Free Republic

One of the candidates to lead Britain's Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, has come under scrutiny for comments he once made calling Islamist terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah his "friends." As the Labour leadership race heats up, Corbyn has seen his controversial comments - and his decision to invite members of the terrorist groups to parliament in the first place - come back to haunt him, with the topic being brought up in successive interviews Monday. But it seems the grilling was a little too much for Corbyn, who finally snapped during this interview with Channel 4: Video He is one...

srael tried to retrieve Avraham Mengistu, the Israeli who entered Gaza and is being held by Hamas. A report on Channel Two Monday said that IDF and security forces tried to bring Mengistu back to Israel a short time after he entered Gaza, but were tricked by Hamas into abandoning him. According to the report, talks on returning Mengistu to Israel took place a few weeks after he entered Gaza. According to Israeli officials, Mengistu crossed the fence into Gaza last September due to mental illness and that the move was not in any way a deliberate security risk. According...

Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has written an op-ed in the Financial Times which sets forward a distinct sequence for ostensibly resolving the daunting security challenges of the Middle East. First, the P5+1 - the group of powerful nations negotiating with Iran - should come to a deal over its nuclear program. As a result, he argues, Tehran will "open new horizons" and join "the international battle" against "the increasingly brutal extremism that is engulfing the Middle East." The idea that Iran is a partner in the fight against terrorism is not only disingenuous but also absurd. What Zarif is...

Pope Francis on Saturday condemned a fatal car-bomb attack outside the Italian Consulate in Cairo, where one person was killed and eight others were injured. According to the Associated Press, the pope sent a telegram to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi calling for “political and religious players at all levels to unite their efforts to combat with ever more determination the plague of terrorism and to promote harmony and solidarity.” The explosion took place in the early-morning hours, causing heavy damage to the building and sparking fears that Islamic militants have begun a fresh round of attacks against foreigners, Reuters...

Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) has warned against any further prisoner swaps with terrorist groups in return for captive citizens. Speaking at a "Meet The Press" interview, Erdan stated that Israel must do everything in its power to free the two Israeli civilians currently held hostage by Hamas in Gaza - 26-year-old Avraham (Avera) Meginsu, and a still-unidentified Arab-Israeli resident of the Negev. However, Erdan warned that past experience has clearly demonstrated that acceding to Hamas's exaggerated demands to release scores of convicted terrorists from prison in exchange would be a grave mistake. "To free terrorists, in light of...

VIENNA—The White House is targeting Jewish groups in its latest push to blunt congressional criticism of an Iran deal that observers expect to be sealed in the coming days, according to a recording of a strategy conference call obtained by the Washington Free Beacon and experts familiar with the call. The White House’s liaison to the Jewish community on Monday advised dozens of progressive groups to push a poll commissioned and distributed by the liberal fringe group J Street, which has been defending a deal with Iran. Matt Nosanchuk, an official in the White House Office of Public Engagement, who...

Israel has claimed that Hamas is aiding ISIS's branch in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in order to free up arms-smuggling routes into Gaza, in preparation for its next war with Israel. In an interview with Israel Radio, a senior IDF officer responsible for monitoring Israel's southern borders with Gaza and Egypt claimed that, despite the ideological differences between them, a strategic alliance has been forged between Hamas in Gaza and ISIS's "Sinai Province." "Why was it is so very important for them [Hamas] to develop the connection with Sinai Province? Because they need the raw materials that would enable the military...

Egypt’s military launched air strikes and ground operations that killed 63 Islamist militants in North Sinai on Sunday, security sources said, as the country grapples with an increasingly ambitious insurgency based in the region. The Sinai has recently witnessed some of the heaviest fighting between security forces and Islamist militants since the army toppled President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013. Security sources said on Sunday troops killed the 63 in villages between the towns of Sheikh Zuweid and Rafah. ADVERTISING The army found four militant hideouts and attacked them with Apache helicopters and ground troops. It also...

One of the incidents most widely disseminated as “proof” of Israeli war crimes during its defensive Operation Protective Edge in Gaza last year was the deaths of four Arab youths on a Gaza beachfront used exclusively by Hamas terrorists. Foreign journalists reported as fact that Israeli war planes had bombed a beachfront, killing four youths—and the incident was highlighted in the recent UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry. […] However, it now appears that Israel need not take any approach to defend its actions—as the children on the beach were apparently killed not by its forces, but by Hamas...

Ein el Helwe Palestinian camp, Lebanon: This is one of the questions ricocheting between Palestinians in Syria and Lebanon, posed also by ISIS (Da’ish) operatives, as the hot summer months and plummeting quality of existence raise tensions in the refugee camps and social gatherings. With its resilience, on-the-ground “achievements”, adaptability, global franchising, copy-cat knock-offs, chameleon-like adaptations, combinations and permutations, and slick honing of medium and message, ISIS is offering oppressed and desperate populations in this region both hope and fantasy for escaping their deepening misery. The dream is to escape abject poverty and indignity by any means necessary, and joining...

Israel's former ambassador to Egypt, Zvi Mazel, currently a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), believes that the Egyptian army is not going to be able to successfully fight ISIS. In the end, he believes, the IDF is going to have to do the job. “The Egyptian army has not collapsed, and it is very large, with 600,000 soldiers,” said Mazel. “But for two years they have been fighting guerrillas in Sinai, unsuccessfully. They are just not experienced enough in guerrilla warfare.” Eventually, it is very possible that ISIS will take over Sinai – placing them along...

A group affiliated with Islamic State has said it fired three rockets into Israel from Egypt's Sinai peninsula. The affiliate, which calls itself Sinai Province, said it had acted in retaliation for what it says is Israeli support for the Egyptian army. Israel said two rockets landed in the south of the country, causing no casualties or material damage. At least 17 Egyptian soldiers and 100 IS militants have died in fighting in northern Sinai since Wednesday. The clashes were triggered by a co-ordinated mass assault of IS militants on the town of Sheikh Zuweid.

Egyptian troops battle ISIS in Sinai The statements coming from different Israeli spokesmen this week were not just at dangerous variance with the actual events but with one another, when it came to Egypt’s massive confrontation this week with ISIS close to Israel’s border, a fresh round of Palestinian West Bank anti-Israel terror and the ambivalent role played by Hamas extremists in all these events. Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai said in an Al Jazeera interview Thursday, July 2, that Israel had “clear evidence” of Hamas aiding the offensive the Islamic State’s Sinai affiliate...

On a dusty hill in the suburbs of Amman, the capital of Jordan, I visited the late King Hussein's magnificent automobile collection, opened to the public as a museum. Amid rows of gleaming motorcycles, I passed a brightly-coloured Japanese racer and a low-riding American chopper, and my eyes fell on one dark model that stood behind them. This, a placard told me, was a Brough Superior, British-made and once common in Jordan as a motorcycle used for military purposes. Jordan is an island of peace and stability in a sea of turmoil. There is almost nowhere in the region that...

The fighting in Sinai continued into a second day. Air strikes from Egypt's warplanes killed 22 militants in dawn raids on Thursday. The situation in Sinai is now "100% under control," according to Egyptian officials. However, in the town of Sheikh Zuweid, where the militants attacked a string of army checkpoints on Wednesday, the army is still going from house to house, searching for extremists, and removing explosive booby traps and mines... The militants were from the terror group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM -- Ansar Jerusalem -- Champions of Jerusalem), which has conducted numerous attacks in Egypt's Sinai, along the...

HOUSTON, Texas — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released the following statement in response to the United Nations Human Rights Council vote in condemnation of Israel:“Our single vote in opposition is just and the abstentions of our friends are welcome, but at this point they are meaningless gestures. It is time to stop ceding moral authority to the UNHRC and tell the truth about this hopelessly biased and anti-Semitic institution. There is no equivalency between Israel’s right to self-defense and Hamas’ genocidal aggression against the Jewish people. There is no equivalence between Israel’s extraordinary efforts to protect civilians and Hamas’...

Hamas helped the ISIS-affiliated group in Sinai to carry out the latest attacks against Egyptian troops and supplied them with weapons and other support, an Israeli general told Al-Jazeera on Thursday. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered condolences over the attacks that claimed the lives of dozens of people. Israel has "clear information that Hamas is supporting the Wilayat Sinai, which belongs to Daesh," Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the coordinator of government activities in the territories, claimed, referring to the Islamic State group in one of its acronyms. He added that Hamas provided the Islamist group weapons and logistical support,...

ISMAILIA: Egypt launched airstrikes on Islamist militant targets in the Sinai peninsula Thursday, killing 23 fighters a day after the deadliest clashes in the region in years, security sources said. The sources said those killed had taken part in Wednesday's fighting in which 100 militants and 17 soldiers, including four officers, were killed, according to the army spokesman. Sinai-based insurgents, affiliates of ISIS, have stepped up attacks on soldiers and police since then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled Islamist President Mohammad Morsi in 2013 after mass protests against his rule. Sisi, now Egypt's elected president, says the pro-ISIS group Sinai...

Wednesday's terror attack was the largest ever carried out by the Sinai Province, Islamic State's Egyptian affiliate, since it began its fight against the government in Cairo some four years ago. It also marked the most painful blow suffered by the Egyptian military in its war on extremist Islamist terror, which it is bent on eradicating. It was a well-planned attack, carried out by dozens of ISIS operatives in northern Sinai, and the explosions and weapons fire were heard loud and clear in Israel. Amid concerns that ISIS may try to spread their attacks in the direction of Israel -...

Yediot Ahronot: Egypt proposes water barrier and kilometer wide sterile zone in Philadelphi Corridor Dr. Aaron Lerner 23 February 2007 Yediot Ahronot correspondent Alex Fishman reported in the 21 February edition that Egypt proposed to Israel to dig a deep trench on the Philadelphi Corridor to be flooded with water from the Mediterranean in order to prevent smuggling from Sinai into the Gaza Strip. According to Fishman, the Egyptians raised the proposal during meetings with IDF officials and U.S. General Dayton along with a proposal to create a sterile cleared kilometer wide band on the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi...