Free Republic

Terror group said to tell mediators it doesn’t have 33 living people who meet ‘humanitarian’ criteria of initial phase — after Israel agreed to lower previous demand of 40 people Hamas has said some of the 33 hostages it would release under the first phase of a prospective hostage deal with Israel would not necessarily be alive. In an announcement detailing the clauses to which it had agreed Monday in the latest proposal for a deal, the terror group said, “During the first phase, Hamas releases 33 Israeli detainees (alive or corpses).” The New York Times reported Tuesday that the...

The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani, traveled to Tehran on Monday to meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who warned him to prevent “anti-revolutionary elements” from getting too friendly with the autonomous Kurdish region. The warning appeared to be a threat intended to dissuade Kurdish cooperation with the United States and any potential cordial ties with neighboring Israel. The KRG maintains friendly relations with the United States and cooperates militarily with Washington, particularly against the Islamic State (Isis) jihadist organization. The KRG’s Peshmerga forces were pivotal in the ouster of the ISIS “caliphate” from...

Israeli fighter jets during the night shot down a drone that was heading toward Israel from “the eastern direction,” the military says. The IDF says the aircraft had been tracked throughout the incident, and there was no threat to civilians.

An Iranian warship has embarked on a mission in oceanic waters, Iran’s state media reported, in the wake of a warning by Houthi rebels that they could renew their attacks on vessels transiting the region. The aircraft carrier Shahid Mahdavi, operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has reached southern hemisphere waters, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, without specifying its exact location

The media in America is destructive, inhumane, utterly immoral, and has no conscience as a group whatsoever, and they are tearing this country apart through their lies and projection. Donald Trump has been the greatest friend Israel and the Jewish people have ever had in the Oval Office, and the only president to have a Jewish family, but to people who don’t like him, he is Hitler. Democrat media outlets like Media Matters and people like Joe Scarborough make a mockery of the Holocaust by calling their political opponents Hitler as they do to Donald Trump, while they repeat Hamas...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a utopian plan for a rebuilt Gaza on Friday called “Gaza 2035.” In a PowerPoint file apparently published by the Prime Minister’s Office, and available (in Hebrew) on the Ynet news website, the Israeli government envisions a future for Gaza as a thriving center of trade and innovation under a Palestinian administration that is de-radicalized and focused on economic growth rather than on terror and hate. The “Gaza 2035” plan seeks to capitalize on Gaza’s historical role as a crossroads on the east-west route between Cairo and Baghdad on the one hand, and the...

Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife were indicted Friday on charges of conspiracy and accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from foreign entities, the Justice Department announced. Prosecutors allege Cuellar and his wife, Imelda Cuellar, began accepting the roughly $600,000 in bribes beginning as early as December of 2014 from an oil and gas company owned by Azerbaijan's government as well as a bank headquartered in Mexico City. While Cuellar's wife allegedly propped up sham front companies on the promise of providing consulting services to the two companies in order to launder the payments, she "performed little to no...

Shiraz University in Iran has announced a scholarship program offering free tuition to American students expelled as a result of their pro-Palestinian protests. The announcement was made by the university’s head on Iranian state-owned Press TV. “Students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University, and I think that other universities in Shiraz, as well as Fars province, are also prepared,” Mohammad Moazzeni told Iranian state-owned Press TV. You Might Also Like Recommended by The declaration comes in the wake of the New York Police Department’s arrest of over 280...

On Thursday's broadcast of MSNBC's "Alex Wagner Tonight," Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) stated that the encampment on Columbia was "completely peaceful" and "Some of the images that we saw from UCLA and other places made it look like a bunch of disorder. But the majority of these protests are peaceful. When you send in hundreds of military-dressed law enforcement officers into a college, that brings the disorder and that brings the chaos."Bowman said, "We want the protests to be peaceful. We do not want violent protests. I visited the Columbia encampment last week, and they were completely peaceful. There was...

"Send them to Iran" is the sort of thing you normally hear from grumpy old men like me, not temperamentally moderate and strictly rational men like Jonathan Turley, who is far more measured and thoughtful than most of us. But in this case, he has a moderate case to make. It's not that he would revel in watching the moral midgets who are simultaneously lecturing us about peace as they call for the genocide of the Jews; he just thinks the students need an education about the real world. ...Some universities clearly have space after students were arrested for protesting...

The head of a university in Iran is reportedly offering scholarships to students in the U.S. who have been expelled for taking part in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses. Mohammad Moazzeni, head of Shiraz University in the southern region of Fars, extended his proposal to those protesting Israel's actions in its war against Hamas, following clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement across America. "Students and even professors who have been expelled or threatened with expulsion can continue their studies at Shiraz University and I think that other universities in Shiraz as well as Fars Province are also prepared [to provide the...

After Abu Marzouk claims good relations with Amman, veteran Jordanian diplomat responds that country ‘has closed the book on Palestinian cells’ Jordan on Tuesday quickly dispelled the idea that Hamas leaders would be welcome to set up their offices on their territory after a senior Hamas official suggested the terror group’s political bureau would move to the kingdom if it was forced to leave its current home in Qatar. It was reported earlier this month that Hamas’s political chiefs are exploring moving their base of operations out of Qatar, as the Gulf state faces increasing pressure over its influence with...

CNN’s Dana Bash confronted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Sunday over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN)’s visit to Columbia University, where she gave a statement about the pro-Palestinian protests. Omar’s own daughter was suspended from Columbia-affiliated Barnard College last week after being arrested at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the Morningside Heights campus. Omar was recorded saying, “I think it is really unfortunate that people don’t care about the fact that all Jewish kids should be kept safe and that we should not have to tolerate anti-Semitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they are pro-genocide or anti-genocide.” Bash asked Sanders,...

A documentary about Hamas’s sexual crimes on and after October 7 has been published on YouTube, featuring testimonies from survivors, released hostages and first responders. The aim of the film, titled ‘Screams Before Silence’ and fronted by former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, is to highlight sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas during and after the terror group’s devastating massacre on southern Israel, when terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 253, triggering an ongoing war in Gaza. Clips from the hour-long film have been published in recent months, including interviews with female hostages released in a November truce. Warning...

The Iranian attack on Israel seems a historic blunder. It opened up a new chapter in which its own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power. Details of the recent limited Israeli retaliatory strike against Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions. Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance. The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design. Israel showed...

A North Korean delegation led by the cabinet minister for international trade is visiting Iran, the North’s official media says in a rare public report of an exchange between the two countries believed to have secret military ties. The minister for external economic relations, Yun Jong Ho, left Pyongyang on Tuesday by air leading a ministry delegation to visit Iran, the North’s KCNA news agency says. It gives no other detail. North Korea and Iran have long been suspected of cooperating on ballistic missile programs, possibly exchanging technical expertise and components that went into their manufacture.

Hardline Iranian parliamentarian and member of Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Javad Karimi Ghodousi tweeted on April 22 implying that if granted permission, Iran could test its first nuclear weapon within one week.[17] Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Deputy Chairman Shahriar Heydari stated on April 22 in response to Karimi Ghodousi’s tweet that Iran has no ”intention” to build or use nuclear weapons.[18] Heydari cited Khamenei’s 2003 fatwa as the reason Iran is not seeking to acquire or use nuclear weapons. Heydari stated that Karimi Ghodousi's tweet may have been taken out of context.

Sen. John Fetterman reiterated his criticisms of activists calling for cease-fire in Gaza, and slammed fellow Democrats for their “crazy” response to the attacks Iran has launched against Israel, in an interview with Fox Digital. “It is not appropriate or legal or helpful to advance your argument if you show up in a Starbucks with a bullhorn and start yelling at people,” he told Fox News Digital in a Friday interview. He also claimed such protests don’t “make you noble.” “It just makes you an (–*&*(,” Fetterman (D-Pa.) said. Since the onset of the war between Israel and terrorist group...

President Biden marked the coming of Passover in a message Sunday, tying the Jewish holiday to the Israel-Hamas war and doubling down on his support for Israel in the conflict. “This holiday reminds us of a profound and powerful truth: that even in the face of persecution, if we hold on to faith, we shall endure and overcome,” Biden wrote. “We can never forget the horror of Hamas’ despicable atrocities.”

JNS) – The White House was shocked at the scale of the Iranian missile and drone attack against Israel on the night of April 13, according to a Sunday report in The Wall Street Journal detailing how the Biden administration handled the unprecedented event. According to the article, President Joe Biden cut short his vacation at Rehoboth Beach, Del., and rushed back to Washington the evening before the attack where he was briefed on Tehran’s plans. Even with advanced warning of the attack, administration officials told the Journal that the senior officials gathered in the White House Situation Room were...