Free Republic

New details have emerged about the booby-trapped clinic explosion that killed three IDF Maglan unit soldiers in Gaza earlier this week - Sergeant First Class Matan Gottlieb, 21, from Rishon LeZion; Sergeant First Class Omar Chai, 21, from Savion; and Sergeant First Class Guy Algranati, 20, of Tel Aviv, hy"d. Over eighty kilograms of explosives were built into the UN-funded hospital's walls themselves, it was cleared for publication Thursday - revealing that the clinic itself was built to mask, and perform, potential acts of terror on the IDF. Moreover, the clinic was built over tens of terror tunnels, according to...

.... The assertion that Israel has no regard for the lives of Gazan citizens is utterly false. Israel continues to supply electricity and water to Gaza even during this unfortunate conflict. Since the beginning of the current conflict, 1248 trucks entered Gaza from Israel, 4.44 million liters of diesel were delivered for the power station, and 48 infrastructural repairs were carried out. On July 27, 170 trucks were scheduled to enter but the crossing was forced to close at 14:00 because of Hamas activity in the area. The 94 trucks that entered delivered, among other thing, 1165 tons of food,...

If you want to judge a nation, look at how it treats its most vulnerable civilians. Hospitals are a good place to start. Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, is housed in a converted British army barracks. Some 126 miles north is Israel’s Ziv Medical Center in Zefat. Hamas, which controls Gaza, is using the civilian population as human shields. The terrorist group has placed its missiles in schools and mosques and, even more deplorably, burrowed its command center underneath the al-Shifa hospital. Hamas‘ activities are taking place in plain sight. Just two weeks ago, The Washington Post described al-Shifa...

Hamas killed hundreds of children in the construction of its extensive tunnel network, built partly to carry out attacks on children across the Gaza border in Israel. That report--confirmed by Hamas itself--emerged in 2012, not from the Israeli government, but the sympathetic Journal of Palestine Studies, in an article that otherwise celebrated the secret tunnel system as a symbol of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli "siege" of the Gaza Strip. The article, "Gaza's Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel's Siege," was published in the Summer 2012 edition of the Journal by Nicholas Pelham, who writes for the Economist and...

This is an Israeli online paper. My translation: Investigation into the incident yesterday which killed three elite Maglan fighters shows that the structure which collapsed on the soldiers was a UN clinic. It further shows that Hamas hid in the wall 12 barrels of explosives and each weighed 80 kilograms. . . . Findings of the investigation suggest that before entering the clinic Maglan forces shot a shell inside the building out of concern that it was booby-trapped. Then, special Maglan forces burst in along with fighters from the Bomb Squad, who have been operating since the beginning of operation...

Asked by a convert to distill the Torah’s essence, Rabbi Hillel — Judaism’s great sage — taught, “What is hateful unto you, do not do unto your neighbor.” Like the Golden Rule that roots most ethical traditions, Hillel’s first-century precept was aimed at inspiring a better society, one that brought order, dignity and peace to an otherwise cruel and warring world. That too much of the world still inhabits a darker moral universe — refusing to Think Again about its preference for violence, hate and death — is perhaps humanity’s greatest challenge. As Nazi-era refugee Albert Einstein understood, defending our...

There is not much that is simple about the Arab–Israeli conflict, but there is one thing that is certain: The question of how many Palestinian women and children are going to die in Gaza is not going to be decided by the Israelis — it is going to be decided by Hamas. The Jews mean to live, Hamas means to exterminate them, and there will be war until Hamas and its allies either weary of it or win it and the last Israeli Jew is dead or exiled. It is Hamas, not the Israelis, that stashes rockets and soldiers in...

As the battle with terrorist groups in Gaza continues to rage, IDF forces have taken the fight to Hamas in its vast network of underground tunnels, many of which lead into Israeli territory for attacks against both military and civilian targets. On Thursday, the military released footage from an underground gun battle, in which soldiers from the IDF's Givati Brigade killed at least one terrorist. In the video - which is subtitled in Hebrew only - a commander can be heard alerting his men to a terrorist nearby: "There was a guy just here, that terrorist, who entered between us...

Though glossed over in major media reporting on the Israel-Gaza confrontation, the Hamas conflict with the Jewish State remains deeply ideological. Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV broadcast a sermon Friday reaffirming the Hamas ideology that according to Islam, it is Muslim destiny to exterminate the Jews.

Customs officials at southern Israel’s Ashdod port discovered hundreds of ball-bearings and cement mixers in a Turkish shipment of “humanitarian aid” to Gaza on Wednesday, raising fears the cargo could have been used by Hamas to support its ongoing war against Israel, according to Channel Two. While both items have civilian uses, both have played a central role building Hamas’s rocket arsenal and its vast network of “terror tunnels” into Israel. Terrorists in Gaza regularly use ball-bearings to maximize the lethality of locally-made, short-range Qassam rockets. Unlike other, more powerful long-range rockets and military-grade mortar shells smuggled into Gaza from...

Though Hamas started the latest round of conflict with Israel, it seems to have calculated--wrongly--that Israel would not launch a ground invasion. Members of the Hamas terrorist organization are reportedly so desperate for food after three-and-a-half weeks of war with Israel that they are seizing United Nations food coupons to keep their members fed--and to prevent them from surrendering to Israeli soldiers out of sheer hunger.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani lashed out at Israel in vitriolic terms on Wednesday, referring to Israel as a “festering Zionist tumor.”Rouhani, who has been championed by Western media as a moderate reformer who could change Iran’s extremist ways, appears to be adopting a violent tone similar to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has advocated for the complete destruction of Israel in recent days.“Today, this festering Zionist tumor has opened once again and has turned the land of olives into destruction and blood and littered the land with the body parts of Palestinian children,” Rouhani was quoted as saying in a...

CAIRO: Battling Palestinian militants in Gaza two years ago, Israel found itself pressed from all sides by unfriendly Arab neighbors to end the fighting. Not this time. After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. That, in turn, may have contributed to the failure of the antagonists to reach a negotiated ceasefire even after more than...

Israelis applying for visas at the United States Embassy have not received them since July 11. The American embassy has stopped issuing ordinary visas and cut back on ongoing services to American citizens due to staff reductions because of the security situation.

Jul. 30, 2014 - 6:46 - Mosab Hassan Yousef on why it's time to stop the organization

Are you okay, Marc? I have a hankie you can use to wipe away that rolling teardrop that Alan Dershowitz possibly caused during your heated debate on Israel and Gaza during CNN Tonight on Monday. The weird thing is that Marc Lamont Hill was actually crying over Israel (GASP!) defending itself against both rocket attacks and secret tunnels built from Gaza into Israel for the purpose of killing and kidnapping. A video was posted by Soopermexican showing Hill's tear of absurdly misplaced compassion (or was it frustration from arguiing with Dershowitz?) rolling down his cheek.

The Israeli government has agreed to a temporary humanitarian ceasefire starting at 15:00 today (Wednesday). "The IDF (army) has authorized a temporary window in the Gaza Strip. The window will commence today between 15:00-19:00 (1200 - 1600 GMT)," it said. But the lull would not apply in areas where ground troops were "currently operating", it said. The four-hour ceasefire was declared as the Security Cabinet meets at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv to discuss whether to expand or end Operation Protective Edge, after 23 days of fighting in Gaza. It comes as the IDF has stepped up its operations against...

Hamas has urged Hezbollah to join the fight against Israel, according to multiple sources, after Israel's self-defense operation against the terror organization in Gaza has expanded further. “We hope the Lebanese front will open and together we will fight against this formation [Israel],” deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau Mousa Abu Marzouk told Russian news agency RIA Novosti. “There’s no arguing that Lebanese resistance could mean a lot,” Abu Marzouk stressed. The remarks surface just minutes after Hamas rejected yet another humanitarian ceasefire from Israel, which had expanded its operation in Gaza earlier Wednesday. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has expressed...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Sunday that she knows how difficult it is "to be the leader of a relatively small country." Come again? I know I’m relatively young, but I think I would have remembered President or Prime Minister or Queen Hillary. Clinton made the comments on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" while discussing the conflict between Israel and Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu. “I’ve known Bibi a long time and I have a very good relationship with him, in part because we can yell at each other – and we do,” Clinton said. “And...

Police arrested a second suspect on Wednesday in connection with an attempted arson attack in which Molotov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue in western Germany. Another man who said he was Palestinian has denied involvement. Prosecutors in Wuppertal said they had arrested a 19-year-old from Syria on Wednesday in connection with the Molotov cocktail attack on the city's Bergische synagogue in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Police believe three young men threw a number of burning bottles into the synagogue entrance-way in an apparent attempt to burn it down. Officers found broken bottles on the ground at the...