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A spokesperson for the EU responded today (Thursday) to the report according to which the European Union links aid to PA to financial ties with Israel. According to the report, European Union leaders told the Palestinian Authority that they will refuse to provide financial aid as long as it refuses to accept tax revenues collected by Israel. "The EU and its Member States are and continue to be the largest international financial supporter of Palestinians. The EU is a firm supporter of the Palestinian Authority", the spokesperson said to Arutz Sheva. "The EU and many partners in the international community...

In 2006, I deployed to Fallujah, Iraq, and returned in early 2007. Within a month, I started getting sick with persistent chronic bronchitis that would come and go, even when I felt healthy. In 2010, after two and a half years of tests and doctors’ visits, the VA determined that I’d suffered permanent damage to my small airways as a result of “whatever you were exposed to over there.” (That’s a direct quote from my then-VA pulmonologist, and I’ll never forget it.) In 2017, I first heard about the Burn Pit issue and realized that my illness, which had grown...

Trump has reduced the U.S. military footprint abroad, choosing to punch hard while pulling back. The Islamic State’s so-called caliphate in the Middle East has been destroyed. Syria and Iran are on notice. The two biggest terrorist leaders alive when Trump took office, the Islamic State’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani, are now dead. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have recently signed major diplomatic agreements with Israel, a breakthrough engineered by the Trump administration and the first such pact between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors in 25 years. The president has focused the...

"Gambling on the losers": a storm after the Saudi prince attacked the Palestinians Roy Kaise. Oct.6.2020 Following the agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Saudi Arabia was designated as a state that if Israel succeeds in normalizing its relations with it, it will be a breach of equality with the Arab world. Tonight, Israel may have received a positive message in this direction, in an interview with one of the Saudi princes on the Al-Arabiya network: he attacked the Palestinians for their opposition to agreements between Israel and the Gulf states, implicitly mentioned Abba Eben. [From the clip: 'We...

“To the people of Lebanon, Israel means you no harm. But Iran does.” Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the annual forum of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on Tuesday, September 29, 2020. In his speech from Jerusalem (due to Covid-19, worldwide leaders delivered their speeches via videos, not in person in New York City), he devoted the lion’s share of the time to the threat Iran poses to the international community and especially in the Middle East. He said that, “Iran is the greatest enemy of peace.” He also pointed out on a large map, the location in Beirut where...

If a visitor from Mars observed press coverage of President Donald Trump Middle East peace negotiations, he would have heard an amazing tale about Donald Trump’s incompetence and futility of his efforts. The most experienced negotiator, John Kerry, declared in 2016 "There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world…. No. No, no, and no." In April 2016 Harvard Business Review wrote, “The Donald Trump approach to negotiation would be not only ineffective but also disastrous.” In October 2019 The Atlantic posted an article “Trump’s Middle East Policy Is a Fraud.” Infamous for its foresight, especially when...

For decades, the Iranian government has avoided judicial accountability as the No. 1 nation-state sponsor of international terrorism. This will end on November 27, 2020 in Antwerp, when Belgium’s criminal court commences proceedings against senior Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi. In June 2018, as third secretary in the Iranian Embassy in Vienna, Assadi delivered over half a kilo of Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP) to Iranian sleeper agents in Luxembourg. TATP is a high explosive used in bombs, suicide attacks, and improvised explosive devices.The target was a major international gathering near Paris, in support of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)....

Today's top stories 29.09.20 Rival Palestinian factions reach an agreement that will see parliamentary and presidential elections held within six-months -- as part of a collective Palestinian effort to resist Israel's normalization with Arab and Muslim states.Damascus is reportedly seeking to revive direct-negotiations with Jerusalem.French president Emmanuel Macron accuses Hezbollah and its allies for the failure to attain much sought-after political breakthrough for Lebanon.

In apparent retaliation for the execution of the reportedly innocent Iranian champion wrestler Navid Afkari, assailants on Sunday fire bombed the entrance of the revolutionary court in the city of Shiraz that sentenced him to death. Video footage of the reported explosion was posted on social media on Sunday. The Iranian regime-controlled news outlet IRNA confirmed the attack on Sunday. “According to a report received by IRNA on Monday, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal of Shiraz announced the firing of incendiary materials in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Tribunal of Shiraz. The complex is in good health and...

A Su-25 jet of the Armenian Air Force was shot down by a Turkish F-16 fighter in the airspace of the Republic of Armenia, Spokesperson for the Armenian Defense Ministry Shushan Stepanyan informs. F-16 fighter jets belonging to the Air Force of the Republic of Turkey took off from Ganja Airport of the Republic of Azerbaijan at 10:30 am today and were assisting SU-25 fighters and Turkish-made Bayraktar UAVs in the missile strikes on Vardenis, Mets Masrik, Sotk regions of the Vardenis region of Armenia. During this period, the air defense units were performing fire support tasks for the air...

Senior editor of Saudi online paper Arab News, Siraj Wahab, has just tweeted that Egyptian ships forced Iranian retreat from Bab Al-Mandab strait near the Port of Aden. A statement issued by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry stated that Egypt is coordinating with Saudi Arabia, together with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) for the participation of its Air Force, Navy, and ground forces, should it prove necessary. However, it should be noted that Iran threatened Saudi Arabia today (Thursday), announcing that its foray into Yemen would end up costing it dearly.

Security sources said the blast had caused a number of injuries. An arms depot of the Iran-backed Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah exploded in southern Lebanon on Tuesday, a security source said, injuring several people and sending a new shockwave across a nation grappling with its deepest crisis in three decades. The security source said the arms depot blast, which sent a huge column of black smoke into the sky, was caused by a "technical error." The al-Manar television station run by Lebanon's Hezbollah said the cause of an explosion in southern Lebanon on Tuesday was not yet clear. The explosion...

Interview By: Peter Tase Vakilabad Prison is located in the city of Mashhad in eastern Iran. This prison has reportedly been the site of hundreds of secret executions carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not only have the executions taken place secretly, but neither the prisoners nor their families were informed prior to their execution. Mr. Ahmed Shaheed, the former UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, has documented more than 300 secret executions in Vakilabad during the past years. Vakilabad Prison is massively overcrowded, which puts the prisoners under severe pressure, with many of...

Iran’s state television reported Tuesday night that a fire broke out at a large dairy factory near the capital, Tehran, the latest in a series of fires and explosions, some of which hit sensitive sites. Video clips showing the huge fire erupting around the two-story facility were posted on Twitter. The Mihan Dairy & Ice Cream company belongs to the Mihan Food Industries Group, located 22 km. From Tehran on Saveh Rd., was established in 1974 and today has a 65% market share for ice cream and 50% market share for UHT (Ultra-high-temperature processing) Milk.

Rehabilitation works will include the church’s arcades, external walls, the annexed cloister, a dining room, and sacristy rooms Reconstruction and rehabilitation works have begun on Iraq’s Al-Tahera Church in the Old City of Mosul in close coordination with the UAE and local authorities. Phase 1 of the project, which included clearing the rubble and securing the project site for reconstruction, has been completed, according to the UNESCO authorities. The reconstruction works will be quite complex, as large parts of the structure’s arcades and its external walls have been damaged. Local contractors, under the supervision of skilled experts, have been chosen...

A family, who wants their identity protected, hid for three years two books containing Syriac Orthodox rituals. The head of the family recently entrusted them to a former Christian neighbour, with whom they have been friends for years. For Chaldean priest, many Muslims view Christians as brothers and are ready to risk their lives for a book.Mosul (AsiaNews) – A Muslim family hid for three years two ancient Syriac Orthodox books in Mosul during the city’s occupation by the Islamic State (IS) group to prevent their destruction at the latter’s hands. They did so, putting their own lives at risk....

Fr. Paul describes Christmas celebrations in the former stronghold of the Islamic State. Liturgies on the Nineveh plain "crowded and vibrant". A new Archbishop in Mosul to rebuild the community, on a pastoral and social level. Christians and Muslims against obscurantism, ask for "dialogue and modernity".Mosul (AsiaNews) - If 2014 was "the black year" with the flight of the bishop, priests and faithful following the rise of the Islamic State (IS, ex Isis), then 2019 will be the year "of our rebirth, of pastoral and social challenges, of the return of the refugees," says Fr. Paul Thabit Mekko, the head...

Months after Isis was forced out and tired of waiting for government action, volunteers have begun the urgent job of rebuilding Iraq’s citiesEven if we work every day for the next six months, we still won’t finish this job – we don’t have enough support or equipment,” says Muhammed Shaban, an officer of the Civil Defence Force in west Mosul, in the exhausted tone of someone who is unable to separate his life from his work. Shaban and his colleagues were recovering as many as 30 bodies a day in August last year, one month after the fighting ceased. More...

Iraqi pro-government fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units have found a mass grave in the country’s northern province of Nineveh containing the bodies of dozens of Christians believed to have been executed by Daesh Takfiri terrorists. An unnamed source from the Syriac Orthodox Church told Arabic-language al-Ghad Press news agency that the volunteer forces, commonly known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi, unearthed the mass grave along with security troops in Halila region near the village of Badush, located some 15 kilometers northwest of Mosul. The source added the mass grave contains the bodies of 40 Christian victims, noting that...

Candle lights, fragrant of incense and sounds of bells brought back to life in the Chaldean Church of St. Paul in Mosul (Almajmoua’ Althaqafyia suburb). The Eucharist, symbol of the New Testament for the salvation of all mankind is back again on the altar. All this happened on Sunday, 24 December 2017, when His Beatitude the Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael Sako celebrated the mass in participation of the Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni, the Archbishop of Mosul of Syriac Catholics, Putros Moshi and the Archbishop of Mosul of Syriac Orthodox, Nicademos Sharaf, in addition to some priests. Among them Fr....