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Three Palestinian residents of Ramallah, Mohammad Adawi and his two sons Naser and Nasim, arrived in Canada in 2010 requesting refugee status. According to Adawi, he was forced to flee Samaria following death threats from armed members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The three recently applied for a judicial review of a 2012 decision that refused them refugee status and claimed their story was likely fabricated, reports Shalom Toronto. The federal courts involved in the review canceled the earlier decision and opened a new hearing of their case. Adawi reports that his eldest son refused to help Hamas and Islamic...

The Egyptian authorities have begun revoking the citizenship of Hamas leaders, according to reports in Palestinian and Egyptian media outlets. The move is seen in the context of intensifying tensions between Egypt and Hamas in the aftermath of the downfall of deposed President Mohammed Morsi’s regime. Under Morsi’s rule, the Egyptian authorities granted Egyptian citizenship to thousands of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, including top Hamas officials. One of the Hamas leaders who received an Egyptian passport was Mahmoud Zahar, who was born to an Egyptian mother. The Palestinian daily Al-Quds reported that the Egyptian authorities have taken effective measures...

Bill de Blasio has appointed his transition committee and it includes Imam Khalid Latif. Latif is one of the cleaner faces of CAIR. He was a chaplain at Princeton and now NYU. Bloomberg appointed him to be a police chaplain and he’s won interfaith awards.He’s young enough and savvy enough to play the moderate role really well. You won’t catch him shouting “Death to America� or “We are all Osama� when the cameras are off. And his presence as a CAIR board member will be overlooked by most. In 2006, when deadly protests broke out in the Muslim world...

The one-year-old granddaughter of Hamas’s Gaza Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, has died, The Associated Press (AP) reported Wednesday. The girl was brought to Israel in grave condition last week, with a serious infection of the digestive tract which affected her nervous system. She was returned to Gaza a day later after Israeli doctors concluded they could not help her. A statement from Haniyeh's office quoted by AP said the girl, named Amal, died at a children's hospital in Gaza. Amal's father wrote on his Facebook page that she had suffered brain damage. Haniyeh's office declined comment on the granddaughter's seeking...

Two lion cubs born in a zoo in the Gaza Strip died Thursday two days after their birth. [....] The twin felines...were born Tuesday in the Bissan zoo after their parents had been smuggled into the coastal enclave from Egypt.... The report...cited the zoo worker as blaming Israel's blockade of the Strip for the lack of food and medicine....

Gaza authorities say two newborn lion cubs just unveiled by Hamas as prized additions in a zoo they run have died. Mohammad Abdel-Rahman, the acting manager of the Beit Lahiya zoo in northern Gaza, said Thursday the cubs died of an unspecified illness. He said the zoo's staff was unable to save them because they lacked experience in caring for newborn cubs. …

A granddaughter of Gaza’s Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has been hospitalized in Israel in critical condition, Palestinian sources said Monday. Amal Haniya, aged one, suffers from a serious infection of the digestive tract which has affected her nervous system, according to Gaza medical sources. …

Under Barack Obama, American influence in the Middle East has sunk to levels not seen since before World War II. From Israel to Saudi Arabia, from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates, our friends are shaking their heads, wondering why we have seemingly taken leave of our senses. Across this vital region, Obama is effectively empowering our opponents and turning his back on U.S. supporters and allies. He has openly courted implacable adversaries like Tehran's ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood, allowed Chinese penetration to reach unprecedented levels and restored Russian clout to pre-1979 proportions. And Obama is far from finished....

New York Times reports that Hamas has introduced its own textbooks into Gaza schools, as part of effort to spread its ideology • Books do not recognize Israel and describe Palestine as encompassing all land between Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. Hamas has introduced its own textbooks into schools in the Gaza Strip this fall, as part of an effort to spread its militant ideology among Palestinian youth, The New York Times reported on Sunday. According to the report, the books do not recognize modern Israel, or mention the Oslo Accords that Israel signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization in...

When a class of Palestinian ninth graders in Gaza recently discussed the deadly 1929 riots over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, it was guided by a new textbook, introduced this fall by the Islamist Hamas movement. … What Gaza teenagers are reading in their 50-page hardcover texts this fall includes references to the Jewish Torah and Talmud as “fabricated,” and a description of Zionism as a racist movement whose goals include driving Arabs out of all of the area between the Nile in Africa and the Euphrates in Iraq, Syria and Turkey.“Palestine,” in turn, is defined as a...

Five IDF soldiers were wounded near the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza on Thursday evening. An initial investigation has found that terrorists detonated an explosive device as IDF soldiers were operating in the area, preparing to blow up the terror tunnel that was recently discovered by IDF soldiers, leading from Gaza into an Israeli kibbutz. As the soldiers crossed the border fence, the device was detonated, wounding the five soldiers who were taken by helicopter to the Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva. The IDF responded by opening fire at terrorists who were in the ara.

AAAN has long been tied to President Obama. In 2001 and 2002, the Woods Fund of Chicago, with Obama on its board, made grants totaling $75,000 to the AAAN—about a fifth of AAAN’s overall budget. Obama served in that role alongside Bill Ayers and received $6,000 a year from 1999-2002. AAAN’s founder Rashid Khalidi and his wife Mona hosted Obama in their home on at least one occasion. Obama praised Khalidi’s insights, which had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases.” Khalidi returned the compliment, telling a mostly Arab audience, that Obama is...

A ministerial committee headed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday approved the list of 26 Palestinian prisoners to be released in the second stage of Israel's commitment to the Palestinian Authority to resume peace negotiations. The names of the pre-Oslo prisoners were expected to be published later Sunday night. Earlier Sunday, a bill sponsored by the Bayit Yehudi Party to ban future Palestinian prisoners release failed to pass the Legislative Ministerial Committee by an eight-to-five vote, as a separate panel prepares this evening to approve such a release.

Hamas has reportedly issued orders to shoot any opposition protesters in the head. Sources in the Palestinian Authority told the Palestine Press news agency on Saturday that the Interior Minister in Hamas’s government in Gaza, Fathi Hamad, has instructed security forces to be tough on any anti-Hamas demonstrator who will take part in a campaign by the opposition scheduled to begin on November 11. …

The first and second intifadas featured "Palestinian" jihadis murdering Israeli civilians and then celebrating their murders. The third will bring more of this. The sham "peace process" will only wring more concessions from Israel; it will not stop these bloodthirsty murderers. "Hamas Prime Minister Calls for Violence against Israel," from the IDF Blog, October 20: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called for an end to the peace process, urging Arabs and Muslims to prepare for the next intifada against Israel. In a speech last Saturday, October 19, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called for an end to peace negotiations with Israel,...

Hamas issued a threat to Israel on Friday, warning that it will kidnap more Israeli soldiers in order to bring about the release of all Palestinian Authority Arab prisoners. The terror group which controls Gaza made the threats in a statement posted on its website on the second anniversary of the release of Gilad Shalit. … In the two years that have passed since Shalit’s release, many of the terrorists who were freed in the deal have been re-arrested when they were discovered to have resumed terrorist activities. …

Following are excerpts from a statement by Egyptian TV host Khaled Al-Abraq, which aired on Egyptian Channel 1 on October 5, 2013. Khaled Al-Abraq: [In the 1973 war], the Israeli Jews slashed open our soldiers' bellies, chopped them to pieces, and ran them over with tanks. Gentlemen, our external enemy will forever be Israel, and our internal enemy will be ignorance. They may try to invent other enemies for us, but the real enemy will remain [Israel]. Never will they approve of you… They always taught us at school that our enemy is Israel. I don't know who they say...

Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, will visit Iran soon, the movement confirmed on Thursday, according to Kol Yisrael radio. Hamas used to be heavily backed by Iran, but the relations between the Islamic Republic and the terror group have been strained for the past two years because of the civil war in Syria. …

5,549 trucks carrying 155,312 tons of goods entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom Crossing in September, according to figures released by the IDF on Sunday. These included 1,519 truckloads of food products, 1,244 truckloads of construction materials, 64 truckloads of medical equipment, 258 truckloads of livestock and 2,464 truckloads of miscellaneous items. … Hamas, which violently took control of Gaza in 2007, constantly claims that the region is under an “Israeli siege” because of Israel’s naval blockade on the region, which is meant at stopping weapons and other materials that can used for terror attacks to enter Gaza. …

Nazi scientists helped Arab countries produce chemical weapons, according to a prominent Egyptian journalist. The journalist, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, made the comments in an interview which aired on September 19, 2013. … “The production of chemical and biological weapons was easy … It was all based on German scientists who fled Germany [following World War II]. Some of them had knowledge of nuclear energy, like Dr. [Wolfgang] Pilz, who came to us for a while, and then started working on missiles and moved to China.” …

Senior Hezbollah and Hamas officials met with representatives of the Iranian government several times over the past two weeks in Beirut and in Tehran, to discuss developments in the region, Lebanese newspaper As-Safir reported Monday. The parties conducted an assessment of recent events in the Middle East, including the blockade of the Gaza Strip, the Syrian crisis and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Officials reportedly also agreed to fortify what they called the “axis of resistance.” …

The Islamic Hamas movement has suffered a severe financial crisis since the Egyptian army destroyed most of the smuggling tunnels at the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Palestinian analysts said that the options of Hamas which has been ruling the coastal enclave since 2007 to overcome the crisis are slim, due to the Israeli blockade, closure of tunnels, lack of financial liquidity and cut of the Iranian aid... Hamas used to get about 22 million U.S. dollars monthly from Iran, and the income that Hamas earned from the taxes of the goods smuggled through the tunnels reached 365...

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) pulled out a Sharpie marker and wrote in big block letters at the bottom of a letter: ”THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. THE FBI MUST COMPLY WITH THE LAW.” The letter was addressed to FBI Director James Comey: Wolf was referring to the FBI’s violation of the ban on cooperation with the unindicted co-conspirator terrorist organization CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), according to a just-released DOJ Inspector General report. CAIR was determined to be related to the web of terrorist financing during the Holy Land Foundation trials in Dallas, a trial which resulted in guilty verdicts. Afterwards,...

On a day when the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a report accusing its critics of bigotry, a Justice Department investigation reminds the public why CAIR does not merit the public's trust. Inspector General Michael Horowitz found a series of incidents in which FBI field offices knowingly engaged in outreach activity with CAIR despite a 2008 policy banning non-investigative cooperation with the Islamist group. Only (a summary) of the report has been released publicly. The rest is considered classified, but has been made available to Congress. The ban on interactions with CAIR, (first reported) by the Investigative Project on...

The Hamas Islamist group ruling Gaza has been teaching Egyptian Islamists how to plant bombs in cars, Egyptian state television said on Thursday. Hamas also gave 400 landmines to Egyptian militant groups, said the television. Hamas is an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas rejected the allegations on Thursday. "This is completely incorrect," said Fawzi Barhoum, spokesman for the Islamist group. He said that the report was an "attempt to demonize Hamas". "Security authorities have learned that the military wing of the Hamas movement trained several people to undertake car bombing operations and trained various others to make explosives," said...

Infiltration by people with ties to terrorist groups is a major worry at the CIA, according to a Washington Post report. Some job seekers were found to have connections to groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, and the agency apparently has millions of dollars targeted at investigating its own staff, according to a classified budget document obtained by the Post from ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. Among job applicants with questionable backgrounds, about one-fifth had “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” according to the document.

An estimated one-fifth of a subset of all applicants for Central Intelligence Agency positions had significant ties to the terror groups Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, a newly released document from NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s collection revealed Monday. The document — released by Mr. Snowden as part of his National Security Agency intelligence dump — said the terrorist groups worked hard to infiltrate America’s top security agencies. CIA officials uncovered thousands of applicants, roughly one in five of a subset, with “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” the document states, as Ynet News reported. The specifics of those ties were...

An estimated one-fifth of a subset of all applicants for Central Intelligence Agency positions had significant ties to the terror groups Hamas, Hezbollah and al Qaeda, a newly released document from the Edward Snowden collection revealed Monday. The document — released by Mr. Snowden as part of his National Security Agency intelligence dump — said the terrorist groups worked hard to infiltrate America’s top security agencies. CIA officials uncovered thousands of applicants, roughly one in five of a subset, with “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” the document states, as Ynet News reported. The specifics of those ties were not...

Individuals with connections to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations repeatedly tried to obtain jobs in US intelligence community; 'One of five CIA applicants has connections to hostile groups'

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday for talks criticized by the White House as undermining American efforts to isolate the hard-line Arab country. Pelosi said Assad assured her of his willingness to engage in peace talks with Israel, and that she and other members of her congressional delegation raised their concern about militants crossing from Syria into Iraq, as well the Israeli soldiers kidnapped by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas.

Egyptians protest after homes demolished to create buffer zone; Hamas official says Egyptian move could "solidify the blockade." Egyptian soldiers keep guard in Sinai Photo: REUTERSThe Hamas government said Sunday it was "surprised" to hear that Egypt is planning to create a buffer zone along the border with the Gaza Strip. Ehab Ghissin, spokesman for the Hamas government, said that there should be no buffer zones "between brothers and friendly countries." Ghissin expressed hope that the Egyptian move would not "solidify the blockade" and increase the suffering of the people in the Gaza Strip. He called for establishing a free...

President Barack Obama said that an introduction of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war would constitute a "red line" with "enormous consequences" that "would change [his] calculus." That was a year ago. This past March, Obama said, "We will not tolerate the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people, or the transfer of those weapons to terrorists. ... We will hold [Bashar al-Assad] accountable." Credible sources -- including Britain, France and U.S. intelligence agencies -- accuse the Syrian government of using chemical weapons on two or more occasions, once last December and possibly twice during March. Obama took...

Israeli and Palestinian Authority negotiators on Tuesday night concluded a third meeting as part of the renewed peace talks between the sides. The meeting, reportedly held at an undisclosed location in Jerusalem, was described as “serious”. The sides agreed to meet again soon. As usual, Israel was represented at the meeting by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s envoy Yitzhak Molcho. The PA side was represented by chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and Mohammed Shtayeh. The late evening meeting, which ended shortly before midnight, was the second meeting of the day between the sides. Earlier Tuesday, a senior...

Stunned by turmoil in neighboring Egypt and starved of funds, the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas is looking to repair damaged ties with its traditional Middle East allies, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah party. An off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas celebrated when the Sunni movement's Mohamed Mursi was elected president of Egypt in 2012, believing the vote would boost its own international standing and its grip on the isolated Gaza Strip. In the meantime, outraged by the bloody civil war in Syria, the Palestinian group quit its headquarters in Damascus, snapping the Iran-led "axis of resistance" that challenged Israel and...

Anti-Al Jazeera posters have recently appeared in Egypt saying, “A bullet kills a man, a lying camera kills a nation.” This attitude led to the new government closing the channel, after 22 staffers quit in disgust over its pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias. Al Jazeera is the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood, the group now laying siege to Egypt and burning Christian churches there. On Sunday, CNN’s media criticism show “Reliable Sources” featured a discussion of the launch of Al Jazeera America. While Egyptian Christian churches burn because of what the channel has done there, Al Jazeera America was given a warm...

Amid escalating violence against Egypt’s Copts, churches in Minya, located in upper Egypt, cancelled Sunday Mass for the first time in 1,600 years. Other churches in Minya also didn’t hold prayer services. "We did not hold prayers in the monastery on Sunday for the first time in 1,600 years,” Priest Selwanes Lotfy of the Virgin Mary and Priest Ibram Monastery in Degla, just south of Minya, told the al-Masry al-Youm daily. He said supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi destroyed the monastery, which includes three churches, one of which is an archaeological site. “One of the extremists wrote on the...

As church after church is put to the torch in Egypt by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, one of the things that is going up in flames is the reputation of President Obama. In the past 48 hours alone, some 57 Egyptian churches have been burned to the ground in the Nile valley. It will not be lost on the Egyptians that Mr. Obama has spent the crisis playing golf at Martha’s Vineyard. Scores of Christians are being consumed in this conflagration, some burned beyond recognition defending their churches, even as Mr. Obama’s much-despised envoy in Egypt,...

CAIRO — Egyptian judiciary officials say former President Hosni Mubarak could be freed from custody this week. They say a court on Monday ordered his release in a corruption case that alleged he and his two sons embezzled funds for presidential palaces.

(CNSNews.com) – Some supporters of Egypt’s ousted Islamist president directed their wrath at the country’s Christian minority Wednesday, in what activists described as “the worst coordinated attacks on Egypt’s Coptic community in modern history.” Largely eclipsed by the military’s crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood protest camps in Cairo and resulting loss of life, more than 20 churches in a number of provinces were reported to have been targeted for arson and other attacks. Through the day news reports and social media posts drew attention to individual incidents and it soon became apparent that a concerted campaign of coordinated attacks was underway....

Islamist terrorists have killed 24 security personnel in an ambush in northern Sinai, officials in Egypt have claimed, according to Sky News. The BBC reported that the people killed were members of the police. They were traveling in two buses which came under attack from armed men close to the town of Rafah, on the Gaza border, security forces said. A number of policemen were also reported to have been injured in the blast. Multiple reports circulating on the Twitter network said that the policemen were made to lie down and then shot, execution style. Security sources cited by the...

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia said on Monday that Arab and Islamic countries will step in to help Egypt if Western nations cut aid packages to Cairo over its deadly crackdown on Islamist protesters. "To those who have announced they are cutting their aid to Egypt, or threatening to do that, (we say that) Arab and Muslim nations are rich... and will not hesitate to help Egypt," Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said in a statement carried by the kingdom's SPA state news agency. Prince Saud was speaking upon his return from France, where he held talks with President Francois Hollande who...

The National Salvation Front, a coalition of pro-democratic and secular parties in Egypt, set out its objections to remarks made by President Barack Obama Thursday on the escalating violence in Egypt. Led by Ahmed Said of the Free Egyptians Party, the group issued the following letter: "Like most Egyptians, we listened with attention to your statement on Egypt's latest developments. As representatives of the non-Islamic political forces in Egypt, we believe in the same fundamental values on which the U.S. was founded. Be we also have 7,000 years of civilization and history that give us a special identity that we...

Minya churches canceled on Sunday the second mass, holding only a brief one. Meanwhile, prayers did not take place at other churches which were attacked. Priest Selwanes Lotfy of the Virgin Mary and Priest Ibram monastery in Degla, south of Minya, said, “We did not hold prayers in the monastery on Sunday for the first time in 1,600 years.”

It’s 2015, and there is a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas), financed by Iran, wins an election on a platform demanding the expulsion of the Jews from Israel. Iran, meanwhile, smuggles shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to terrorist cells in Palestine that can take down civilian airlines at Ben-Gurion Airport. With backing from the Egyptian military, Fatah throws out the elected Hamas government and kills a large number of Hamas supporters. What will Washington do? Given the track record of both the Obama administration and the Republican mainstream, one would...

Arab Columnists Criticize Firing Of Rockets From Gaza As Reckless Escapade Serving Iran, Not Palestinians Alongside the official Arab condemnations of Israel's attack on Gaza, and the popular protests against it in some of the Arab countries, there has also been criticism against Hamas. This criticism is mainly voiced in the countries of the moderate Arab camp (headed by the Gulf states, the PA and elements in Egypt), which opposes the resistance camp (headed by Iran, Syria and Hizbullah). The critics claimed that Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel are reckless and ineffective, and do nothing but give Israel an excuse...

A top Israel envoy criticized Turkey’s outreach to terror groups Friday, hours after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying Hamas is not a terrorist organization. “Turkey has embraced the leaders of Iran and Hamas, all of whom called for Israel’s destruction,” declared Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren. “Our policy has not changed but Turkey’s policy has changed, very much, over the last few years,” he said. “Under a different government with an Islamic orientation, Turkey has turned away from the West.”

December 10, 2001 Iran plotting with Hamas to replace Arafat regime Assassination discussed: Hardliners hope to set up Palestinian Islamic republic Con Coughlin The Sunday Telegraph LONDON - Iran has substantially increased its financial support for Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group, in the hope it will succeed in establishing an Islamic regime in the West Bank and Gaza. The desperate position in which Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, finds himself after a series of suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa has led Iran's hardline ayatollahs to conclude there is a realistic possibility Mr. Arafat's regime could be ...

Iran has renewed efforts to supply advanced weaponry to Hamas and the IDF is concerned that the terror group will try to smuggle long-range Fajr missiles into the Gaza Strip.

Western intelligence agencies believe that Iran will provide funding for "a multi-million-dollar military base" in Syria, according to a report published Saturday in a British newspaper. According to the Daily Telegraph, the deal would assist with the development of an Iranian military compound at Syria's Latakia airport to be completed by the end of next year. The agreement will open a supply a route that will allow Iran to transfer military hardware to Syria. Furthermore, the report says, teams of Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers are to be stationed at Latakia on a permanent basis, where they will coordinate arms shipments...

Israel’s security agencies are stepping up targeted attacks throughout the world on Hamas‘ leadership in what one Israeli official called “intelligence-based prevention.” In the past two months, Israeli operatives have intercepted a German ship in international waters, fired a missile at a suspected Hamas leader in Sudan, and captured a Hamas engineer in the Ukraine, according to Israeli and Western officials and press reports from the region. “Israel defeated the wave of suicide bombing attacks against it in 2002 by identifying the leadership that was behind it and making it clear to them that they would pay a price,” said...