Free Republic

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...