Free Republic

A spokesman for the Iranian government on Tuesday warned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that U.S. President Donald Trump could nullify any nuclear deal with North Korea, reported The Associated Press. The semi-official Fars news agency quoted Mohammad Bagher Nobakht as saying, "We are facing a man who revokes his signature while abroad." Nobakht's remarks came following the historic summit in Singapore between Trump and Kim. Even before the summit began, Iran urged North Korea to be cautious, with a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry saying Pyongyang should enter the gathering with “awareness” because the United States has a...

Embattled weekend host singled out lavish bat mitzvahs and suggests the US had no stake in the terrorist threat from Iran NEW YORK (JTA) — Embattled MSNBC host Joy Reid published posts on her now-deleted blog mocking a lavish bat mitzvah, criticizing the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and suggesting the US had no stake in the terrorist threat from Iran. The 2006 posts on The Reid Report criticizing bar and bat mitzvah celebrations and addressing Iran were first reported by The Daily Caller. JTA found additional posts critical of Sharon and the media coverage of Jews and Israel....

China’s activities in the South China Sea have proven to be one of the most contentious geopolitical issues of the Trump Presidency. Leading up to a successful summit in Singapore between President Trump and North Korean leader Chairman Kim Jong Un, new data released by Israeli Private Intelligence Firm ImageSat shows that China removed anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles from Woody Island, in the South China Sea last week. Woody Island, also referred to as Yongxiang Island, is the largest of the Paracel Islands claimed by China in the South China Sea. In recent years, China has taken major steps to...

Inland lake where Christians believe Jesus walked on water has reached its lowest level in a century The shrinking Sea of Galilee, the inland lake where Christians believe Jesus walked on water, is to be topped up with desalinated seawater. A plan given Israeli cabinet approval will pump 100 million cubic metres of water annually by 2022 into the lake in the Galilee region, said Yechezkel Lifshitz, from the country’s energy and water ministry. In 2017 Israel’s water authority said the sea, hit by years of drought, had reached its lowest level in a century. Situated 200 metres (656ft) below...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Shared Meal 
 (New Testament) Matthew 14 John the Baptist Beheaded 14 At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the reports about Jesus, 2 and he said to his attendants, “This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead! That is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” 3 Now Herod had arrested John and bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, 4 for John had been saying to him: “It is not lawful for you to have her.” 5 Herod wanted to kill John, but he...

Heavy fighting in Yemen between pro-government forces and Shiite rebels has killed more than 600 people on both sides in recent days, security officials said Monday. A charity said meanwhile that an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition had destroyed a new cholera clinic in the country's north. Government forces, backed by the Saudi-led coalition, have been advancing along the western coast in recent weeks as they battle the Iran-allied rebels, known as Houthis. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media. Witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals,...

Prince William will sit down for talks with the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president during his historic visit to the Middle East. William will also visit Jordan, and the capital Amman where his wife the Duchess of Cambridge lived from May 1984 until September 1986. 'The non-political nature of His Royal Highness's role – in common with all Royal visits overseas –allows a spotlight to be brought to bear on the people of the region: their cultures, their young people, their aspirations, and their experiences.' The palace said his 'goal' is to meet as 'many people from as...

Israeli Military Industries Systems, or IMI Systems, in cooperation with Israel Aerospace Industries, abbreviated IAI, is close to finishing development of a new air-launched, precision-guided, high-speed weapon called Rampage that can hit targets more than 90 miles away. The announcement comes as Israel steps up its cross-border campaign against Iran and its interests in neighboring Syria, which has seen an increasing emphasis on stand-off capabilities given the complex air defense environment in that country, but the weapon could also be especially attractive to a number of foreign military forces. The two Israeli state-run companies officially unveiled the new weapon in...

(News, Comment, Analysis) "What will Israel's reaction to this be? How effective will Syrian air defenses be against a reaction? What will Russia's reaction be to Israeli attacks on its ally's forces?" Col. Pat Lang on his "Sic Semper Tyrannis" blog 6/10/2018 The word from Syria is that the Assad regime is planning their "largest offensive of the war" to launch this week. The report published by "Almasdar News" Saturday June 9th says the big offensive expected in southwestern Syria against the jihadists is about to kick off. The US State Department issued a statement May 25th warning the Syrian...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Shared Meal 
 (New Testament) Matthew 12 Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath 12 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. 2 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, “Look! Your disciples are doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath.” 3 He answered, “Haven’t you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread—which was not lawful...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu released a video Sunday in which made an "unprecedented offer" to the Iranian people to help solve Iran's water crisis by creating a Farsi website with detailed plans on Israeli water conservation technologies and strategies. "The Iranian people are victims of a cruel and tyrannical regime that denies them vital water," Netanyahu stated. "Israel stands with the people of Iran, and that is why I want to help save countless Iranian lives." He noted that "Iran's meteorological organization says that nearly 96% of Iran suffers from some level of drought" and that Iran;s Environmental Minister had...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday warned Syrian President Bashar Assad was “no longer immune” from retaliation, while declaring the Iran nuclear deal is over after Washington ditched the accord. “He is no longer immune, his regime is no longer immune. If he fires at us, as we’ve just demonstrated, we will destroy his forces." “Syria has to understand that Israel will not tolerate the Iranian military entrenchment in Syria against Israel,” Netanyahu added. “The consequences are not merely to the Iranian forces there but to the Assad regime as well,” he said, adding: “I think it’s something that he...

An Israeli air strike on the Gaza Strip destroyed a Hamas tunnel giving frogmen unseen access to the sea from their base, the Israeli army said Sunday. Army spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters that the tunnel, the first of its kind discovered by Israeli intelligence, was hit on June 3 in the north of the strip as Israeli aircraft pounded over a dozen militant targets in Gaza. He said it was probable there were more like it not yet located by Israel.“We continue to monitor using all our operational, technical and intelligence capabilities that we have at our disposal,” he...

This afternoon, Donald Trump made an announcement regarding the future of the Iran nuclear deal. Ahead of a self-imposed May 12th deadline, the President announced that he will not be waiving the sanctions. This decision places the United States in violation of the deal. But while it may not kill the JCPOA completely – European states and Iran could decide whether to keep some version of the deal going without the United States – it will start a period of profound uncertainty about the future of U.S-Iranian relations. In some ways, this uncertainty is the most concerning thing about the...

Israeli and American Jews are deeply divided on issues related to President Trump, according to a new poll from the American Jewish Committee (AJC). More than three-quarters (77 percent) of Israeli Jews surveyed said they approved of U.S.-Israeli relations under Trump, while only 34 percent of American Jews said they felt the same way. Over half — 57 percent — of American Jews said they disapproved of Trump's handling of U.S.-Israeli relations, while just 10 percent of Israeli Jews said the same. The poll also revealed a significant split between Israeli and U.S. Jews on the U.S. embassy's move to...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Shared Meal 
 (New Testament) Matthew 10 Jesus Sends Out the Twelve 10 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. 2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. 5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the...

Germany was voted onto the United Nations Security Council for the sixth time on Friday, after it secured a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly. The place was effectively guaranteed going into the vote: Germany and Belgium ran unopposed for the two spots in the Western European and Others category. Israel was initially also in the running, but withdrew its bid last month. Germany received 184 votes from the 190 cast ballots. […] In a tweet, the German Foreign Office in Berlin said: “We are looking forward to this huge task and responsibility. Many thanks to all those who placed...

Following a major Spanish city’s vote to boycott Israel, the leader of Spain’s third-largest party called the Jewish state a “criminal country” during an interview aired by public television broadcaster. Pablo Iglesias Turrión, leader of the Podemos far-left party, said this in an interview earlier this week on RTVE. “We need to act more firmly on an illegal country like Israel,” said Iglesias Turrión, whose party in 2015 won 20 percent of the votes in the general election just one year after its creation. Last week, a motion promoted by a local fraction of Podemos on the city council of...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem The Shared Meal 
 (New Testament) Matthew 9 The Calling of Matthew 9 As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. 10 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. 11 When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who...

The Department of Homeland Security announced Friday that Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will be traveling next week to Jerusalem, where she will receive a briefing on Israel’s border infrastructure technology and security. DHS said Nielsen would meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan...Nielsen will be participating in the International Homeland Security Forum Seventeen different countries will participate in the forum, which will focus on counterterrorism and how the U.S, Israel, and other international allies and partners can combat threats.