Free Republic

FULL TITLE: Ted Cruz: The facts suggest President Obama has just used the FAA to launch an ECONOMIC BOYCOTT on Israel…//// Sen. Ted Cruz ripped the president today for using a federal agency, the FAA, to launch an economic boycott on Israel in order to force them to comply with his demands. He pointed out that this economic boycott aids Hamas while simultaneously hurting Israel. What Cruz is calling for is the Obama administration to answer the following questions: Was this decision a political decision driven by the White House? If the FAA’s decision was based on airline safety, why...

Qatar hosts three major US military bases on its territory. And it is becoming one of the most important clients for US military contractors. Earlier this year Qatar signed an $11.4 billion dollar arms agreement with the US. At the same time, according to the Calacalist report, Qatar is the major bankroller of ISIS and al Nusra in Syria and Iraq. It gives $50 million a month to jihadists in Libya. It gives Hamas $100m. in annual aid. And in the past two years Doha has provided Hamas with an additional $620m. dollars, including $250m. it transferred to Hamas leader...

A State Department official who just returned from a seven-week trip to Iraq, said the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—or the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL)—is no longer just a terrorist group. “ISIL is no longer simply a terrorist organization,” Brett McGurk, deputy assistant secretary for Iraq and Iran at the U.S. Department of State, said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday. “It is now a full-blown army seeking to establish a self-governing state through the Tigress (sic) and Euphrates Valley in what is now Syria and Iraq.” …

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, addressing the annual Washington conference of Christians United for Israel, July 21, 2014.With sharp jabs at the Obama administration, Christians United for Israel launched its annual Washington rally with appeals to Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran and cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority. David Brog, the group’s executive director, said CUFI regarded the Iran nuclear talks as a failure and would back legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that would impose new sanctions immediately. The Cruz measure is tougher than legislation already under consideration that would trigger sanctions...

As of Tuesday night, despite the efforts of international intermediaries here in the region, there was no sign of an Israel-Hamas ceasefire. Visiting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had failed to achieve the long-term humanitarian truce he planned. This despite signs Monday that Hamas might want to halt the fighting. The Al-Mayadeen satellite station, which has good contacts in the office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, claimed late Monday that Abbas and Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal had reached a ceasefire deal, based on Egypt’s proposal for an immediate cessation of hostilities. Abbas’s intelligence chief Majid Faraj set...

The European Union on Tuesday called upon terrorist groups in Gaza to disarm, and to end and renounce violence. The official statement read: "The EU strongly condemns the indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas and militant groups in the Gaza Strip, directly harming civilians. These are criminal and unjustifiable acts. The EU calls on Hamas to immediately put an end to these acts and to renounce violence. All terrorist groups in Gaza must disarm. The EU strongly condemns calls on the civilian population of Gaza to provide themselves as human shields."

The Islamic State-- formerly Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)-- has previously used water as a destructive tool to destroy crops and dams in Shi'ite territory. Now, ISIS is attempting to deprive major Christian strongholds of water through their control of pipe systems. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the city most affected by ISIS's new campaign to deny water to as many Christians and Shi'ites in Iraq as possible is the city of Qaraqosh, currently under control of Kurdish Peshmerga forces and, thus, impenetrable to the terrorist jihadist group. Their only current connection to Qaraqosh is a water pipeline from...

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has called for an end to the fighting and bombing in Gaza. “Both sides must distinguish between combatants and noncombatants, and Israel must ensure that its use of force is proportionate in accordance with international humanitarian law. More immediately, all combat operations must stop, and Israeli troops should withdraw from Gaza,” Carter said in a statement released Tuesday. So far, more than 600 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed in the fighting, according to reports. The Israeli death toll is estimated at 29, including two civilians. Humantarian groups have also called for an end to...

EU countries have defended Israel’s use of force in Gaza, but blamed it for harming peace prospects in the longer term. Foreign ministers in a joint statement on Tuesday (22 July) said they are “appalled by the human cost” of some parts of “the Israeli military operation”, which has killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians. But they “recognized Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself”, while blaming Hamas, the militant group which rules Gaza, for “indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel”, in what they described as “criminal and unjustifiable acts”. They also gave credence to Israeli claims that Hamas is urging civilians...

IRAQI special forces secured full control of a crucial former US military base on the outskirts of Tikrit, officials said yesterday. Camp Speicher, the headquarters for US forces in northern Iraq during the 2003 invasion and subsequent war, has become a focal point in the fight between Iraqi forces and Islamist militants.

Asserting that India's policy on Palestine issue remains unchanged, government on Monday refused to take sides over the Gaza conflict as it said Israel and Palestine should have peace talks and forestalled a resolution in Rajya Sabha which was demanded by the opposition. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said the House should not be divided but send out a joint message that wherever there is violence, it is condemnable and both Israel and Palestine should accept Egypt's offer of peace talks. She was replying to a short-duration debate on Gaza situation during which opposition condemned the violence in Gaza, pressed...

Elhanan Miller, The Times Of Israel July 21, 2014A large explosion in a Sudanese ammunition warehouse last Friday was the result of an Israeli attack targeting weapons intended for Hamas, and not a fire, as claimed by the government, an Arab daily reported on Monday. Sudanese Intelligence had claimed that the explosion, which took place in a military training camp in Al-Gaili, north of the capital Khartoum, early Friday morning, was caused by “a local fire.” A Sudanese army spokesman, A-Sawarmi Khaled Sa’ad, said the explosion had no connection to “external hands, or a domestic act of sabotage.” But unnamed...

More than 700 people were killed in Syria over the course of Thursday and Friday, in what activists say were the bloodiest 48 hours of fighting in the conflict to date. ... Abdul Rahman said the death toll of Thursday’s clashes was 396 people, while Friday’s total reached 314, adding that 90 more people were still unaccounted for, although they were also expected to have been killed.

A report in London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Arab Monday said that Israeli planes over the weekend destroyed a warehouse in Sudan that was holding a large number of long-range Iranian missiles. The missiles belonged to Hamas, and were to be used against Israel after they were smuggled into Gaza. According to the report, eyewitnesses said they saw a "huge explosion" after planes flew over the building. Six people were injured in the attack, witnesses said. The resulting blaze required the services of large numbers of firefighters, they added. Sudanese officials confirmed that there was an explosion, but denied any connection...

Kerry Angrily Spars With Fox’s Chris Wallace: ‘You Like To Ask Questions, But You Don’t Like To Get Answers!’ 07/20/2014 After months of shutting Fox News out of his Sunday show appearances, a downed airliner in Ukraine and an ongoing Israeli invasion of Gaza compelled Secretary of State John Kerry to finally appear on “Fox News Sunday” A frustrated Kerry relentlessly castigated Fox’s Chris Wallace for continuing to ask questions while the Secretary of State was in the middle of answering. “You like to ask questions, but you don’t like to get answers!” he charged petulantly, before refusing to address...

Now that the U.S.-Russia relationship has broken down, Moscow could throw a wrench into the teetering nuclear negotiations with Iran. The escalating tensions between Washington and Moscow, brought to fever by the MH17 airliner disaster, are finally to the point where they threaten to spoil the number one item on President Obama’s foreign policy agenda: the nuclear talks with Iran. The man doing the threatening is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Earlier this week, Putin promised to retaliate against the United States for new sanctions targeting his friends and business associates, as well as large Russian defense, energy, and financial firms....

A fantastic photo-essay demonstrating the psychoses of the American left and its allies in the Islamo-fascist, "pro-Palestinian" movement.

Jews are SCARED. In the first three months of 2014 more Jews left France for Israel than at any other time since the Jewish state was created in 1948. The hundreds of rockets raining down on Israel are considered acceptable. Retaliation (with phone-call warnings , "knocking" to prevent civilian casualties,) is "massacre by the Jews." And the White House, of course, is silent. Europe is ablaze with Jew hatred, and North America is, too. The "Palestinians" own the streets, the schools, the colleges, the immigration process, the White House. If you want to help, you can do these things: LIGHT...

Imagine being killed because of your religion. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a radical Islamic group, says this will start happening in Iraq by Saturday and the threat is sending shockwaves through the community of more than 50,000 Chaldeans in the San Diego area. At St. Michael Chaldean Church in El Cajon, locals are hoping for peace. Chaldeans visit the church in east San Diego by the thousands to pray for the thousands of victims killed in Iraq and people being persecuted because of their religion. One of the women praying there is Sister Francois. Though she’s...

Israel on Friday ordered some of its diplomatic staff in Turkey to leave the country for security reasons, after protesters angered by its assault on Gaza sought to storm Israeli embassy buildings. Turkish protesters overnight tried to break into the ambassador's residence in Ankara as well as the consulate in Istanbul, with the diplomatic controversy over the Gaza assault risking a new crisis in relations between Turkey and the Jewish state. "Foreign Minister (Avigdor) Lieberman issued a statement... following the demonstrations and instructed the Israeli consulate and embassy to reduce their diplomatic staff in Turkey," an Israeli embassy spokesman told...