Free Republic

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.” …

Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.(Isaiah 53:1-3)We have been looking at the 4th Servant Song of Isaiah,...

An Israeli hacker team published on Tuesday images and personal details of members of the Anonymous hacker collective who participated in the OpIsrael attack against Israeli sites earlier this week, Israel’s Channel 2 reported. Israeli Elite Force gained access to the computers of 16 Anonymous members and was able to capture screenshots and photos of the anti-Israel hackers with their own webcams. The Israeli team published the information in a Dropbox document via their Facebook page, saying, “Anonymous, next time do not mess with us.” The file includes the names of the attackers, their countries of origin, and usernames and...

An aerial view of the Old City of Jerusalem. An organization of Israeli temples is preparing priests for the the reconstruction of the city's historic third temple. On April 10, at 5 p.m., hundreds of Jews will gather at the Maimonides rabbinical institution plaza in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood in Jerusalem and start learning the Jewish laws of Passover. Rabbis and experts, including Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, the head of the Temple Institute in the Old City of Jerusalem, the leading body preparing for the establishment of the third temple, will teach the audience the laws of the Passover sacrifice. Alongside Ariel, the ritual...

US officials expressed anger over Israel's policy of "non-interference" with the Russian annexation of the Crimea; Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported. A US official told the paper that the White House was disappointed with Israel's absence from the UN General Assembly meeting two weeks ago to vote on condemning Russia's military invasion of the Crimea and call to maintain Ukraine's territorial integrity. "We have been consulting closely on Ukraine not only with our partners and allies around the world. Obviously we are looking to the entire international community to condemn Russia's actions and to support Ukraine, so we were surprised to...

Being  respectful toward the sensitivities of Islamists should be easy for the "legitimate" media. They are normally more than respectful toward the sensitivities of the Obama Administration.An April 15th post by Jonathan Turley argues, gently, against catering excessively to Islamic sensitivities. Lawrence Pintak, dean of the Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, has written a controversial guide for journalists on how to cover stories without insulting Muslims. “Islam for Journalists” is an effort to educate reporters on the sensitivities of Muslims to avoid triggering protests or violence. Pintak writes that “Across the Muslim world extremists are wielding their swords with grisly effect, but the pen ....

In a recent report, NGO Monitor revealed that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a non-profit funded largely by the U.S. Congress (i.e. American taxpayers), gave approximately $232,000 to the Holy Land Trust (HLT) between 2006 and 2012.  A search of NED’s website confirms that it has given multiple grants to the organization. HLT is a Bethlehem-based “peacemaking” organization whose leader, Sami Awad, has stated publicly that his organization has given training in non-violence to Hamas and other militant groups in Palestinian society. He did it in a speech he gave at the National Leadership Conference for the Vinyard Church in Galveston,...

Anders Behring Breivik is a conservative Christian who enjoys classical music and the video game World of Warcraft. Breivik has been named by several Norwegian media outlets as the suspected shooter at a youth camp in Oslo, where 10 people were killed Friday and he may be linked to a bombing near the prime minister's residence that killed seven others. On his Facebook page, which appears to only have been started July 17, Breivik mostly posted music videos and said his interests include hunting and bodybuilding. Under education, Breivik wrote he studied independently, noting he has "approximately 14,500 hours of...

Could there be a link between Norway-based LTTE operatives and Anders Behring Breivik, who bombed the Norwegian government headquarters in Oslo and wiped out a youth group on a nearby island on July 22 killing over 80 civilians? Responding to a query by The Island, informed sources said that the Norwegian could have had a link with the LTTEactivists in Norway. Breivik, in his 1,518 manifesto, which was released hours before he carried out the massacre, said had felt that Europe should follow the LTTE example of expelling the Muslims from Sri Lanka. He had interpreted the expulsion of Muslims...

The man allegedly behind Norway's devastating terror attacks, Anders Behring Breivik, is now under arrest. And he should count himself lucky for—if entirely undeserving of—a penal system in that country that is among the cushiest in the world. There's no capital punishment, and the longest jail term allowed is 21 years (a caveat: if a prisoner is deemed to still be a threat, his sentence can be extended in five-year blocks indefinitely, though it's highly unlikely, according to Norwegian officials). In Norway, rehabilitation is the guiding principle, not punishment—a somewhat difficult notion to swallow given the gravity and callousness of...

The 32-year-old Norwegian man arrested for gunning down children on the holiday island of Utoya has been named locally as Anders Behring Breivik. Described as 6ft tall and blond, he is reported to have arrived on the island of Utoya and opened fire after beckoning several young people over in his native Norwegian tongue. Reports suggest he was also seen loitering around the site of the bomb blast in Oslo two hours before the island incident. More than 30 are believed to have been killed - seven in Oslo and between 25 to 30 on Utoya Island, 50 miles north...

April 28, 2006Cornell study of ancient volcano, seeds and tree rings, suggests rewriting Late Bronze Age Mediterranean history By Alex Kwan Separated in history by 100 years, the seafaring Minoans of Crete and the mercantile Canaanites of northern Egypt and the Levant (a large area of the Middle East) at the eastern end of the Mediterranean were never considered trading partners at the start of the Late Bronze Age. Until now. Trenchmaster Vronwy Hankey and foreman Antonis Zidianakis excavate storage jars from the Minoan settlement Myrtos-Pyrgos. The jars were analyzed in the Cornell study using radiocarbon analyses. Cultural links between...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Trees of The Bible Judges 9 Jotham's Parable New International Version (NIV) 9 Abimelek son of Jerub-Baal went to his mother’s brothers in Shechem and said to them and to all his mother’s clan, 2 “Ask all the citizens of Shechem, ‘Which is better for you: to have all seventy of Jerub-Baal’s sons rule over you, or just one man?’ Remember, I am your flesh and blood.” 3 When the brothers repeated all this to the citizens of Shechem, they were inclined to follow Abimelek, for they said, “He is related to us.” 4 They gave...

A retired Egyptian general has accused a historic monastery of being a threat to national security, and a Salafist weekly newspaper alleged that the monastery collaborates with Israeli intelligence officials, according to the Egyptian weekly Watani and the Fides news agency. Saint Catherine’s Monastery, now Eastern Orthodox, was built by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century and is located at the foot of Mount Sinai. It stands accused of being a beachhead of Greece and the European Union on Egyptian territory. “It is weird that our monks, and there are no more than 37 of us, would be accused...

A retired army general says he has filed a court case pushing for Egypt's historic Saint Catherine's Monastery to be demolished and its Greek monks deported on the grounds that they pose a threat to national security. In May 2012, Ahmed Ragai Attiya obtained 71 administrative orders regarding the demolition of the monastery's multiple churches, monk cells, gardens and other places of interest on the grounds, which he claims were all built in 2006 and thus not historic, according to Ihab Ramzy, the monastery's lawyer. ... In the same ONTV interview, Attiya levelled a host of accusations against the monastery's...

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."

Sunday, April 13, 2014 The Paranoid Party Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog The Democrat may no longer believe in God, the Constitution or even motherhood and apple pie, but he devoutly believes with all the faith of a 9/11 Truther in the impermeability of steel and of a Neo-Nazi in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that somewhere out there Republicans are sitting in a sealed room and plotting to bring back the 50s. And if not the 50s, then at least the early 60s. The left accuses the right of being deeply paranoid. Meanwhile...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Trees of The Bible 1 Kings 9:11 The Building of The Temple New International Version (NIV) 11 King Solomon gave twenty towns in Galilee to Hiram king of Tyre, because Hiram had supplied him with all the cedar and juniper and gold he wanted.

Far be it from me to defend Putin’s annexation of Crimea, which had been part of another country, the Ukraine. And most of reasons Putin and his gang trot out in defence of the heist is hogwash. But the Americans brought this on themselves and not just Obama, the most incompetent president in the history of that country, and as far as foreign policy goes, the most untrustworthy Israel should pay attention, not so much to Russia, but to the Americans, because they are stuck in our craw as well. When the Soviet Union fell, the Ukraine was a nuclear...

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. …