Free Republic

The State Department’s Counter Terrorism (CT) Bureau apologized on Tuesday for promoting a controversial Muslim scholar whose organization has reportedly backed Hamas and endorsed a fatwa authorizing the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. The apology came on the heels of a Friday Washington Free Beacon report detailing the CT Bureau’s promotion of Sheik Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the vice president of a radical Muslim scholars group that was founded by a radical Muslim Brotherhood leader who has called “for the death of Jews and Americans.” Bin Bayyah himself is one of several clerics who endorsed a 2004 fatwa, or religious...

The Trump administration declared its firm support Thursday for a bill that would suspend U.S. financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority until it ends what critics have described as a long-standing practice of rewarding Palestinians who kill Americans and Israelis. The State Department announcement comes nearly six weeks after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee backed the measure. The legislation, which is named after an American who was stabbed to death in Israel by a Palestinian, reflects bipartisan outrage over what lawmakers have termed a “pay to slay” program endorsed by the Palestinian Authority. “The Trump administration strongly supports the Taylor...

Google, Facebook and the rest wield more power than most governments. The secular Left and the proponents of Islamic blasphemy laws have a new issue on which they are making common cause: the quest to destroy the freedom of speech, the cornerstone of our democracy. After Charlottesville, the Left sees its chance to crush all dissent, and given its alliance with Islamic supremacists, this means the implementation in the West of prohibitions on criticism of Islam, including counterterror analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terrorists. This anti-free speech initiative, if it succeeds, will destroy free society, which cannot exist...

A strange way to combat anti-Semitism. On August 28, The Anti-Defamation League announced that it had hired Obama holdover, George Selim, as its “Senior Vice President of Programs.” According to the ADL’s press release, Selim will be the ADL’s point man on programs connected to law enforcement, education and community security. This newly created position will ostensibly help the ADL better track, monitor and thwart all forms of xenophobia and prejudice. Selim will report directly to the ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt. On paper, Selim, an Arab-American of Egyptian and Lebanese descent, appears qualified for the role. He served in the...

I must be much more fair and generous than liberals. Because I would never attack a CEO for what political causes he personally believes in.Liberals clearly don't feel that way. I remember a few years back when the CEO of Mozilla was forced by liberal activists to resign from his company because he gave a PERSONAL $1000 donation to a California PAC fighting gay marriage. This CEO didn't involve his company in politics in any way. He didn't use a dime of company money. The charity was not radical. In fact, it was so mainstream that the leftist voters California voted in favor of traditional marriage....

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas' new leader in the Gaza Strip said Monday his group has repaired relations with Iran after a five-year rift and is using its newfound financial and military aid to gear up for new hostilities with Israel. The announcement by Yehiyeh Sinwar came as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was visiting Israel. At a meeting with the U.N. chief, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained about what he called rising anti-Israel activity by Iran and its allies in the region. Iran was once the top backer of Hamas, an Islamic militant group that seeks Israel's...

The swamp is overflowing. It's on the garden path. It's in the lawn. It's on the front stairs. It's in the foyer. It's certainly in Foggy Bottom. The State Department hosted this month leaders from the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, which represents a number of organizations including American Muslims for Palestine, or AMP, an organization that promotes "extreme anti-Israel views" and "anti-Zionist" propaganda, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks anti-Israel hate groups.

Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the new deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, suggested Thursday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions deserves jail time for failing to mention his meetings with Russia’s ambassador during his confirmation hearing in January. In a statement issued Thursday morning, Ellison asserted that Sessions “lied under oath” in his Jan. 10 Senate confirmation hearing about the meetings with Kremlin’s diplomat, Sergey Kislyak. “Since it has now come to light that Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath about meeting with Russian officials during the campaign, we must be entirely clear on one thing: perjury is a...

How you can stop anti-Israel incitement on campus. When President Trump presented his budget, he defunded Title VI from $72 million to zero. But it’s up to Congress to make it happen. What’s Title VI? Title VI of the Higher Education Act set out to fund international studies that would promote our national security. But on many campuses, Title VI centers undermine our national security by supporting Islamic terrorists. The Higher Education Opportunity Act mandated that Title VI centers reflect a “wide range of views”. Instead when it comes to the Middle East, Title VI centers have only one point...

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday met with a delegation of Hamas officials in his offices in Ramallah, Yediot Aharonot reported. Heading the Hamas delegation was former minister Nasser al-Din al-Shaer, the report said. The rare meeting dealt with inter-Palestinian reconciliation efforts. Hamas officials also congratulated Abbas on his handling of the Temple Mount crisis. The meeting is surprising given the longstanding feud between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah, which began in 2007, when Hamas violently took control of Gaza in a bloody coup. …

The European Court of Justice ruled Wednesday morning that the Gaza based Hamas organization would remain on the EU’s group of terrorist groups. …

The Hamas Islamic Resistance movement issued a press release by Ismail Haniyeh regarding developments in Al-Aqsa Mosque, in which they inadvertently admit that until this week’s Temple Mount closure, Israel has allowed practice of their faith “in complete freedom … for half a century”, reported The Tower. […] The claim that Israel plans to seize control of the mosque that sits on the Temple Mount has been at the heart of Muslim incitement against Jews for at least a century, and continues to be invoked across the Arab and Muslim world by leaders looking to deflect attention from themselves and...

A decade after the Islamist group Hamas seized Gaza, the Palestinian enclave is effectively unliveable for its 2 million people, with declining incomes, healthcare, education, electricity and fresh water, the United Nations said. In a report examining humanitarian conditions in the territory, which Hamas took over in June 2007 after a brief conflict with forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority, the United Nations concludes the situation in Gaza is deteriorating "further and faster" than was forecast only a few years ago. "Across the board we're watching de-development in slow motion," Robert Piper, the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development...

There are few surprises here. Just the inevitable descent of the Democrats into the fever swamps of hatred and extremism. According to the anti-Israel group behind the Congressional letter, “The effort to gather signatories to the letter was supported by a coalition of human rights organizations including U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, CODEPINK, Jewish Voice for Peace, and American Muslims for Palestine.” American Muslims for Palestine has been linked to Hamas. Jewish Voice for Peace, which is neither Jewish nor peaceful, is a BDS group. This is what the Dems are mainstreaming. 32 Democrats in Congress signed on to a...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Atayeb Odeh is crazy about dogs. He got his first when he was one-year-old, his second aged three and third when he was five. He’s now 17 and proudly shows off Liza — a gangly and gregarious German shepherd. But the high school senior cannot take Liza and her pal Rex — a white-and-brown mutt — beyond the front gate of his family's compound. Hamas — the militant group that runs the poor, Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip — recently decreed dogs can’t be walked in markets, roads and along beaches. That ruling angered dog owners in...

Fifteen days after London was targeted in a deadly terrorist attack — its second in less than three months — police in the British capital stood by Sunday as flags of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah were carried openly during a small pro-Palestine march through the city center. Hours after the march, yet another apparent attack occurred near a mosque in north London late Sunday night. One person was killed and eight injured after a van slammed into a crowd of people who had emerged from a prayer service at the mosque. A suspect has been arrested. Earlier, more than...

QATAR IS LARGELY SUSPECTED TO BE THE FOREMOST STATE SUPPORTER OF ISIS. After taking credit for a Mideast-wide initiative to shine a light on the terror-supporting activities of the government of Qatar, President Donald Trump has done a dramatic reversal and will sell Doha up to 36 U.S. military jets. Bloomberg reported Wednesday afternoon that the Qatari defense minister will meet with Defense Secretary James Mattis at some point later that day to officially sign the agreement. On June 6, the president tweeted about Qatar’s support for terrorism: ***snip***see tweets at source Now, just over one week later, as evidenced...

Consider the special counsel, Robert Mueller, who gives commencement speeches about honor and integrity. This is a guy who met secretly with Islamist groups and sanitized FBI training materials so that FBI agents could not recognize and identify the enemy trying to kill us. The Judicial Watch report, "U.S. Government Purges of Law Enforcement Training Material Deemed 'Offensive' to Muslims," should have disqualified Mueller from ever again serving in any role as an investigator of anything remotely connected to national security. Christopher Farrell of Judicial Watch calls it a "curious" story about how "a group of radical Islamists" with links...

The Jerusalem Post reports: In 2007, then-Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad told the US Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Stuart Levey that Qatar provides “more support to fundamentalists than Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. Qatar was “willfully bad,” Fayyad said.

1. Immediately break diplomatic relations with Iran. 2. Expel all Hamas members. 3. Freeze bank accounts of Hamas members and stop dealing with them. 4. Expel all Muslim Brotherhood members from Qatar. 5. Expel all anti-GCC members from Qatar. 6. End support of 'terrorist organisations.’ 7. Stop interfering in Egyptian affairs. 8. Cease broadcasting the Al Jazeera news channel. 9. Apologise to all Gulf governments for 'abuses' by Al Jazeera. 10. Qatar must pledge that will not carry out any actions that contradict the policies of the GCC and adhere to its charter.