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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Saturday called President Bush an enemy of Islam because the U.S. government froze the assets of Hamas leaders in response to a suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem. Speaking to Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV, Abdel Aziz Rantisi called the action "a theft of Muslim money by the Americans" and said the frozen money doesn't belong to Hamas. "Hamas does not have any money in the U.S., Europe or even in the Arab states. President Bush has become Islam's biggest enemy," Rantisi said in the interview. On...

DEAD SEA, Jordan - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday he was concerned about the Israeli killing of a leading member of Hamas but nevertheless emphasized that Hamas and Islamic Jihad shoulder primary responsibility for the difficult situation facing the Palestinian people. Powell added that Middle East peace negotiators needed to keep working despite the killing of the Hamas leader in Hebron on Saturday at the hands of Israeli special police forces. "I regret we had an incident that could be an impediment to progress," he told a news conference after a meeting of the "Quartet" of key...

US considers granting missile ships to Turkey WASHINGTON / ANKARA As Turkey plans developing its national naval vehicles, a US bill to the House of Representatives suggests granting guided missile frigates to Turkey. The bill angers a particular Hellenic-US group A recent bill has been submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives that would authorize President Barack Obama to grant the provision of guided missile-firing naval vessels to Turkey, along with several other countries, including Thailand and Mexico. Under the motion, Turkey may receive the USS Halyburton (FFG–40) and the USS Thach (FFG–43) ships. USS Halybutron is the 34th ship...

FinalCall.com) - The outpouring of people in Ramallah, the West Bank, at the funeral of Yasser Arafat was a sign to the world of the love that his people had for the man that embodied their struggle. What most of the world does not realize, and the press is not saying, is that there would have been 10 times the number if the people from Gaza and other West Bank cities and towns had been permitted to travel to Ramallah. Because of the apartheid system that the Israelis have imposed on the Palestinians and the blockade against Gaza, people did...

Just a regular day in Gaza, quiet, serene, peaceful, young folks going out and about, shopping, enjoying the sunshine, Hamas' headwear adorned by all the males as the latest fashion gear, their fully loaded RPGs or other weapon slung over their shoulders in a relaxed pose tells you life has returned to normal for Gaza.

It’s been formally acknowledged that U.S. NATO ‘ally’ Turkey is providing safe haven to leaders of Hamas, a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) so designated by the U.S. State Department. By its very definition, an FTO should be considered declared enemy of the U.S. Despite this, Turkey doesn’t appear to be paying any price. Another player in all this is the small nation of Qatar. It is desperately trying to play both sides of a political fence as leaders of Hamas – to include the terrorist organization’s political leader Khaled Meshaal – has been forcibly relocated to Turkey. The reason these...

A myth of Palestinian centrality has dominated Western policy, but contrasts with reality, in the Middle East.‎ In 2015, following in the footsteps of Presidents Hosni Mubarak and Anwar Sadat, Egyptian ‎President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi does not subordinate Egypt’s national security ties with Israel to ‎Egypt’s ties with the Palestinians. ‎ El-Sissi — just like his two predecessors — considers the transnational ‎Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian terrorism mutual threats to Israel, Egypt, ‎Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states, which have never regarded the ‎Palestinian issue as a top priority, and have denied the Palestinian Authority their ‎financial generosity. Notwithstanding...

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will represent the United States at the 70th anniversary ceremony for the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on Tuesday—rather than President Barack Obama or Vice President Joe Biden—while other countries are slated to send their heads of state. Tuesday’s ceremony will likely be the last major anniversary where a significant number of survivors of the Nazi camp are present. About 300 are expected to attend, and most of them are in their 90s or older than 100. Nazi authorities killed 1.1 million people at the camp, mostly Jews, which was liberated by the Soviet army...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyTel Aviv, Israel — January 21, 2015 … An elite Israeli police unit, which serves both prisons and courts, reacted quickly in capturing a 22-year-old Islamic terrorist from the West Bank city of Tulkarm. The terrorist boarded bus number 40 in central Tel Aviv and began to attack the driver. The wounded driver Herzl Biton, 55, a father of three and a bus driver for over 23 years responded by spraying the attacker with mace spray. Biton, who was stabbed in the chest, was evacuated by Magen David Adom emergency medical services to Ichilov and...

I never give time frames, because you never know where you'll have sufficient evidence to go public with a prosecution, " Mueller said.

The Palestinian Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip, Hamas, has intensified its efforts to achieve the destruction of Israel. Hamas has obviously interpreted these two decisions -- by the EU court (to remove Hamas from the list of terror organizations) and the International Criminal Court -- as a green light to proceed with its plans to eliminate Israel. The main goal of Hamas's "Liberation Army" is, of course, to prepare for war against Israel, according to Hamas spokesman, Mushir al-Masri. "The main purpose of these training camps is to prepare an army for the liberation of Palestine and its holy...

Tehran threatens to punish Jewish state following funeral procession of a top commander killed in Syria strike TEHRAN, Iran — Senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commanders said Israel will be punished for killing one of its generals in a January 18 airstrike in Syria that also killed six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters. Nasser Soltani said “Israel will certainly pay for what it did.” He spoke during a funeral ceremony Wednesday for Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, who will be buried in his hometown of Sirjan in southeastern Iran on Thursday. Soltani was quoted by the state TV as saying that Allahdadi was...

An Iranian general killed in an Israeli air strike in Syria was not its intended target and Israel believed it was attacking only low-ranking guerrillas, a senior Israeli security source told Reuters on Tuesday. The source declined to be identified because Israel will not confirm or deny whether it carried out the strike. Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Mohammed Allahdadi was killed along with a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group's late military leader, Imad Muughniyeh, in Sunday's attack on a Hezbollah convoy near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

A suspected terrorist stabbed at least nine people on the 40 bus line in Tel Aviv near the Maariv junction on Wednesday morning. Two of the victims were seriously injured and several others suffered moderate injuries, Magen David Adom said. Others at the scene were treated for shock. The injured were evacuated to the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer and Ichilov Hospital at Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv. The attacker fled on foot but was shot and neutralized by police and is being questioned. The assailant is a 23-year-old man from the West Bank city of Tulkarm, illegally...

Israeli police say they have shot an attacker who stabbed at least nine people on a bus in central Tel Aviv. The stabbing incident occurred on the Maariv bridge, police said, adding that the stabbings took place both in and outside the bus. At least two of the victims were in a critical condition......

Iran on Monday promised that Hezbollah would deliver “crushing response” to the Israeli attack over the weekend, which killed six Iranian agents, including a top-level commander, and five Hezbollah members. “The experience of the past shows that the resistance current will give a crushing response to the Zionist regime’s terrorist moves with revolutionary determination and in due time and place,” Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), was quoted as saying. The Israeli strike came just days after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared that the terror group was preparing for a war in Israel’s northern Galilee...

Iran's revolutionary guards' corps (IRGC) has confirmed that one of its senior commanders, general Mohammad Ali Allahdadi (or Dadi), has been killed by an Israeli strike on the Syrian sector of the Golan Heights. The air raid, which also killed six members of Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah group, occurred near Syria's Quneitra border crossing with Israel. "Following the Zionist aggressions against the resistance in Syria, General Mohammad Allahdadi, a former commander of the Sarollah Brigade of the Revolutionary Guard, was martyred along with Jihad Moughniyah and three others in the same car," the Dana news website said. The senior commander was...

Hezbollah supporters turned out in force on Monday to bury the son of the group's late commander, one of six fighters who died in an Israeli air strike in neighboring Syria that also killed an Iranian general. The killings raised the possibility of a retaliatory attack, with a senior Iranian official suggesting that Israel would be hit at "the right time and right place". An Israeli defense official said escalation was possible. Jihad Mughniyeh was buried in Beirut alongside his father Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008. Though it was unclear what role Mughniyeh, who was in...

Israelis live under the constant threat of terrorist attacks. Just overnight, Israel rolled up a six-member cell linked to the Islamic State with the alleged orders to execute strikes against Israeli targets inside the Jewish stateÂ’s territory. On IsraelÂ’s borders, Hamas to the south and Hezbollah to the north represent a constant terrorist threat. IsraelÂ’s ability to defend its borders by executing strikes on terrorist targets is further complicated by the fact that any one of those strikes could ignite an international incident by accidently killing a high-ranking military officer from one of those terror groupsÂ’ state sponsors. That...

As parliaments in more and more European nations vote to recognize “Palestine,” European politicians insist they are doing so to promote the objective of an independent Palestinian state living in peace beside a secure Israel. But both the declared aims of Palestinian leaders and the pattern of European policy vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians give the lie to European averments of benign intent. Neither party of the divided Palestinian leadership has, to say the least, demonstrated an interest in peace with Israel. Hamas, now controlling Gaza and enjoying extensive popularity in the West Bank, openly trumpets its objective not only...

Western intelligence sources say son of late Hezbollah leader Mughniyeh was planning attacks on Israel, received direct Iranian sponsorship. Following reports of an IAF helicopter strike on Sunday that targeted a convoy of Hezbollah operatives and killed 10, Hezbollah-run television in Lebanon indicated the incident could prompt a "costly" surge in tensions in the region. On Sunday evening, the al-Manar news channel said the attack suggested that "the enemy has gone crazy because of Hezbollah's growing capabilities and it could lead to a costly adventure that will put the Middle East at stake." Western intelligence sources reported Sunday that Jihad...

Israel’s Shin Bet security service says it arrested the first known Islamic State cell operating inside the country. The intelligence agency said Sunday that the seven cell members belong to the country’s Arab minority. It said they were caught just before executing an attack and were practicing on animals how to behead people. …

British-Lebanese human rights lawyer urges Egyptian president to expedite release of Canadian-Egyptian reporter.British-Lebanese human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has called on Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to release and pardon an imprisoned Egyptian-Canadian journalist for Al Jazeera, whom she represents. The attorney - who recently wed Hollywood star George Clooney - released a statement Friday, expressing disappointment over the lack of "concrete" progress toward the release of Mohamed Fahmy following a meeting with Egyptian and Canadian diplomats, Egypt's Al-Masry Al-Youm reported. Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird expressed cautious optimism for Fahmy's release after talks with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shukri...

A full 185 Arab residents of Gaza were given rare permission by Israel to hold prayers last Friday on the Temple Mount, where they promptly waved banners of the Hamas terrorist organization and burned French flags, protesting satire magazine Charlie Hebdo's recent cartoon of Mohammed. The magazine's Paris headquarters were targeted in an Islamist terror attack two weeks ago, with 12 people including senior staff brutally murdered over its depictions of the founder of Islam. Defiantly the paper last week released a new edition with Mohammed on the cover, which has sold out in record time. The nearly 200 Gaza...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Saturday evening released a strong statement of condemnation on the International Criminal Court (ICC) decision last Friday, in which it chose to launch a preliminary probe into charges of Israeli "war crimes." “Israel rejects the absurd decision of the ICC prosecutor," said Netanyahu. "It’s absurd for the ICC to ignore international law and agreements, under which the Palestinians don't have a state and can only get one through direct negotiations with Israel." Reportedly Netanyahu spoke with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday night, requesting American support in preventing the ICC action against Israel....

Istanbul (AFP)- A teenager from Russia's Muslim region of Dagestan, suspected of a suicide bombing in Istanbul, was said Friday to have been an Islamic State jihadist and the wqidow of an Norwegian extremist...

Muslims never guilty of 'terrorist massacres,' Turkey's Erdogan insistsTurkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan’s increasingly bizarre rhetoric continued this week when he told reporters Muslims have "never taken part in terrorist massacres" and appeared to blame the West for the recent Islamist attacks in Paris.

The International Criminal Court has begun considering whether to investigate alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Hague-based ICC said on Friday it had "opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine". It is an automatic step taken by the court upon a referral. The Palestinians have asked the ICC to investigate Israeli "crimes" since June 2014. Israel and the US have strongly criticised the Palestinians' move. After the Palestinians applied to join the ICC, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they had chosen "a path of confrontation" and that Israel would "not sit idly by". Israel...

A Lebanese newspaper reported that Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas told Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi that the Palestinian Authority would not file a case against Israel in the International Criminal Court if negotiations between Israel and the PA resumed “in the coming weeks.” According to the report in the Al-Ahabar newspaper, Abbas made the comments to Sisi during their meeting in Cairo Wednesday. The PA several weeks ago formally requested membership in the ICC. Approval of the PA's membership is expected within two months. Last week, the PA recognized the ICC's jurisdiction to investigate what it said were Israeli war...

ICC prosecutor opens a preliminary probe into possible war crimes committed by Israel. Netanyahu: This decision is scandalous. The International Criminal Court's (ICC) prosecutor on Friday opened a preliminary probe into possible war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians, including during last year's Gaza war, AFP reports. The prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said her office would conduct its "analysis in full independence and impartiality". Depending on her findings, Bensouda will decide at a later stage whether to launch or quash the investigation, based on the initial probe, the report added. Israel condemned the decision as "scandalous", as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu...

The Islamic Republic of Iran—which would be better known as the Islamic Occupation Regime—has for over thirty years championed itself as the “Palestinian” Arabs greatest supporters in the Islamist quest to extirpate the State of Israel from the world. Yet, while the non-Arab, Persian Shi’ite regime demonizes Israel and “Zionists” twenty four hours a day, it aligns itself with the Arab Sunni fundamentalist terror gang called Hamas, while also aligning itself with the Arab Shi’ite terrorist gang - Hizbullah - which has a strangle hold on Lebanon.

While Western newspapers were debating whether or not to reprint the Mohammed cartoons, in Nigeria as many as 2,000 people were massacred by the Islamic State in Nigeria, also known as Boko Haram, in what is being called the deadliest attack by the Muslim group to date. Survivors described the Islamic State setting up efficient killing teams and massacring everyone while shouting “Allahu Akbar”. “For five kilometers (three miles), I kept stepping on dead bodies until I reached Malam Karanti village, which was also deserted and burnt,” one survivor said. There’s a word for that. It’s genocide. The Islamic State...

Israeli report says developments violate agreements; guards say the chief security officer is establishing ‘a militia’ The US Consulate in Jerusalem is training a force of 35 Palestinians from East Jerusalem to serve as armed guards, particularly for consular trips to the West Bank’s Area A, which is off-limits to Israelis, it was reported on Wednesday. The arrangement violates a 2011 agreement between Israel and the consulate, the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth stated, whereby only IDF combat veterans would be authorized to carry arms as consulate guards. “The consulate was authorized to keep roughly 100 handguns for security staff, on...

A fierce debate is raging within Israel’s military over the extent to which soldiers should be held legally accountable for their actions during last year’s Gaza war, with commanders increasingly at odds with military lawyers. The dispute has set off a firestorm in Israel, where many say the legal threat would shackle soldiers in any future battle, lower their morale and shatter a sacred trust on which Israel’s compulsory military service relies.But with the Palestinians announcing their application last week to the International Criminal Court, the decision to investigate becomes all the more pressing: A robust Israeli inquiry into its...

Mahmoud a-Zahar, a top Hamas terrorist in Gaza, slammed Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas for participating in the anti-terror rally in Paris Sunday. A-Zahar called Abbas “hypocritical” for participating in the event. “The participation of Abbas in this event is part of the hypocrisy and political acrobatics that Abbas commonly participates in,” a-Zahar said. “Abbas wants to show that he can fight terror, but he does not even know the meaning of terror.” In an interview, he said that Hamas was opposed to the terror attack at the Charlie Hebdo magazine, in which 13 people were killed, saying that “Hamas...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem — January 9, 2015 … Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with French Ambassador to Israel Patrick Maisonnave and made the following remarks at the start of their meeting: “I wish to send from this place our deepest condolences to President François Hollande, the bereaved families and the people of France. We grieve with our French brothers and sisters. We reaffirm our commitment to work together to defeat the enemies of the democratic values we all cherish. I know that you’re going from here to France, and I want you to take with you...

School closures ordered by the Islamic State militant group have resulted in an estimated 670,000 children in Syria being deprived of an education ... The Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that has seized territory in Syria and Iraq, began shutting schools in areas in eastern Syria in November. The closures were ordered pending a religious revision of the curriculum. ... Between 1.3 million and 1.6 million Syrian children have been prevented from attending school as a result of the now five-year civil war, which has killed more than 200,000 and displaced half the country’s population ... In September, students...

As new details are revealed in the investigation of the Islamic State (ISIS) terror cell in Hevron, security officials estimate that hundreds of Hamas terrorists are leaving the “moderate” terrorist group in favor of ISIS to wage war on Israel—and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The leader of the Hevron ISIS cell, Ahmed Wadah Salah Shehada (22), admitted under Israel Security Agency (ISA, or Shin Bet) investigation that he switched from Hamas to ISIS in recent years because it was too “moderate” for him, in that Hamas didn’t compel Sharia Islamic law, reports Channel 2. Reportedly the security system assesses that...

Twisted, self-indulgent, calculating projection is rife among dictators, despots, religious zealots and terrorists and, unfortunately, a growing number of elected and appointed officials here in the United States The New Year unfolded with more terror from Islamists. The Paris gunmen, reportedly an Al Qaeda terror cell with Yemeni connections who murdered 12 people at a leftist French satirical magazine, may give courage to Muslim-based wannabe states like the Palestinian Authority that try to bully authentic nations. The close of 2014 brought a defeat for the Palestinian Authority as it attempted to fast-track statehood, hoping to bypass negotiations with Israel via...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJanuary 6, 2015 — New York, NY … UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stated this evening that the state of Palestine will join the International Criminal Court on April 1. This action will enable the Palestinians to pursue war-crimes charges against Israel. As Israel is not a member of the International Criminal Court, it is not required to participate in any investigations by the ICC. The Israel Defense Forces are conducting their own internal investigations of any possible wrong doing and this may very well suffice for the ICC. The Palestinian Authority, which is in a...

Wagdy Ghoneim, just expelled from Qatar along with other Muslim Brotherhood leaders, used to live in the United States. He served as imam at the Islamic Institute of Orange County, California in the early 2000Â’s, and raised funds for Hamas-linked Muslim charity KindHearts. How many people are still in the United States today who learned about Islam from Wagdy Ghoneim? And why doesnÂ’t this Muslim cleric, who has dedicated his life to understanding and teaching the QurÂ’an and Sunnah, see what Barack Obama and David Cameron and Tony Abbott and so many other non-Muslims see so clearly, that the Islamic...

Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Ankara would welcome seven top Muslim Brotherhood (MB) figures who are being forced to leave Qatar after heavy pressure from Gulf countries. In a press meeting with journalists after returning from an official trip to the Arab country, Erdogan said the Islamist leaders can come to Turkey like any other foreign visitor, if they wish to do so. Turkey's ruling moderate Islamist AK Party backed the Muslim Brotherhood after Egypt's army ousted president Mohamed Morsi from office in July 2013. He added that none of the figures have yet contacted Turkish officials...

Leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood group and allied clerics said on Saturday that they are departing Qatar, where they had sought refuge following the ouster of Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and the crackdown on his supporters. Their presence in Qatar had severely strained Doha’s relations with Egypt as well as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all of which view the more than 85-year-old Islamist movement as a threat. The expulsion threatens to further isolate the group, which rose to power in Egypt through a string of post-Arab Spring elections but suffered a dramatic fall from grace during...

ABU DHABI — Qatar, under pressure from the Arab League, is said to have expelled the Muslim Brotherhood. Diplomatic sources said Doha deported dozens of exiled Brotherhood leaders who escaped Egypt in 2013. The sources said the Brotherhood operatives flew to Egypt’s neighbor Libya and joined Islamist militias. “The Brotherhood people were given three days to pack their bags and get on the plane to Tripoli,” a source said. The sources did not identify those deported. But they said several of them were on a list of 15 Brotherhood and Hizbullah operatives submitted by Saudi Arabia last month. In March...

Egypt has not invited Qatar and Turkey for a major Islamic conference due in Cairo later this week, according to a report published on March 22. “We are not having a crisis with the Qatari or Turkish people … The issue lies in the policy of the Turkish and Qatari governments,” Egyptian Minister of Waqfs (religious endowments) Mohammad Jumaa told at a press conference, gulfnews.com has reported. Cairo will host a conference on March 25 on religious extremism, as Egypt continues a crackdown on Islamists in what the military-backed government portrays as a “war on terrorism”. Around 80 scholars from...

The spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, for long one of the most authoritative voices in Sunni Islam — and certainly a “radical,” who, among other things, insists Muslims must always “obey the prophet, even if he tells you to kill” — has just had his Qatari citizenship revoked and told to leave Qatar by its emir, Tamim bin Hamd bin al-Khalifa, in light of events in Egypt, specifically the overthrow of the Brotherhood and Morsi. Qaradawi has lived in Qatar for years, as he was exiled from Egypt under Mubarak for inciting terrorism. The emir has...

The trouble at home started when, as a teenager, he began questioning the beliefs and actions of his parents, both ardent Hamas supporters. “I ended up having a big fight with them, and ran to Israel,” the youth told The Times of Israel in a phone conversation Monday from Edmonton, Canada, where he eventually sought political asylum. A tragic experience in an Israeli prison cell that night sparked a chain of events which would turn the teenager’s belief system on its head, leading him to convert to Christianity and change his name to John Calvin, after the 16th century French...

Looks like the diplomatic efforts of Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi may have paid off. Khaled Mashaal, who ran the recent Hamas war on Israel from the safety of Doha where he has long kept his organization’s worldwide headquarters, got kicked out of Qatar altogether — along with the Muslim Brotherhood. CNN reports that the expelled officials will likely end up in Turkey: Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal and members of the Muslim Brotherhood have been expelled from Qatar, a Hamas-run news agency reported Tuesday. The officials are most likely headed to Turkey, the report said.The move comes after...

The United States said Monday it opposes a move by Israel to freeze the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for its bid to join the International Criminal Court, AFP reports Monday. "This step is one that raises tensions as others do," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, referring to the freeze on revenue transfers to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority (PA) formally presented a request to the United Nations on Friday to join the ICC, in a move firmly opposed by both Israel and the United States.

One of the most controversial aspects of Israel's policy on Gaza is economic: A blockade of the Palestinian territory began in 2007 after Hamas gained control of the region. Most experts agree that it has had a dramatic effect on life in the region (over the summer, the Economist said the siege had made Gaza "the world's biggest open-air prison") yet many also argue that it has failed to achieve its aims of weakening Hamas. In this light, the impending opening of a Coca-Cola factory in Gaza seems important. Reuters reports that Palestinians – with Israeli approval – began importing...