Free Republic

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran wants major amendments within the framework of a U.N. nuclear fuel deal which it broadly accepts, state media said, a move that could unravel the plan and expose Tehran to the threat of harsher sanctions. The European Union's foreign policy chief said on Tuesday there was no need to rework the U.N. draft and he and France's foreign minister suggested Tehran would rekindle demands for tougher international sanctions if it tried to undo the plan. Among the central planks of the plan opposed by Iran -- but requested by the West to cut the risk of...

On Sunday evening at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., J-Street opened its first ever-national policy conference. Officially founded over a year ago, the self-proclaimed "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby was birthed amid controversy. While J-Street positioned itself as the voice of mainstream American Jewish opinion on Israel, critics (myself included) argued it was a left-wing front far from the mainstream.

If world powers are not successful in efforts to contain the Iranian nuclear threat, an Israeli strike on Iran could become a reality, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said during a visit to Beirut, the Daily Telegraph reported Monday. The French foreign minister suggested that time was indeed short for a solution to the Iranian threat. "There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat." "Israel will not tolerate an Iranian bomb. We know that, all of us," said Kouchner, adding that for...

Arab American journalist, Joseph Fara, writes: Well, as an Arab-American journalist who has spent some time in the Middle East dodging more than my share of rocks and mortar shells, I’ve got to tell you that these are just phony excuses for the rioting, trouble-making and land-grabbing. Isn’t it interesting that prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, there was no serious movement for a Palestinian homeland? The truth is that Palestine is no more real than Never-Never Land. The first time the name was used was in 70 A.D. when the Romans committed genocide against the Jews, smashed the Temple...

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - State television says Iran will agree to the “general framework” of a U.N.-drafted plan to ship enriched uranium out of the country for processing, but will seek “important changes” in the deal. The report Tuesday on the state-run channel Al-Alam does not specify the amendments Iran will seek. It says Iran will officially reply within 48 hours. The plan calls for Iran to ship 70 percent of its enriched uranium abroad for further enrichment.

Major Adrian Agassi did not make the connection between the Bible, the land and the Jews when, fresh out of university, he left England for Israel in search of his roots. He was not even a practising Jew. But over the past quarter of a century, the Israeli army lawyer and then military judge at the forefront of arguably the most significant battle in the occupied West Bank – the confiscation of Palestinian land for the construction of Jewish settlements – has come to see himself as in service of a higher duty. In an unusually frank interview, which offers...

FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU Arab prof: 'Blowing oneself up' OK in Tel Aviv But asserts suicide bombings against Saudis not legitimate Posted: October 26, 2009 10:16 pm Eastern By Aaron Klein © 2009 WorldNetDaily JERUSALEM – Suicide bombings are OK in Tel Aviv, Israel, but not in Saudi Arabia, declared a Saudi professor speaking on Arab satellite television. "Someone who blows himself up amidst the enemy is different from someone who blows himself up in a safe place. Blowing oneself up in Tel Aviv is not like blowing oneself up in Riyadh," stated Saudi University professor Salman Al-Abdali on Iqra...

And the pig sitting as "president" of the Council would not even use the name "Israel" in response. Disgusting.

“There is a likely chance of tsunami waves reaching the shores of Israel,” says Dr. Beverly Goodman of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa following an encompassing geo-archaeological study at the port of Caesarea. “Tsunami events in the Mediterranean do occur less frequently than in the Pacific Ocean, but our findings reveal a moderate rate of recurrence,” she says. Dr. Goodman, an expert geo-archaeologist, exposed geological evidence of this by chance. Her original intentions in Caesarea were to assist in research at the ancient port and at offshore shipwrecks. “We expected to find...

Israel has thrived during the global collapse—thanks to an entrepreneurial culture built on compulsory military service. Dan Senor and Saul Singer on why U.S. companies should take notes. For all the press coverage of the Middle East, there is one side of Israel that gets scant attention: the country’s economy has the highest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurialism in the world today. For years, multinational technology companies and global investors have been beating a path to Israel. Even in 2008—a year of global economic turmoil—per capita venture investments in Israel were 2.5 times greater than in the United States, more...

http://conservativehq.com/petitions Here is our chance to sign a petition to request the RNC to " Dump Dede"!

When America entered the war in Vietnam, Ho Chi Min said that it would be a long war and that the communists would win by using propaganda in the media and the universities. He was correct. It is time to take stock in the war between Israelis and the Palestinians and deal with some forbidden subjects. Israel is losing the propaganda war, hasbarah, and for a very good reason. Israel is not in the hasbarah game, unless one counts belated responses to the Palestinians' propaganda offensives. Pierre Rehov, a Moroccan French Jew, is a documentary filmmaker. He claims that the...

Jpost thelastcrusade.orgLibyan President Col. Muammar Gaddafi told Sky News in an interview aired Monday that Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians and Saudis all have the right to nuclear weapons. "Even the Palestinians should have [nuclear weapons] because their counterparts, or their opponents, have nuclear capabilities," Gaddafi said in the interview. "If we don't want this situation...we'll have to disarm the Israelis from their nuclear weapons capabilities." Israel neither confirms nor denies the existence of a nuclear arsenal.

Leah Rabin, the late widow of assassinated premier Yitzhak Rabin, used words such as "nightmare," "monstrosity," "corrupt" and "liar" to describe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in letters she wrote over a decade ago that have recently been obtained by Haaretz.

(IsraelNN.com) A major meeting of the Jewish Agency is set for Sunday. The crowd will be addressed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Natan Scharansky, the new chairman of the board of the Jewish Agency, will address the group for the first time. Discussions at the meeting will include the fate of Jewish education in the Diaspora, development of a a "new paradigm" relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, efforts to increase aliyah, and methods of helping to develop Israeli society.

As the United States and its allies haggle with Iran over its nuclear program, Moscow has fueled Western unease about its military links to Tehran by pledging to continue selling arms to the Islamic republic. This has raised speculation that it may brush aside the strident objections of the United States and Israel and supply Iran with advanced S-300PMU surface-to-air missiles that would greatly enhance its defenses against airstrikes. The Russians, who have rejected the proposed imposition of economic sanctions on Iran as "counterproductive," are keeping the waters muddied with contradictory and ambiguous statements regarding the S-300s. On Wednesday, Russia's...

Israel says PM did not consult Obama ahead of trip because meeting on peace process unnecessary. WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's intention to visit Washington for the annual UJC General Assembly has surprised many on Capitol Hill and was apparently not coordinated with the Obama administration. An American source told Ynet Sunday that news of the visit had been received with reserved astonishment. The Obama administration has not yet responded to questions of whether a meeting with Netanyahu was forthcoming due to their surprise over the unscheduled visit. On the other hand, failure to invite Netanyahu to the White...

The crucial Nov. 3 special election in upstate New York features two candidaties -- liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava and Democrat Bill Owens -- connected to the Working Families Party (WFP) which is the New York political arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). <snip> With both Big Labor and ACORN working to defeat the Conservative -- who is also being attacked by the national GOP Establishment -- Hoffman's campaign is sending out a nationwide call for volunteers to help match the "community organizers" being brought into the 23rd District by his major-party opponents. "We need boots...

Israeli police firing stun grenades faced off Sunday against masked Palestinian protesters hurling stones and plastic chairs outside the Holy Land's most volatile shrine, where past violence has escalated into prolonged conflict. A wall of Israeli riot police behind plexiglass shields marched toward young men covering their faces with T-shirts and scarves, sending many of them running for cover into the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the Islamic structures in the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. They remained holed up in the mosque with police outside for several hours until dispersing...

Following a day of clashes between security forces and Arab rioters in Jerusalem, Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Sunday evening stated that the fate of the capital would be determined by force, not negotiations. "The fate of Jerusalem will be determined only by confrontation and not by the negotiating tables," Mashaal said in a speech, according to Channel 10. "The Israelis want to divide al-Aqsa Mosque, and this is not all. They want to hold their religious ceremonies in the mosque … in preparation for demolishing it and building their temple there," he reportedly said. Israel is interested in...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said Iran must agree to stop all uranium enrichment in any deal with world powers. The UN nuclear watchdog and world powers headed by the United States are trying to reduce Tehran's stockpile of enriched uranium in return for supplying a medical reactor. They hope the deal will build trust on the way to persuading Iran to give up uranium enrichment, which they fear is part of an atomic weapons program, even though Iran says the uranium will only fuel power stations. "The crucial thing is that the international community pressure...

Stone-throwing Arab youths wounded three policemen on the Temple Mount on Sunday as Jerusalem police, firing water cannons and stun grenades, raided the holy site in a bid to quell repeated bouts of rioting. Police stormed the compound twice; the first time was in response to Arab youths who pelted officers with rocks and poured oil on them. Later Sunday morning, about 100 Arab youths renewed rioting at the Temple Mount, after which Border Police and regular policemen raided the site again, using stun grenades to disperse the rioters. Police were attempting to completely clear the compound of worshippers. Officers...

Israel is hoping to order two modern German-made warships without paying for them, daily Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Friday. Sources within the German government told the paper that Israel wants the Berlin to finance the MEKO corvettes, a sum that would reportedly reach hundreds of millions of euros. The paper reported that the government has not yet reacted to Israel’s request. But “influential politicians from northern Germany,” where the shipbuilding industry is suffering from the global economic downturn, are apparently supportive in the interest of keeping German shipyards in business.

BERLIN, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Germany has been asked to help fund yet another submarine for the Israeli navy. Jerusalem plans to order another submarine of the Dolphin class from German Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG and has asked the German government to subsidize the order, German news magazine Der Spiegel reports. Berlin has helped Israel pay for five previously ordered submarines. The first two (named Dolphin and Leviathan) were a gift by Germany after it surfaced that German companies were involved with Iraq's chemical weapons program. To save the orders and jobs for the German shipyards, Chancellor Helmut Kohl decided to...

JERUSALEM-TORONTO – The Archaeological Research currently taking place in the ‘Walls Around the Old City’ national park at the City of David in Jerusalem is in the public’s best interests, according to an Israeli Supreme Court decision regarding two recent petitions against the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). The petitions were submitted by residents living near the excavation site. According to a press release issued by Yaen Vered, the IAA representative in Canada, it is the IAA’s opinion that “these residents are being incited by other factors whose considerations are political and improbable.” In a telephone conversation with the Jewish Tribune,...

Iran yesterday angrily denied Israeli media assertions that senior nuclear officials from the two countries held confidential talks last month in what was portrayed as the first direct exchange between the two arch enemies for 30 years. The reports sparked a flurry of official statements from Tehran and Tel Aviv which, unusually, agreed on many points. Both acknowledged sending representatives to an international conference in Cairo on nuclear disarmament. Each confirmed there were no direct, bilateral talks. The deliberations were meant to be confidential. But leaked accounts of the conference infuriated Tehran, which said the notion of any sort of...

  Dead Sea Power Project GREEN ENERGY: The Dead Sea Power Project (DSPP) is a tunnel and hydropower project that can produce 1500 to 2500 megawatts of clean and renewable electric energy. The value of such electric energy will be maximized by power generation during peak demand times. Planned operation of the project can fill the Dead Sea to the desired level within seven years of operation; after that, the continued operation of the hydropower plant will be enabled by the development of additional desalination capacity to supply the water needs of the region. SAVING THE DEAD SEA AND...

WASHINGTON - During consideration of H.R. 3126, legislation to establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA), Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee voted to pass an amendment offered by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) that will make ACORN eligible to play a role in setting regulations for financial institutions. The Waters amendment adds to the CFPA Oversight Board 5 representatives from the fields of "consumer protection, fair lending and civil rights, representatives of depository institutions that primarily serve underserved communities, or representatives of communities that have been significantly impacted by higher-priced mortgages" to join Federal banking regulators in advising the...

Trouble was on the agenda when the aging provocateur, infamous for his tough remarks on Israel, visited a Jewish cultural hub last night. But as Lloyd Grove reports, Vidal charmed the critics. There were moments at the 92nd Street Y Tuesday night when Gore Vidal was just a sweet old man, reminiscing. “What do you miss most about Ravello?” asked his literary executor, Middlebury College English professor Jay Parini, reading an audience question about the Amalfi Coast palazzo where Vidal had lived with Howard Austen, his companion of 53 years. “Hmmm, Howard, I suppose,” Vidal mused sadly—and the answer just...

by Emanuel A. Winston, Middle East Analyst & Commentator thelastcrusade.orgIn Tanach (the Jewish Bible), it speaks about the Nations of the North assembling and descending upon Israel in a conquest of savage killing. In the Prophecy the attacking Nations from the North succeed in occupying, first the lowlands along the sea and then they begin to ascend the foothills toward Jerusalem. They succeed with much carnage, raping, killing until the earth heaves; the skies turn black wherein a man cannot see to the end of his arm. This phenomenon speaks of volcanic ash so dense that nothing can be...

The following appeared as an op-ed in Kuwait’s Arab Times. I’ve oft quoted it’s Editor -in-Chief Ahmed al-Jarallah,. He’s no Zionist stooge, gentle reader, and while I oft times disagree with his views I find them fair coming from an Arab editor, in an Arab land. Does Iran want the Palestinian peace process to pass through nuclear reactions? Whenever Egypt expresses its frustration over Hamas activities, demanding that they should deal with it as the largest Arab nation, not as a Palestinian but a Palestinian faction, it shows its despondency. The so-called resistant group has remained adamant for quite a...

Never since the mid 1970s when the Watergate Congress insisted on abandoning our South Vietnamese allies after the war had been won have I seen defeat snatched from the jaws of victory in such a bold and decisive manner. As I survey the scene in America today I’m beginning to wonder if we would be in any worse shape if we’d lost the Cold War. From sea to shining sea Americans watch as the once greatest industrial nation on earth board up our factories and ship our manufacturing capacity to other countries. It seems like every other day the last...

It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state. Yet in the two decades since...

THE WEEKLY STANDARD just received a statement from Sarah Palin endorsing conservative Doug Hoffman for Congress: The people of the 23rd Congressional District of New York are ready to shake things up, and Doug Hoffman is coming on strong as Election Day approaches! He needs our help now. The votes of every member of Congress affect every American, so it's important for all of us to pay attention to this important Congressional campaign in upstate New York. I am very pleased to announce my support for Doug Hoffman in his fight to be the next Representative from New York's 23rd...

I walked down the street in Barcelona, and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz. We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world. The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world. These are the people we burned. And under the pretense of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove...

Founded "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," today's United Nations is instead laying the groundwork for war galore. In the name of "justice," the U.N. handicaps democracies trying to defend themselves against tyrants and terrorists. That's the bottom line of the so-called Goldstone report, ... ... From this exercise Goldstone emerged to accuse Israel of "reprisals" and "collective punishments" and "war crimes." He also criticized "armed groups" in Gaza (where the major "armed group"--terrorist Hamas--runs the enclave). But in the U.N. universe, that is a nod to the appearance of impartiality, of no real relevance to action....

BETHLEHEM - One of the untold stories of the Middle East is what is happening to the Christian population. Many are fleeing areas like the West Bank city of Bethlehem because Muslims are persecuting them. Bethlehem is the birthplace of Christ and was once a Christian city. But today Christians are only about 10 to 15 percent of the population. Some observers say if the mass exodus continues, within another generation it could become a city of Christian holy sites without any Christian residents. Justice Weiner believes that is happening. He has spent years investigating persecution and the exodus of...

A Sudanese man used a knife from the in-flight meal to threaten crew members after the plane left Turkish airspace and demanded that the flight be diverted to Jerusalem, the official said.

MOSCOW, October 21 (RIA Novosti) - President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin congratulated on Wednesday the Israeli premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, on his 60th birthday, a Kremlin spokesman said. Medvedev reiterated Russia's intentions "to contribute actively to the settlement of a fair and solid peace in the Middle East on the basis of equal and safe security for all states and nations in the region." Putin praised what he described as a "constructive and open dialogue" between the two countries. "I am committed to enhancing further the cooperation between our countries' governments," the Russian premier said.

Iran, Russia and America met in Vienna under the supervision of the IAEA.The meeting is to discuss the shipment of nuclear fuel with about %20 of enrichment to Tehran's research reactor which produces radioactive medicine for hospitals.IRI's representative in the IAEA Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh is leading Iran's delegation. IAEA's director-general Mohammad Elbaradei is also attending the meeting.The Islamic Republic of Iran demands that up to %5 of enrichment for Tehran's research reactor to be done in Iran and then be sent to Russia, France or America for more enrichment.

Yesterday Morning's headlines blared "Man Arrested Attempting to Spy For Israel." The small print continued to explain that Israel was no way involved in the sting. The FBI has long believed the accused spy Stewart David Nozette,was up to no good so it created this sting to nab him. Because the FBI has a strong belief that American Jews have a dual loyalty between Israel and the US, the chose to build the sting around Israel. Truth is, Nozette did not grab the bait because of any love toward the Jewish State, but because of the offer of cold hard...

If you haven't seen the movie Judgement at Nuremberg, you should. It was a movie of the trial of 16 Nazi Justices. One Judge in the dock, Schlegelberger, played by Burt Lancaster, was a good man who had reluctantly served the Nazi Regime until he resigned for reasons of conscience in 1942. He was found guilty. And in the end he agreed the verdict was a just one. This case is referred to by Ayal Rosenberg in GOLDSTONE : A CRITIQUE OF SELF-APOTHEOSIS. He begins with this introduction of it, The criminal culpability for crimes against humanity of judges enforcing...

The significance of Israel to the west is out of all proportion to her size and in direct relation to her place, on the front line. The country is unambiguously western, and not only her institutions but the way they operate leave no doubt of this. When, for instance, there are allegations that Israeli troops have committed crimes, in the course of military operations, there is an investigation. The contents and conclusions of that investigation are invariably made known. There will most certainly be open public discussion, and Israel's press is remarkably free.

Moon scientist Stewart Nozette held as Israeli spy in FBI sting Giles Whittell in Washington An American astrophysicist with top-level nuclear security clearances appeared in court yesterday after being arrested in an FBI sting and charged with trying to sell secrets to Israel. Stewart Nozette, who helped to discover water on the Moon and spent six years at a top-secret defence technology agency, was lured into a trap by federal agents. They posed as Israeli intelligence operatives who met him at a Washington hotel and agreed to pay him cash for classified papers. “I don’t get recruited by Mossad every...

CAIRO (AFP) – Egypt is opposed to hardline Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman attending a meeting of the Mediterranean Union which it co-chairs with France, diplomats said on Wednesday. Foreign ministers of the 43-strong grouping, which brings European Union members together with states from north Africa, the Balkans, Arab countries, Israel and Turkey, are due to gather in November in Istanbul. An Egyptian diplomat told AFP that Cairo "did not want to send an invitation to the Israeli (foreign) minister," but could accept that Lieberman be represented by someone else. Egyptian officials refused anything to do with Lieberman after he...

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed his government on Tuesday to draw up proposals to amend the international laws of war after a damning UN report on its war in Gaza. The security cabinet did not, however, discuss calls made by ministers for an internal investigation into the 22-day offensive at the turn of the year that killed some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis, an official told AFP. "The prime minister instructed the relevant government bodies to examine a worldwide campaign to amend the international laws of war to adapt them to the spread of global terrorism,"...

Apparently it more important to keep the Israelis out, then obtain their knowledge on such a serious issue. This fits right in with the recent day of hatred towards Israel that Cleric Yusuf Al Qaradawi called for. US Org. Hosts Cancer Meet, Israelis not Welcome by Maayana Miskin (IsraelNN.com) A United States-based organization's conference on breast cancer awareness, to be hosted in Egypt, has been touted by international news networks as an example of “unprecedented cooperation” in the region. However, according to Channel 2 news, the celebration of unity may be premature, as Israeli doctors were told at the last...

The world is against Israel because of its own moral weakness and not because of alleged human rights violations, according to Rabbi Yaakov Medan, rabbi of Har Etzion Yeshiva, located in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. “Islam is strong, and it is convenient for people to go with strength,” the rabbi explained in an interview with Arutz-7.

You’ve all seen horror movies in which the stupid characters just don’t look behind them at crucial moments. And you want to yell: “Look out!” Or: “Can’t you see that he’s the murderer!” Or: “That innocent-looking green globule is actually a man-eating silicon-based creature from Andromeda!” Welcome to my world, the world of analyzing the contemporary Middle East or, to put it a different way, yelling, “Look out!” to those who think the best way to handle a threatening regime or revolutionary foe is to take them out to dinner and a movie. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero and...

The Report by Ari Bussel “What many could not understand was how an army which even some German generals considered the strongest in Europe could be defeated so quickly and easily. So staggering were the losses – 90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded, more than one and a half million taken prisoner – …” This is the story of France in 1939 (as told by Don & Petie Kladstrup in 2002). “The most important arena where we need to act … is in the arena of public opinion, which is crucial in the democratic world. We must continue to debunk this lie...