at the Sanctuary of Great Gods on Samothrace in northern Greece on August 8... focused on the stoa in the western section of the sanctuary and the monuments on the terrace it stood on, as well as on the publication of the area's findings.Emory professor Bonna Wescoat was top excavator for a new five-year research project, carried out through the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and supervised by the Evros Ephorate of Antiquities... Findings suggest that there was religious activity on...

...by resolving discrepancies between archeological and radiocarbon methods of dating the eruption, according to new University of Arizona-led research... "It's about tying together a timeline of ancient Egypt, Greece, Turkey and the rest of the Mediterranean at this critical point in the ancient world -- that's what dating Thera can do," said lead author Charlotte Pearson, an assistant professor of dendrochronology at the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research... Archeologists have estimated the eruption as occurring sometime between 1570 and 1500 BC by using human artifacts such as written records from Egypt and pottery retrieved from digs. Other researchers estimated the...

Greek archaeologists expressed their concern on Monday over the abandonment by the state of the site of the mid-5th century BC Temple of Artemis Agrotera, which they described as "one of the most historically important archaeological sites in the center of Athens." The Ionic-style temple, dedicated to the Greek virgin goddess of the hunt was constructed of Pentelic marble. It stands on Ardittou street, in the neighbourhood of Mets, surrounded by modern buildings. In a press release titled "A monument in danger," the Association of Greek Archaeologists says that despite numerous decisions published by the Central Archaeological Council since 1964...

Greece is a country in the European Union which serves as a point of entry for thousands and thousands of so-called refugees arriving on the Old Continent from Africa via boat. Today’ news is about a bleeding heart refugee loving NGO, called Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI), which has made over half a billion Euros yearly since 2015 by helping smuggling over 70,000 so-called refugees (actually illegal aliens) into Greece. The NGO made $2325 (2000 euros) from each illegal alien that was smuggled into the country. On top of that, ERCI got $5815 per immigrant, courtesy of various governmental programs,...

Unearthed in 1912, squirreled away for a lifetime and then handed in to a museum — the story behind the discovery of an ancient Egyptian coin in far north Queensland is almost as mysterious as how it came to be there.The bronze coin — about the same size as a 50 cent piece — was minted during the reign of Ptolemy IV, between 221 and 204BC.More than two millennia later it was found about seven centimetres underground in the depths of the far north Queensland rainforest.The man who found it, Andrew Henderson, had abandoned the gold mining fields of...

The Russian Orthodox Church threatened to break off relations with Orthodox Christianity's leading body - the Patriarchate of Constantinople - if it endorses the new self-governing, or autocephalous, Ukrainian Church. In an interview in Moscow on Saturday, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department for External Church Relations, said that the Russian Orthodox Church wil sever ties with Constantinople if a decision is made there to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Kyiv Patriarchate, according to TASS. "The Russian Orthodox Church will not accept this decision," the cleric said. As UNIAN reported earlier, the Ecumenical...

Archaeologists have made a huge discovery with signs of habitation stretching from the Protocycladic era until the 7th-8th century AD, which was unearthed at Vryokastro on the island of Kythnos, the site of an ancient city, and the nearby islet Vryokastraki that was once connected to the island by a narrow isthmus. The excavation work was carried out from June 24 until August 4 and finds include an early Christian basilica with later additions, including two towers and strong exterior walls, a number of rectangular rooms partly carved from rock that was used until late antiquity and obsidian tools and...

WASHINGTON — America's allies in Europe are plotting ways to bypass President Donald Trump's sanctions on Iran as they work to keep the nuclear deal alive without the United States. With a second round of U.S. sanctions set to take effect in November, European officials are working at cross-purposes with Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign as they try to preserve as much business as possible with Iran. The goal is to persuade Iran's leaders to stay in the deal for a few more years — perhaps long enough for Trump to be replaced and for a new U.S. president to rejoin...