Free Republic

There is an unfortunate tendency in the West to downplay the threat from Jihad. This is especially true when the acts of Jihad occur in the Third World and especially when the victims are non-white and poor. This week has provided us with prime examples of this in Nigeria, where Boko Haram has continued its Jihadist terror with horrific attacks which have been little more than an afterthought in US and other Western media. 72 killed, 133 wounded, 129 young schoolgirls kidnapped, all since Monday...had this happened in Europe or the US, it would have stopped all activity. But it's...

Hundreds of people are executed every year in Iran. Balal, thanks to the actions of his victim's mother, will not be one of them. Balal was standing on a chair, blindfolded and with a noose around his neck, when the mother of the man he stabbed to death seven years ago approached him, the Guardian reports. According to some interpretations of sharia law, the victim’s family participates in the punishment by pushing the chair from under the condemned man. But this time, the mother of the victim slapped Balal across the face and then helped the victim’s father remove the...

As thousands of Jewish visitors stream in to visit the Cave of the Patriarchs to celebrate Passover holiday, dozens of rioters throw stones at soldiers in West Bank city. For the second day in a row violent clashes broke out between the IDF and Palestinian activists in Hebron by the Policeman’s Checkpoint in the West Bank city. On Thursday the clashes occurred on the sidelines of a Hebron demonstration to mark Prisoner Security forces responded with riot dispersal means, including tear gas. The checkpoint separates the section of the city that is under control of the Palestinian Authority from the...

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu initiated a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss bilateral issues, Iran and Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a statement. ... Netanyahu does speak to Putin by phone from time to time, so Tuesday night's conversation - though not a regular occurence - is by no means unprecedented. Russia is a major player in three areas of major concern to Israel: Iran, Syria and arms sales to the Middle East. ... On Monday, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki denied a Haaretz report last week...

Opportunities for the West to hurt the Russian economy are limited, President Vladimir Putin said Thursday. Europe cannot stop buying Russian gas without inflicting pain on itself, and if the US tries to lower oil prices, the dollar will suffer. If the West tries to damage Russia’s influence in the world energy market, efforts will likely backfire, the Russian President said during his twelfth annual televised question and answer session. To really influence the world oil market a country would need to increase production and cut prices, which currently only Saudi Arabia could afford, Putin said. The president added he...

A new op-ed prompted by his interview with ABC over the weekend, which generated headlines like, “Rand Paul: Don’t dismiss containment option for nuclear Iran.�He’s not for containment, he now says, but nor is he irrevocably against it. What he’s for is strategic ambiguity, not telegraphing your intentions towards a bad actor lest you inadvertently limit your options later. Does America have any recent experience with that? I am not for containment in Iran. Let me repeat that, since no one seems to be listening closely: I am unequivocally not for containing Iran.I am also not for announcing that the...

LONDON — Germany was expected to reject a request by Saudi Arabia for hundreds of main battle tanks. A leading German newspaper said the Berlin government would not approve a Saudi request for up to 800 Leopard-2A7 MBTs. The newspaper, Bild, said the deal was opposed by leading members of the government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, particularly Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel. “Without agreement from the economy minister, the deal has no chance,” Bild said. If correct, the newspaper report could signal the end of Berlin’s plans to become a leading military supplier to the Arab world. Many in parliament...

Syria's opposition fighters have been supplied with U.S.-made anti-tank missiles, the first time a major American weapons system has appeared in rebel hands. It is unclear how the rebels obtained the wire-guided missiles, which are capable of penetrating heavy armor and fortifications and are standard in the U.S. military arsenal. The United States has sold them in the past to Turkey, among other countries, and the Pentagon approved the sale of 15,000 of the weapons to Saudi Arabia in December. Both countries aid Syrian opposition groups. U.S. officials declined to discuss the origin of the weapons but did not dispute...

This is the html version of the file http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss/memoranda/memo55.pdf.G o o g l e automatically generates html versions of documents as we crawl the web.To link to or bookmark this page, use the following url: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:lUjtgbDqYXoC:www.tau.ac.il/jcss/memoranda/memo55.pdf+%22ISRAEL-PAKISTAN%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content. These search terms have been highlighted:  israel  pakistan  Page 1 P. R. Kumaraswamy Beyond the Veil: Israel-Pakistan Relations Page 2 Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies (JCSS) The purpose of the Jaffee Center is, first, to conduct basic research that meets the highest academic standards on matters related to...

The prime minister of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday praised a shooting that killed an Israeli and wounded his wife and son as they drove through the West Bank the previous evening en route to a Seder, the traditional Passover meal that starts the week-long Jewish holiday. Speaking in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh said the attack outside the city of Hebron “brought back life to the path of resistance” against Israel and warned of more attacks in the territory. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest incident to threaten peace talks with the Palestinians. […] “We tell the...

Russia and Israel seem to have a growing affinity for each other. A few weeks ago, Israel abstained from a vote in the UN censuring Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported [link at URL] that this is a sore spot for the White House and a diplomatic novum on the world scene. A senior Israeli official said that Israel's absence from the United Nations vote was viewed around the world as an extremely irregular measure, a departure from a long-standing Israeli policy of voting with the United States in the UN. While the Americans viewed...

Jordan’s air force has destroyed military vehicles trying to cross from Syria, Jordanian state television said Wednesday

Mozaffar Khazaee, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen who worked for defense contractor Pratt & Whitney, was arrested last week for allegedly trying to smuggle boxes of documents related to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the plane expected to be the Pentagon’s next generation fighter jet. He was picked up in New Jersey on his way to Iran.

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz likes to say that if you are for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights, basic freedoms of speech, press, association, open democracy, and an independent judiciary, there is only one country in the Middle East that espouses those values you support: Israel. And he is absolutely correct. But there appears to be a major disconnect among American Jews. Today, too many Jewish Americans are ambivalent about Israel, or even openly hostile towards it, believing erroneously that Israel acts in ways that contradict their “progressive” or “liberal” ideals. Jews are even at the forefront...

Dozens of Palestinian protesters and an Israeli policeman were wounded Wednesday morning on the Temple Mount after the site was opened to Jewish visitors. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP that Palestinians threw “stones and firecrackers” at police when they opened the walled compound’s gates. Police responded with stun grenades, Rosenfeld said, and closed the complex to the Jewish visitors after a small number had toured the site. An AFP correspondent at the scene said dozens of Palestinians were wounded by rubber-coated bullets and stun grenade canisters, and were staying inside the Al-Aqsa mosque out of fear they would be...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Kerry: Our Goal is Not Eliminating Iranian Nuclear CapabilityPosted By Daniel Greenfield On April 15, 2014 @ 7:30 pm In The Point | No Comments Sometimes a choice of words can be extremely revealing. That was the case with Kerry’s contentious testimony in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Under pressure, Kerry tends to slip and say revealing things. That was how the infamous, “for it and against it� clip was born. Kerry dismissed breakout as “just having one bomb’s worth, conceivably, of material, but without any necessary capacity to put it in anything,...

Two thousand years ago, a Roman legion led by Marcus Licinius Crassus was marching toward Persian lands. Iran, ruled by the Partian Empire, was in no position to defeat this massive attack. Ten thousand soldiers under Iranian general Sourena faced an army of 43,000 well-trained, well-equipped and experienced Roman legionnaires. ............................................................ Taking a lesson from history, they plot asymmetric tactics to hit the Americans where they’re most vulnerable. Iran is prepared to send swarms of cheap, disposable craft to confuse and overwhelm the Pentagon’s much more monolithic naval forces.

The government of Syrian President Bashar Assad has accused the United States, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the rebels fighting to overthrow it, of being responsible for chemical weapons attacks in the country, Syria’s state news agency SANA reported on Tuesday. In letters to the UN Security Council as well as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Assad regime cited “reports, studies and documented researches” that allegedly implicate the US and Turkish administrations, as well as several other countries, “whether directly or indirectly in these appalling carnage in Syria, including Khad al-Assal on March 15, 2013.” …

Palestinian terrorists open fire on Israeli cars en route to Passover meal; IDF troops launch massive manhunt in area; Hamas, Jihad praise attack. * * * Hamas and Islamic Jihad both praised the attack, although neither organization claimed responsibility. A spokesman for Islamic Jihad called the attack "a natural response to Israeli crimes," while Hamas said the shooting was "the response to the crimes of the occupation, and the repeated assaults on the Al-Aqsa Mosque and against our prisoners in Israel jails."

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) went after fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and President Barack Obama on This Week With George Stephanopoulos sunday morning, telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl that Obama’s “five years of weakness� had emboldened Putin and that the U.S. needed to defend its values across the globe, in contrast to Paul’s less-interventionist foreign policy. “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul,� Cruz said, “but I don’t agree with him on foreign policy. I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. I agree with him that we should be very reluctant to deploy military force abroad. But...

Steinitz says Kerry remarks on Iran nuclear threshold 'not acceptable' Minister in charge of nuclear affairs believes Israel will not adopt 'any agreement' that keeps Iran within a year of attaining nuclear weaponry. Israel described as "unacceptable" on Monday remarks by US Secretary of State John Kerry suggesting cautious openness to negotiating a nuclear deal that would keep Iran six to 12 months away from bomb-making capability. "In the past, and also recently, what we heard from the Americans, including publicly, and from the Europeans and even from the Russians, was that Iran must be distanced years – not months...

Police have “lost control of the Temple Mount,” Temple activists charged Monday morning, on the eve of Pesach. Dozens of Hamas men have taken over the Mount, waving Hamas flags, and are “not allowing Jews and tourists into the Mount,” said the activists. […] The Temple organizations called for the police commissioner to resign, following his failures on the Temple Mount. …

U.S. officials angry over Israel's lack of condemnation of Russia. Israeli policy is driven by its own security interests and does not need to be identical to that of the U.S., a senior defense official said Sunday in response to Haaretz's report that White House and State Department officials in Washington have built up a great deal of anger over Jerusalem's "neutrality" regarding Russia's invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. Senior figures in the Obama administration have expressed great disappointment with the lack of support from Israel for the American position on the Ukraine crisis and with the fact that the...

The Messiah (as Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon referred to U.S. Secretary John Kerry) is not having a good month. According to his formerly good buddy U.S. Sen. John McCain, Kerry is presiding over a “trifecta” of foreign policy disasters. The Geneva Peace negotiations with the “generous reformer” President Bashar al-Assad. The P 5+1 Negotiations with the Mad Mullahs of Iran. And the Israeli-Palestinian “Peace Process.” But I think this is unfair. At least for two of these disasters, President Barack Obama-Costanza is much more at fault for them than is Kerry. It was the president who set his...

In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.​＊ Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s...

Each side in the Syrian conflict blamed the other Saturday for an alleged poison gas attack that reportedly injured scores of civilians in the central province of Hama. There was no independent confirmation of a chemical strike, which reportedly hit the village of Kfar Zeita, an agricultural center northwest of the provincial capital, Hama. Fierce clashes between rebel and loyalist forces have been reported in the area. Various pro-opposition accounts said a government air raid Friday in Kfar Zeita included bombardment with an unspecified chemical agent, causing choking and suffocation among scores of residents. But state-run television said Al Qaeda-affiliated...

Iran is, literally, being blown away. Stifling dust storms frequently now envelop both big cities and rural towns across much of Iran, the world’s 17th largest country. They threaten to disrupt crucial parts of public and economic life, education, commerce, public health, agriculture, trade and transportation. Swirling clouds of windblown silt, soil, and sediment - already affected 23 of Iran’s 31 provinces in 2013, according to Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar, head of the country’s Environmental Protection Organization. Iran’s massive dust storms could also spill well across Iran’s borders, generating serious regional consequences and tensions. Dust clouds veiled Tehran for 117...

(Reuters) - Iranian-American Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine whose previous death sentence in Iran on espionage charges was overturned, has been secretly retried, convicted of collaborating with the U.S. government and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the New York Times reported on Friday, quoting his lawyer. The newspaper quoted lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei as saying Hekmati, held since 2011, was not told by Iranian officials about the retrial, conviction or prison sentence. The Times quoted Tabatabaei as saying Hekmati was retried by a revolutionary court in December and convicted of "practical collaboration with the American government." :snip: The...

There are reports of a possible chemical weapons attack in at least one area of Syria, but possibly more. Below we will be analyzing the information as it comes in. 2034 GMT: A potentially very important video. This claims to have been taken this evening in Kafr Zita, and it is uploaded by a channel that has posted videos nearly exclusively from Kafr Zita. It claims to show a helicopter dropping a barrel bomb filled with the chemical weapons. SNIP- Just today, the Local Coordination Committees reported that five people were killed in Harasta and several more were injured in...

Under pressure from Arab nations, the United Nations Human Rights Council has rejected a U.S.-backed choice to replace its outgoing point man on Palestine, and is now eyeing two candidates who share a long history of alleged anti-Israel bias. The current front-runner to replace Richard Falk, a 9/11 truther who once praised Ayatollah Khomeinei and was reliably anti-Israel while serving as the council's special rapporteur on Palestinian rights, is Christine Chinkin, a law professor at the London School of Economics. Chinkin authored the Goldstone report, an infamous UN study on the Gaza conflict that was repudiated by Israel. A dark...

The White House says the administration won’t grant a visa to Hamid Aboutalebi, who had a role in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis and is Iran’s pick to serve as its ambassador to the UN. White House press secretary Jay Carney said the administration has told Iran at multiple levels that Aboutalebi’s selection was “not viable.” The move effectively keeps Aboutalebi out of the country. But it still isn’t clear whether President Obama will sign legislation that would prevent Aboutalebi from coming here as a matter of law.

April 11, 2014, 01:06 pm Obama denies visa to Iran diplomat By Justin Sink The White House said Friday it would not issue a visa to Iran's next ambassador to the United Nations, who has ties to the Iranian hostage crisis. “We have informed the United Nations and Iran that we will not issue a visa to Mr. Hamid Abutalebi,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said. Abutalebi has admitted that he worked as a translator and negotiator for the student group that held Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran for 444 days. "We’ve confirmed what we’ve conveyed....

The White House announced today that it would refuse to issue a visa to Hamid Aboutalebi, the Iranian envoy to the United Nations, over his connection to the 1979 hostage crisis in Tehran. Aboutalebi belonged to the “student group” who seized Americans from the US embassy despite having diplomatic immunity, and the Iranian government held them captive for 444 days:

An American commentator who appeared on state-owned Iranian Press TV suggested that Israel was responsible for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which went missing on March 8. “Why are they giving us photoshopped pictures of Iranian passengers?” said Barrett, referring to the two Iranian nationals who boarded the flight with stolen passports. “Obviously there was some kind of a set-up to try to blame this on Iran,” he continued. “Precisely what that is we don’t know, but the Israelis have been using their assets, including the head of El-Al security, who was a 9/11 suspect – he lives...

Weak administration foreign policy is causing Senators from both parties, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, to fix and lead diplomacy. The administration has been relatively silent about Iran’s nominating a known terrorist, who hates America, to be their U.N. Ambassador. The terrorist, Hamid Aboutalebi, participated in the 1979 takeover and hostage taking at the American embassy in Tehran, Iran. The terrorist kept our people for 444 days; an atrocity that is still celebrated on the website of the takeover group. Such behavior from Iran is typical and dangerous. The administration has been, in diplomatic and geopolitical terms, nearly silent about...

Chris Matthews for an interview on Hardball Wednesday and made some news by saying he does not think the United States should bomb Iran even if they were to succeed in building an operational nuclear weapon. This statement differs not only from recent comments made by former Vice President Dick Cheney but also from the stated position of President Barack Obama. “I never have felt that Israel had a capability militarily to go 1,200 miles or more and bomb Iran effectively and then return back to Israel,” said of Cheney’s suggestion that Israel could attack Iran unilaterally. “The only country...

PM facing embarrassment over links between adviser and Islamist group. Adviser Tariq Ramadan is grandson of Muslim Brotherhood's founder . ... Tariq Ramadan is one of 14 members of the Foreign Office’s Advisory Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief, chaired by Tory peer Baroness Warsi. He is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Oxford University, and was a member of a taskforce set up by Tony Blair after 7/7. But Prof Ramadan, 51, is grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder Hassan al-Banna and his father Said Ramadan was a leading light. ... He was kept out of France in...

What, if anything, do "we" now stand for and why?An article published on April 9th by the Gatestone Institute International Policy Council is titled U.S.: The Great Problem that Needs to be Solved. Written by Elliot Abrams, it contends that the problem has at its center the world view of President Obama. His world view is based primarily on ideology rather than reality; its bases are evident in all that He and His minions do and fail to do. The problem also impacts domestic policy, implemented by Executive Decree when He "won't wait." If the Democrats control neither house of the Congress following the November elections, there...

Today, three Republican U.S. Senators and one Representative who feel stymied on their investigation into the Benghazi, Libya Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks are calling for House Speaker Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) to convene a Select Congressional Committee. “Segmenting the investigation will never get to the truth,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who is holding a news conference on the effort today with Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC). There have been multiple hearings in the nearly 17 months since the terrorist attacks that killed four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. The hearings, subpoenaed...

This is a bad morning. I was greeted by a headline in the New York Times that said Defense Secretary “Chuck Mullet” Hagel was planning to submit a budget to Congress to cut the size of the military to a level not seen since 1940, before the U.S. entered World War II. The article went on to say that the Pentagon realized that this would be an inadequate force for even very small wars and certainly would not allow the U.S. to police the world and keep control of contingencies like a North Korean attack on the South or a...

The US Senate has unanimously passed a bill barring known terrorists from entering the United States as ambassadors to the United Nations. The move came in response to the decision by Iran to appoint Hamid Aboutalebi, who participated in the 1979 hostage-taking of Americans in Tehran, as its UN ambassador. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf had called the decision "extremely troubling", and at least 29 Republican Senators had appealed to the Obama administration to deny Aboutalebi a visa to enter the US. One of those Senators was Ted Cruz (R-TX), who said he would not make do with a simple...

Look At What America Is Giving To Terrorists By Ted on April 8, 2014 in General By Theodore Shoebat Look at what America is giving these terrorists in Syria. This is a BGM-71, one of the most widely used anti-tank guided missiles.The weapon is used in anti-armor, anti-bunker, anti-fortification and anti-amphibious landing roles. The TOW is in service with over 45 militaries and is integrated on over 15,000 ground, vehicle and helicopter platforms worldwide. In other words, its serious weaponry, and its in the hands of these savages all thanks to politicians like Obama and McCain.

The Senate unanimously passed a bill sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz Monday night, which would block known terrorists from getting visas to enter the United States as U.N. ambassadors. He thanked several senators by name on the Senate floor he said were “instrumental in the passage,” including Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat and a very unlikely ally. Iran’s newest U.N. ambassador, Hamid Aboutalebi, was an active participant in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, when 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days in Tehran. He was appointed earlier this year by Iranian President Hasan Rouhani. Shchumer said in a statement...

Dozens of Fatah supporters demonstrated in Ramallah on Wednesday in support of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The demonstration is the first of its kind in the West Bank since the beginning of the uprising in Egypt. RELATED:For Palestinians, Egyptian unrest is bittersweet The demonstration coincided with the attack that was launched by Mubarak's supporters against anti-government protesters in Cairo. Sources in Ramallah said that the demonstration was initiated by the PA leadership, which has banned anti-Mubarak protests in the West Bank. The demonstrators shouted slogans condemning Egyptian opposition figure Mohammed ElBaradei as a “CIA agent” and warned against foreign...

BERLIN (AP) -- German authorities have banned an organization they say has raised millions of dollars for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which the European Union considers a terrorist organization. Emily Haber, a deputy interior minister, said police raided 19 locations early Tuesday in six German states used by the so-called "Orphaned Children Project - Lebanon."

John Kerry Defends His Diplomatic Efforts: ‘I May Fail – I Don’t Care’ By Ali Weinberg Apr 8, 2014 4:03pm Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State John Kerry defiantly defended his diplomatic efforts, saying that while ambitious, they were better than doing nothing. While the purpose of Tuesday’s hearing was to pick through the State Department’s budget, it was Kerry’s record that came under scrutiny as his old colleagues on the committee accused him of taking on too many responsibilities with too few results. “I think you’re about to hit the trifecta,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,...

Last week, Reuters first reported Russia was preparing an oil-for-goods deal with Iran worth up to $20 billion. An unnamed Iranian official told the news service that the barter would include Russian weapons. And that was before further signs of Russia’s shadow invasion of Ukraine emerged Monday, when crowds spontaneously appeared in three major eastern cities to welcome the troops amassed over the border. The Daily Beast reported that associates of Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed and Kremlin-friendly Ukrainian president, were meeting with pro-Russian activists. One keen-eyed photographer captured a man wearing a Russian Airborne forces tee-shirt at one of the...

The U.S. has already signaled that Iran's UN envoy pick is a no-go - and for VERY good reason. At the same time we are being entangled in these disputes; we do so and are to some degree continuing this because the UN is on U.S. grounds. The statement "get the U.S. out of the UN and the UN out of the U.S." has been oft-repeated...so here is a possible solution - with one caveat. The UN is moved to neutral territory (if at all possible), so we don't have to shell out a significant chunk for its operating expenses....

WASHINGTON (TheBlaze/AP) — The Senate approved a bill Monday to bar a former hostage-taker tapped to be Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations from entering the United States. By voice vote, Republicans and Democrats united behind the legislation sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, that reflected congressional animosity toward Tehran and its selection of Hamid Aboutalebi. Iran’s envoy choice was a member of a Muslim student group that held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran....

<p>I want every talk radio host, rightwing pundit and Republican voter who thinks for one second that Ron Paul is an actual conservative to watch this video, digest it and understand what a joke this guy really is.</p> <p>Ron Paul is the only real nutbase in this GOP primary.</p>