Free Republic

JERUSALEM -- Egypt is now on the front lines of the battle against ISIS, and some of its leaders are making new accusations about the Obama administration's war on terror. They accuse the United States of playing a double game, fighting terrorists abroad while meeting with them at home. A recent White House meeting between President Barack Obama and Muslim leaders sent shockwaves through the Middle East, specifically in Israel and Egypt. The cause of the uproar: the group included leaders with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. "We just don't understand because we know the history of the Muslim Brothers,"...

Thursday, March 26, 2015 Obama’s Two State Tantrum Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Obama’s two terms showed us that he was a sore winner. Israel’s election showed us that he is even more of sore loser. Ever since Netanyahu survived an election that he was supposed to lose, Obama has been throwing a floor-pounding, siren-shrieking and high-kicking tantrum over the Jewish State. Its latest kick and shriek had White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough sidling into the toxic atmosphere at the D.C. conference for the anti-Israel lobby J-Street to berate Netanyahu. In attendance at the...

Mounting chaos in the region puts the administration on the defensive. Barack Obama faces a slew of Middle East crises that some call the worst in a generation, as new chaos from Yemen to Iraq — along with deteriorating U.S.-Israeli relations — is confounding the president’s efforts to stabilize the region and strike a nuclear deal with Iran. The meltdown has Obama officials defending their management of a region that some call impossible to control, even as critics say U.S. policies there are partly to blame for the spreading anarchy. “If there’s one lesson this administration has learned, from President...

Our peevish, petulant, and impetuous president has struck again: In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel’s nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent. But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel’s nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in great depth. The...

<p>Travel schedules of Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif suggest that the parties may gather for a “signing” ceremony on Sunday, March 29 in Lausanne, Switzerland.</p> <p>Omri Ceren, press director at The Israel Project, told reporters via email from Switzerland: “Rumors are swirling about a deal as early as Sunday the 29th: Lavrov is slated to fly in for the 27th-29th, Kerry is supposed to be in Boston on the 30th, and the Iranians are talking about where they want to move the talks for the signing ceremony.”</p>

LAUSSANE, Switzerland—The Obama administration is giving in to Iranian demands about the scope of its nuclear program as negotiators work to finalize a framework agreement in the coming days, according to sources familiar with the administration’s position in the negotiations. U.S. negotiators are said to have given up ground on demands that Iran be forced to disclose the full range of its nuclear activities at the outset of a nuclear deal, a concession experts say would gut the verification the Obama administration has vowed would stand as the crux of a deal with Iran. Until recently, the Obama administration had...

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.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) delivered a pitch-perfect trolling lesson to the Senate on Wednesday, filing an amendment calling to defund "the purchase of stationary [sic] or electronic devices for the purpose of members of Congress or congressional staff communicating with foreign governments and undermining the role of the President as Head of State in international nuclear negotiations on behalf of the United States." In other words, Stabenow wants to defund Tom Cotton letters.

photo WikiMedia Commons [gallery]

he Clinton campaign has issued a list of words and terms to the Drive-By Media in the form of a threatening e-mail to a New York Times infobabe telling them, "These are the words you cannot use to describe Mrs. Clinton." One word that's not on the list is "cankles." I guess everybody in the media is free to use the word "cankles." ... [snip]Here are the words that the Hillary Clinton campaign sent out to the New York Times reporter Amy Chozick is telling her she can't use. "Polarizing." You may not use the word "polarizing" to describe Mrs....

As reported first thing today, while the initial phase of the military campaign against Yemen has been taking place for the past 18 hours and been exclusively one of airborne assaults by forces of the "Decisive Storm" coalition, Saudi hinted at what is coming next following reports that it had built up a massive 150,000 troop deployment on the border with Yemen. And as expected, moments ago AP reported that Egyptian military and security officials told The Associated Press that the military intervention will go further, with a ground assault into Yemen by Egyptian, Saudi and other forces, planned once...

Iran demanded an immediate halt to Saudi-led military operations in Yemen on Thursday and said it would make all necessary efforts to control the crisis there, Iranian news agencies reported. Warplanes from Saudi Arabia and Arab allies on Thursday struck Iran-allied Houthi forces fighting to oust the country's Western-backed president. Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV reported a ground offensive with troops from other Muslim states was being prepared.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states launched airstrikes against rebel forces in Yemen’s capital and across the country in defense of what Riyadh called the nation’s legitimate government. The attacks began Thursday morning, hours after Yemen’s president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, fled the southern port city of Aden by boat when Iranian-backed Houthi militants closed in. The decision by Saudi Arabia and the region’s Sunni monarchies to intervene on Mr. Hadi’s behalf raises the stakes in their rivalry with predominantly Shiite Iran, which has raged in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the region. The raids also risked further inflaming sectarian...

Tehran would be allowed to maintain Fordo facility, as long as it allows inspection and doesn’t pursue an atomic bomb. LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — The United States is considering letting Tehran run hundreds of centrifuges at a once-secret, fortified underground bunker in exchange for limits on centrifuge work and research and development at other sites, officials have told The Associated Press. The trade-off would allow Iran to run several hundred of the devices at its Fordo facility, although the Iranians would not be allowed to do work that could lead to an atomic bomb and the site would be subject...

The outgoing UN Middle East envoy said in his last report Thursday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's new coalition government must freeze Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria for "peace." The Jewish building threatens to "kill the very possibility of reaching peace," Middle East coordinator for the UN Security Council Robert Serry said. "Illegal settlement activity cannot be reconciled with the objective of a negotiated two-state solution and may kill the very possibility of reaching peace on the paradigm of two states for two peoples," Serry said. The envoy said he was "frankly concerned" by Netanyahu's pre-election remarks...

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,...

Democratic assemblyman slams Obama who is 'desperate' for a foreign policy accomplishment at Israel's expense. Arutz Sheva got the chance to speak with Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-NY) about the fallout between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which historians have assessed as being "unprecedented." Hinting at the Senate probe investigating whether Obama funded the V15 campaign against Netanyahu, Hikind remarked that Obama "worked very very hard" to try and prevent Netanyahu from succeeding - which in the end he did, outpacing Labor by 30 seats to 24. The Democratic assemblyman admitted "I don't understand Obama, you know...

Jerusalem is worried by the Iran-backed Houthi takeover of Aden, but Saudi Arabia is burning with anger, and not at Tehran It’s little surprise the group got Jerusalem’s attention. In almost every demonstration held by Houthis in recent months, the slogans heard may as well have been taken straight out of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran: “Death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam.” The Houthi Zaidiyyahs belong to a Shia school of Islamic thought which is distinct from the beliefs held by Shiites in Iran, but they act in accordance with the regime in...

Binyamin Netanyahu is once again Finance Minister - thanks to none other than Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef. But according to the Kikar Shabbat web site, the re-appointment of Netanyahu to the post was prompted by phone calls to cabinet members by none other than Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef – who was concerned that, without a Finance Minister, the sale of leaven (chametz) before the upcoming Passover holiday would be nullified. While many Jews consider the personal or commercial sale of chametz, the leavened products from bread to beer that are forbidden on Passover, to be a mere “technicality,”...

Arab terrorist who murdered 25-year-old from Tekoa gets 2 life sentences, not death as demanded by family; 'this policy must change.' The military court in Ofer Prison north of Jerusalem on Thursday sentenced the Arab terrorist who murdered 25-year-old Dalia Lemkos of Tekoa last November to two life sentences, rejecting the family's request for the death penalty. The terrorist, Maher Al-Hashalmoun of Hevron, ran over Lemkos at a bus stop outside Alon Shvut in the Gush Etzion region of Judea before getting out of his car and stabbing her to death. He then attacked two other Israelis with the same...