Free Republic

ormer U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, in an interview with JTA, surmised that the next U.S. administration would be friendlier with Israel than the current one. The onetime vice presidential candidate also expressed concern over America’s nuclear negotiations with Iran, saying they are “going in a bad direction,” and urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to embrace the long-shelved Arab Peace Initiative. Lieberman predicted that if the 2016 presidential election were held today, a higher percentage of Jewish-Americans would vote Republican than in past races. But he noted that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the party’s front-runner for the Democratic...

WASHINGTON — THE fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday, and of the Syrian city of Palmyra on Wednesday, is a big gain for the Islamic State, but not an utter disaster, as many observers fear. Rather than inducing panic in Western capitals, it should lead to a realistic assessment of the Islamic State’s strengths and weaknesses. One setback in a long war must not trigger hasty strategic shifts that lead to foreign countries’ becoming mired in Iraq once more. Palmyra has economic and cultural significance, as it sits among gas fields and is home to renowned ruins....

War, what's it good for? Aside from countless deaths of innocent civilians of course, it means a GDP boost for the biggest exporter of weapons on earth, the United States, and even more profits for the US military-industrial complex. Profits which mean the shareholders of America's arms manufacturers get even richer. Which is why following months of middle-eastern sabre ratling and numerous quasi-wars already raging in the region, moments ago the U.S. State Department approved the sale of 10 MH-60R Seahawk helicopters to Saudi Arabia for $1.9 billion, the first step in "a major multibillion-dollar modernization of the Saudi...

Al Schwimmer with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Courtesy of Boaz Dvir) The role of overseas volunteers in building the Israel Air Forces has inspired three new films. One volunteer who played a pivotal role and gets considerable attention in the new documentary, “On a Wing and a Prayer,” was Al Schwimmer, a World War II veteran whose efforts to secure aircraft and weapons for Israel during its War of Independence ultimately cost him his U.S. citizenship. (In 2001, a decade before his death, Schwimmer, whose rarely used given name was Adolph, was pardoned and his citizenship restored.) In April...

Faced with the suffering of their own people, the Palestinians recently decided not to help. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas rejected a deal with Israel brokered by the United Nations that would allow Palestinian refugees living in Syria to resettle in the West Bank and Gaza. Abbas stated unequivocally that “we rejected that and said it’s better they die in Syria than give up their right of return.” The Palestine Liberation Organization has also ruled out any military action to help the 18,000 or more refugees who are trapped in the Yarmouk camp near Damascus. Abbas’s cold-blooded response reveals...

Oh, the irony. Here’s an excerpt from the president’s interview with Jeffrey Goldberg: Obama: And I care deeply about preserving that Jewish democracy, because when I think about how I came to know Israel, it was based on images of, you know— Goldberg: We talked about this once. Kibbutzim, and— Obama: Kibbutzim, and Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meir, and the sense that not only are we creating a safe Jewish homeland, but also we are remaking the world. We’re repairing it. We are going to do it the right way. We are going to make sure that the lessons we’ve...

Palestinian rhetoric and behavior reflect their honest intentions: their official organs and most of their leaders seek Israel’s destruction. State of Palestine A Palestinian supporter wears Palestinian and Union Jack flags outside the Parliament in London during October's vote on recognizing a state of Palestine. (photo credit:REUTERS) dShare on Facebook hShare on Twitter With the Palestinians taking Israel to the International Criminal Court and trying to kick Israel out of the international soccer league, FIFA, while still boycotting normal, constructive, personal, economic or cultural ties with Israel, their war against the Jews continues. Even if Pope Francis – whom I...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is ready to supply weapons to Iraq, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday, as the country struggles to halt advances by Islamic State militants. Speaking ahead of talks in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, Lavrov told reporters Moscow would make every effort to help the Baghdad government push back the militants. Islamic State insurgents overran the Iraqi city of Ramadi last weekend in the most significant setback for the Baghdad government in a year, exposing the weakness of Iraq's army and the limitations of U.S. air strikes. On...

House Foreign Relations Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) recently briefed members of the Israel Allies Caucus on Capitol Hill. He spoke to supporters about Iran. Leading off with a question from decades ago: "What distinguishes the United States' nuclear missile arsenal from that of the Soviet Union?" That question was asked of President John F. Kennedy. And that young President answered succinctly: Attitude. Exactly right. The attitude of the United States is not one of dominance and aggression, whereas that of the USSR was undeniably so. President Kennedy had only to point to the Berlin Wall--a ugly spike driven through the heart of...

President Barack Obama said Friday he “forcefully” objects to suggestions that policy differences between his administration and the Israeli government signal his lack of support for the longtime U.S. ally. Speaking at one of Washington’s most prominent synagogues, Obama said the U.S. and Israel should not be expected to paper over differences on Israel's settlement building or the frozen peace process with the Palestinians. “That’s not a true measure of friendship,” Obama said during remarks to a crowd of about 1,200 gathered at Congregation Adas Israel. […] Obama defended the framework deal that negotiators are seeking to finalize by the...

The Clinton Foundation reported Thursday that it has received as much as $26.4 million in previously undisclosed payments from major corporations, universities, foreign sources and other groups. The disclosure came as the foundation faced questions over whether it fully complied with a 2008 ethics agreement to reveal its donors and whether any of its funding sources present conflicts of interest for Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins her presidential campaign.

President Barack Obama is continuing his criticism of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s comments on a Palestinian state and Arab-Israelis before the last elections. In an interview with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, Obama said that the security relationship between the United States and Israel will remain strong, but reiterated that there will be “consequences” from Netanyahu’s remarks. “In every public pronouncement I’ve made, I said that the bedrock security relationships between our two countries—these are sacrosanct. Military cooperation, intelligence cooperation—none of that has been affected. I have maintained, and I think I can show that no U.S. president has...

President says in Atlantic interview he cares so deeply about Israel that he's motivated to criticize continued settlement activity, comments from Netanyahu. WASHINGTON -- "Political forces" in Washington seek to provide the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a rubber stamp for its policies, US President Barack Obama said this week in an interview with the Atlantic magazine. The interview, with the outlet's Jeffrey Goldberg, was published one day before the president is scheduled to address Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, where he is expected to outline his administration's plans to combat a rising tide of anti-Semitism across Europe....

Video US President Barack Obama has described the loss of key Iraqi territory to Islamic State as a tactical setback, while insisting the war against the jihadist group is not being lost. "I don't think we're losing," Obama said in an interview with news magazine The Atlantic published Thursday, days after the Iraqi city of Ramadi was overrun. Shia militias converged on Ramadi Monday in a bid recapture it from jihadists who dealt the Iraqi government a stinging blow by overrunning the city in a deadly three-day blitz. The loss of the capital of Iraq's largest province was Baghdad's worst...

Ramadi falls. The Iraqi army flees. The great 60-nation anti-Islamic State coalition so grandly proclaimed by the Obama administration is nowhere to be seen. Instead, it’s the defense minister of Iran who flies into Baghdad, an unsubtle demonstration of who’s in charge — while the U.S. air campaign proves futile and America’s alleged strategy for combating the Islamic State is in freefall. It gets worse. The Gulf states’ top leaders, betrayed and bitter, ostentatiously boycott President Obama’s failed Camp David summit. “We were America’s best friend in the Arab world for 50 years,” laments Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief.Note: “were,”...

The US Department of Defense “Pentagon” accused the Iraqi army of leaving behind large quantities of weapons and ammunition when it pulled out of the city of Ramadi on Sunday. The weapons, which have been seized by ISIS, include tanks, armored vehicles and heavy guns. After the fall of the city of Mosul at the hands of ISIS last June, the latter have seized massive amounts of American weapons and sophisticated gear left by the Iraqi army. After this date ISIS became stronger; it doubled its strength and its fighters became roaming by “Humvee” vehicles and American tanks and they...

A Boston University professor has defended to WND his creation of a Common Core-compliant lesson plan that uses role-playing workshops to teach students to sympathize with Hamas, create a Palestinian state and divide the city of Jerusalem. Professor Carl Hobert’s “Whose Jerusalem?” project has been lauded by those at the pinnacle of the education establishment as an important work that will, in the words of Boston University School of Education Dean Hardin Coleman, “help students acquire the skills they need” in conflict resolution “to be successful in the 21st century.” But the role-playing exercises have also come under fire recently...

Yesterday, over in La-la Land, President Obama was at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy telling graduates that “climate change” is the greatest national security threat — and denying it is basically dereliction of duty. Well, let’s get back to reality where a REAL global security threat, Iran, is ratcheting up the belligerence. As reported by CBSnews.com, “Iran’s supreme leader vowed Wednesday he will not allow international inspection of Iran’s military sites or access to Iranian scientists under any nuclear agreement with world powers. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told military commanders Wednesday that Iran will resist “coercion and excessive demands” from America...

For all the horror of the reports coming out of the ‘Islamic State’, there seems to have been a fairly widespread assumption that ISIS is, if not beaten at least contained, and that in due course it will burn out/be burnt out. Historical parallels are dangerous to draw and they often lead to some wildly incorrect conclusions, but ISIS’s position in Syria and Iraq reminds me more than a little of the situation in which the nascent soviet state found itself during the early years of the Russian Civil War. The Bolsheviks were encircled by hostile forces, who, on paper,...

For his With All Due Respect show on Bloomberg TV, Mark Halperin sat down with a focus group of Iowa Democratic voters to discuss Hillary Clinton‘s prospects for the 2016 presidential election. While the group fawned over the former First Lady’s personality and politics (one called her a “bad mama jama”), they were stumped when Halperin asked them to name a single accomplishment of Hillary Clinton’s during her tenure as Secretary of State. The responses ranged from “I really can’t name anything off the top of my head” to “Give me two minutes” to “I honestly can’t say I followed...