Free Republic

An anti-Israel protester was caught on camera near Columbia University on Saturday night screaming at opposing demonstrators holding an Israeli flag, “Go back to Poland!” and “Go back to Belarus!” Video shows the offensive marcher, dressed in a bright yellow jacket, black baseball cap and black face mask, waving the Palestinian flag in front of several demonstrators, including those carrying a rolled-up Israeli flag, and hissing, “Get the hell out of here!

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” host Joy Reid argued that Israel’s strike on Iran on Thursday was “wag the doggish” and designed to distract from the war in Gaza and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has an “obsession with Iran” although she added that there is a “mutual” obsession between Netanyahu and Iran.

If someone says, “Trust the science!” these days, it’s usually an effort to short-circuit debate over weighty policy issues. “Trust the science” has been deployed in the past five years to prevent debate over COVID school closures and mask mandates, over electric-car subsidies, and over sex changes for boys and girls. For my entire time in Washington, though, “trust the science” has been used to oppose a missile defense system for the United States. For my first 20 years as a journalist, I was told that a missile defense system simply cannot work and that anyone who disagreed was a...

Hamas has told negotiators it does not have 40 Israeli hostages that it can release as part of a temporary cease-fire deal with Israel, a source familiar with the talks confirmed to The Hill. The admission raises questions over how many of the remaining hostages kidnapped Oct. 7 are alive and who is holding them. Israel says 129 hostages out of more than 240 abducted that day — mostly Israelis and dual nationals — have yet to be released. The Biden administration is pushing a plan to have Israel and Hamas agree to a six to eight week cease-fire that...

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the Biden administration was demanding the Israeli Defense Forces makes “deconfliction changes’ in Gaza Partial transcript as follow: MARTHA RADDATZ: He says this is a war against humanity and things have to change now. KIRBY: Well, our – our hearts continue to go out with Chef Andres and his whole team at World Central Kitchen. As you know, the president spoke to him. The president shares that grief and sorrow.

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby responded to questions on how the 2021 U.S. strike in Afghanistan that killed an aid worker is different from the Israeli strike that killed World Central Kitchen workers are different by stating that it’s “imprudent to try to compare two things that happened three years apart in two different conflicts.” And there was an independent investigation of the Afghanistan strike, “and that independent investigator found that there was no need for personal accountability to be had, but did find that the U.S....

The Iron Dome missile-defense system intercepted at least two projectiles heading for Netivot. Palestinian terrorists fired a barrage of rockets towards the southern Israeli city of Netivot from Gaza on Thursday night, sending over 40,000 people running for shelter for the first time in nearly three months. The Iron Dome missile-defense system intercepted at least two projectiles heading for the city, local reports said. The last time air-raid sirens sounded in Netivot, located about eight miles from the Strip, was on January 16. The Magen David Adom emergency medical service said there were no reports of serious injuries in the...

Human Rights Watch said Thursday that an Israeli strike on an apartment building in Gaza City last October was an “apparent war crime,” citing no military rationale behind the attack after a months-long investigation. The Oct. 31 strike killed at least 106 civilians, including 54 children, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in its report. The report “found no evidence of a military target in the vicinity of the building at the time of the Israeli attack, making the strike unlawfully indiscriminate under the laws of war,” the group said. “Israeli authorities have provided no justification for the attack.” The findings...

Days before one of the researchers’ wedding, a star explodes in a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence.A team of Israeli scientists managed to capture and study a once-in-a-lifetime supernova using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, helping mankind better understand this magnificent event. Supernovas, or exploding stars, are phenomenons that occur in our galaxy about once every century, with the last observable explosion taking place hundreds of years ago. Supernovas can’t be predicted, and instead astrophysicists study their aftermath in a way reminiscent of space archaeology. But the researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science learned about the supernova as it was taking place on...

During an interview released on Wednesday’s “Pod Save the World,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that Israel “is a right-wing country, increasingly becoming a religious fundamentalist country” where some officials have a view that is “not a whole lot different, by the way, than what Hamas is saying.” And “Israel certainly had the right to defend itself, but it did not and does not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people” in a way that is comparable to Putin’s war on Ukraine. He also called for America to work in a “much more cooperative way”...

Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shia terror group, fired rockets into northern Israel on Wednesday, hitting a factory that employed people with special needs, and killing a 23-year-old Druze Arab named Zaher Bashara in the facility. The Times of Israel reported that Bashara, who worked as a driver at the Alon paper goods company, was set to be engaged and had been his family’s breadwinner since the death of his father, providing for his extended family.

On Tuesday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer stated that the disagreement between the U.S. and Israel over a ground incursion into Rafah “is not the first time we’ve had a disagreement with the United States over our military operations.” And that “Even at the beginning of the war, there was a disagreement” between Israel and the Biden administration about “whether we should go in with a ground campaign.” Dermer said, [relevant remarks begin around 6:50] “Well, the United States, the president had asked the Prime Minister to send a delegation so that the...

Johnson’s invitation was the perfect response to these craven moves by the Biden administration and Schumer to throw Prime Minister Netanyahu under the bus to boost Biden’s reelection chances. Kudos to House Speaker Mike Johnson, who yesterday extended an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the U.S. House of Representatives. This was an important and much-needed gesture to reassure the Israeli people that the vast majority of Americans stand with Israel in its war against the Hamas terrorists and do not agree with the surge in hostility toward the Israeli government by the Biden administration and some...

Vice President Kamala Harris told CBS News on Friday that she distinguishes between the Israeli government and the Israeli people, as if Israel were not democratic, and as if Israelis disagreed with their government over the war in Gaza. Harris spoke to CBS News and responded to a question about whether the Biden administration would end military aid to Israel over the death of 30,000 Palestinians. (CBS did not distinguish between terrorists and civilians killed).

Disturbing new video captures the moment a hateful arsonist fumbles in a failed attempt to light an American and Israeli flag on fire outside an Upper Manhattan kosher eatery in broad daylight. The clip, released by the NYPD early Friday, shows the would-be firebug standing on a chair set up next to a small table outside Falafel Crunch on Amsterdam Avenue near West 186th Street in Fort George — about a block from Yeshiva University — and spraying an aerosol can at the two flags displayed together outside the pita spot around 2:50 p.m. Feb. 24. He then stands on...

The Biden Administration continues to apply new sanctions to Israeli individuals and firms as it faces pressure from left-wing activists to take a tougher stance against Israel, lest he lose support in key swing states in the 2024 election. Last month, the White House announced sanctions against four Israeli citizens, none of whom had been charged with any crime, for so-called “extremist settler violence.” The language of President Joe Biden’s executive order is so broad that it allows the administration to adopt sweeping sanctions on any Israeli who lives across the 1949 armistice lines, or who supports the rights of...

Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister of Diaspora affairs, Amichai Chikli, called out U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken Wednesday for “rushing to embrace a Holocaust-denying antisemite” by meeting with Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula. As Breitbart News reported, Blinken had earlier publicized his meeting with Lula, and praised him, without mentioning that the Brazilian leader had recently abused the memory of the Holocaust to criticize Israel’s war of self-defense against Hamas terrorists.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tried to meet privately with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi on Wednesday, without Israel’s elected leaders present, before the meeting was blocked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Blinken is currently on a visit to Israel to discuss hostage negotiations and the Biden administration’s goal of a Palestinian state. The Times of Israel reported: A previously scheduled one-on-one meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi will not take place, amid reports that the Prime Minister’s Office opposed a meeting between a foreign diplomat...

JERUSALEM — Criticism of President Joe Biden by a far-right minister in Israel’s government who said Donald Trump would allow more freedom to fight Hamas sparked outrage there on Sunday, highlighting the sensitivity of relations as Washington provides key support for the offensive against the militants in Gaza. The Biden administration has skirted Congress to rush weapons to Israel and shielded it from international calls for a cease-fire in the four months since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war. But the White House has urged Israel to take greater measures to avoid harming civilians and facilitate the delivery...

The teenage son of an Israeli diplomat is accused of intentionally driving his motorcycle into a Florida cop because he “hates waiting behind traffic,” but could have his charges dropped because of his father’s immunity, according to his attorney. Avraham Gil, 19, appeared to be hysterically crying in his mugshot after he was arrested for striking a Sunny Isles Beach Police lieutenant just after 3:30 p.m. on Jan. 27. The lieutenant was conducting a traffic stop on Collins Avenue, one of the main roadways on the Miami barrier island, when he saw Gil weaving through traffic and yelled at the...