Free Republic

JERUSALEM (AP) — When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dissolved his unwieldy coalition and called new elections last month, he appeared almost certain to be returned once more to office. But a new center-left alliance has surged past his Likud party in the polls, turning the March 17 contest into a toss-up. After joining forces with former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to create a joint grouping they call "The Zionist Camp," Labor Party leader Isaac Herzog is looking, to increasingly many Israelis, like a viable alternative to Netanyahu. He promises to reverse the country's slide toward international isolation and corrosive social...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem Character Studies From The Bible Moses New International Version (NIV) 4 Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” 2 Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” “A staff,” he replied. 3 The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.” Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the Lord said to him, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and...

The Obama administration is using taxpayer dollars to fund a radical anti-Israel group that aims to drive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office in March parliamentary elections. And the U.S.-based group receiving the U.S. government money, OneVoice International, in turn is working with V15, an “independent grassroots movement” in Israel, according to Ha’aretz. V15’s unofficial motto is said to be “anyone but Bibi,” a reference that includes the prime minister’s nickname. OneVoice has reportedly hired Obama campaign aides such as Jeremy Bird of political consulting powerhouse 270 Strategies to take on Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Bird was national field director...

Following are excerpts from an interview with Abu Imad Al-Rifai, Palestinian Islamic Jihad Representative in Lebanon, which aired on Al-Jadeed/New TV on January 19, 2015: Abu Imad Al-Rifai: When the Syrians see that there is a war between Israel and the [Syrian] regime, a large part of the opposition will stand alongside the regime, and fight the Israeli enemy. […] We are part of the resistance, and we will be at the middle of the fighting with the Israeli enemy if it breaks out. Within 72 hours, half of the Galilee will have fallen into the hands of the resistance,...

U.S. President Barack Obama told CNN he will not meet with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in March because his trip to Washington comes too close to Israel's upcoming elections. "I'm declining to meet with him simply because our general policy is, we don't meet with any world leader two weeks before their election," Obama told Fareed Zakaria in an interview which will air Sunday and of which excerpts were released Wednesday. "I think that's inappropriate, and that's true with some of our closest allies," he added. The President said the United States and Britain had to quickly to put...

A video uploaded to YouTube appears to show a large Hezbollah Brigades convoy transporting weapons, troops, and armored vehicles to the front to fight the Islamic State. Several American-made military vehicles, including an M1 Abrams tank, M113 armored personnel carriers, Humvees, and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles (MRAP), as well as Iranian-made Safir 4x4s and technicals (armed pickup trucks) are in the convoy. The Hezbollah Brigades is US-designated foreign terrorist organization that has been involved in killing American soldiers in Iraq. At one point in the video, a transport truck is shown carrying an M1 Abrams tank. The Hezbollah Brigades' flag...

JERUSALEM — Two Israeli soldiers were killed and seven wounded in a missile attack Wednesday as they drove in a disputed zone along the Lebanese border, Israel said, in the most serious flare-up in the area in years. Hezbollah claimed responsibility. The attack raised the risk of a further escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that is one of Israel’s most tenacious enemies. The two sides lobbed rockets and artillery at each other for hours afterward. Hezbollah, which had vowed to avenge a deadly Israeli strike on its fighters earlier this month, said in a statement that...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas on Saturday called President Bush an enemy of Islam because the U.S. government froze the assets of Hamas leaders in response to a suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem. Speaking to Dubai-based Al-Arabiya TV, Abdel Aziz Rantisi called the action "a theft of Muslim money by the Americans" and said the frozen money doesn't belong to Hamas. "Hamas does not have any money in the U.S., Europe or even in the Arab states. President Bush has become Islam's biggest enemy," Rantisi said in the interview. On...

....TheBlaze decided to speak with experts at some of America’s leading universities. One academic, a professor at Duke University, provided a candid assessment, but asked to remain off-the-record. Based on the images and analysis present in the WND report, he said that the script present on Obama’s ring appears to be Arabic and that it does, indeed, include the first portion of the shahada. “I think this is accurate,” he said of the description surrounding the ring.

WND’s report that Arabic-language and Islamic experts claim the gold band Obama has been wearing on his wedding-ring finger for more than 30 years is adorned with the first part of the Islamic declaration of faith naturally was met with skepticism in some circles, but Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze.com news service published a report citing a Duke professor who confirmed the WND experts’ assessment. Earlier today, before it published the report, four members of The Blaze editorial team, including Editor-in-Chief Scott Baker, cautiously discussed the Obama ring story in their “Blazecast Rewind” Internet broadcast, without mentioning WND. Baker, noting he had...

NEW YORK – As a student at Harvard Law School, then-bachelor Barack Obama’s practice of wearing a gold band on his wedding-ring finger puzzled his colleagues. Now, newly published photographs of Obama from the 1980s show that the ring Obama wore on his wedding-ring finger as an unmarried student is the same ring Michelle Robinson put on his finger at the couple’s wedding ceremony in 1992. Moreover, according to Arabic-language and Islamic experts, the ring Obama has been wearing for more than 30 years is adorned with the first part of the Islamic declaration of faith, the Shahada: “There is...

NEW YORK – As a student at Harvard Law School, then-bachelor Barack Obama’s practice of wearing a gold band on his wedding-ring finger puzzled his colleagues. Now, newly published photographs of Obama from the 1980s show that the ring Obama wore on his wedding-ring finger as an unmarried student is the same ring Michelle Robinson put on his finger at the couple’s wedding ceremony in 1992. Moreover, according to Arabic-language and Islamic experts, the ring Obama has been wearing for more than 30 years is adorned with the first part of the Islamic declaration of faith, the Shahada: “There is...

NEW YORK – As a student at Harvard Law School, then-bachelor Barack Obama’s practice of wearing a gold band on his wedding-ring finger puzzled his colleagues. WND EXCLUSIVE Now, newly published photographs of Obama from the 1980s show that the ring Obama wore on his wedding-ring finger as an unmarried student is the same ring Michelle Robinson put on his finger at the couple’s wedding ceremony in 1992. Moreover, according to Arabic-language and Islamic experts, the ring Obama has been wearing for more than 30 years is adorned with the first part of the Islamic declaration of faith, the Shahada:...

Law students in 1990 also poked fun at plan to run for Oval OfficeA publication produced by Harvard law students in 1990 confirms Barack Obama wore a ring on his wedding-ring finger before he married Michelle in 1992. A reference to Obama wearing a wedding ring appears in an annual satirical edition of the “Harvard Law Revue,” published for the 130th anniversary banquet of Harvard Law School. WND reported last week that photographs of Obama at Occidental College in Los Angeles and in New York City in the years when he was supposed to have attended Columbia University show him...

In his definitive 2010 biography of Barack Obama, "The Bridge," New Yorker editor David Remnick features a photograph of a dapper young Barack Obama sitting between his grandparents on a Central Park bench. The bench is real. The grandparents are real. The wall behind them is real. Barack Obama is not. He has been conspicuously photoshopped in. Who did this and why remains as much a mystery as Obama's extended stay in New York. In late October 2007, the New York Times ran a telling article on Barack Obama headlined, "Obama's Account of New York Years Often Differs From What...

Sometimes, a White House press conference can be a chance for a president to take some weight off his shoulders ... but weight off his fingers? Eagle-eyed reporters noticed that President Barack Obama wasn't sporting his wedding ring during Friday's White House press conference. "big to-do over potus not wearing his wedding ring today," Tweeted The Hill's Sam Youngman, who was at the presser. Obama's wedding band is "an intricate gold design from Indonesia, where he had lived as a boy," the New York Times reported in 2009. Michelle will probably be okay with it; after all, she once left...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent a warning to the government of Lebanon and to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from whose territories Wednesday's attack and Tuesday's rocket fire on the Golan Heights were launched. "The government of Lebanon and the Assad regime share responsibility for the consequences of attacks originating in their territory against the state of Israel," he said.

Israel's military says two of its soldiers were killed and another seven were wounded in a Hezbollah strike Wednesday on an army convoy near the Lebanese border. Israel's military responded to the anti-tank missile strike on the convoy with aerial and ground attacks on Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. Lebanese security officials told the Associated Press that Israel fired 25 shells across the border. The Israeli Defense Forces said that residents of the area had been ordered to remain in their homes. The Lebanese terror group Hezbollah earlier claimed responsibility for the attack and said it destroyed a number of Israeli...

In the past several months, many of the Syrian rebel groups previously favored by the CIA have had their money and supplies cut off or substantially reduced, even as President Obama touted the strategic importance of American support for the rebels in his State of the Union address. The once-favored fighters are operating under a pall of confusion. In some cases, they were not even informed that money would stop flowing. In others, aid was reduced due to poor battlefield performance, compounding already miserable morale on the ground.

Media Yawn at Obama and Biden Snubbing Auschwitz Anniversary; Mocked Cheney’s Appearance in 2005 By Curtis Houck | January 28, 2015 Tuesday marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and, naturally, the event attracted plenty of media coverage. In addition to each of the three major networks devoting segments to it on their evening newscasts, the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post and published stories on the topic. Over on cable, CNN covered it multiple times throughout the day for a total of 10 minutes and 27 seconds worth of airtime. At the other...