Free Republic

A Palestinian rally set to take place Wednesday in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate has caused a diplomatic storm as both the Israeli and US ambassadors to Germany called for a performance by Palestinian rappers Shadi Al-Bourini and Shadi Al-Najjar to be banned. Their pressure succeeded at the last hour with the Jüdische Allgemeine newspaper reporting, just 30 minuted before the rally was due to start, that the Berlin Senate Department for Home Affairs and Sport said it was banning the two rappers from appearing. The spokesperson for the Home Affairs and Sport Ministry, Martin Pallgen, said it would probably...

In the aftermath of last week’s inconclusive elections, Israeli president Reuven Rivlin has asked Benjamin Netanyahu to form a government. Netanyahu has until October 24 to do so. Rivlin declared that Netanyahu, the current prime minister, has the best chance to form a government. I think Rivlin is correct that Netanyahu has a better chance of doing so than his main opponent, Benny Gantz, who specializes in declaring victory but not in achieveing it. But that doesn’t mean Netanyahu will succeed. He couldn’t accomplish this task after the April elections in which his party fared better than it did last...

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will tap Likud Chair and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the task of forming a ruling coalition, after meeting Wednesday evening with Netanyahu and his main challenger, Blue and White Chair Benny Gantz. The announcement comes after Rivlin received the official election results earlier Wednesday and as he encourages Gantz and Netanyahu to form a unity government.

Earlier on Monday, Israeli-Arab lawmakers recommended that former army chief Mr Gantz should become prime minister. The Joint List, a bloc of Arab parties that came third in the election, said it wanted to remove Mr Netanyahu from power. It was the first time since 1992 that an Arab political group has issued an endorsement for an Israeli prime minister. Ayman Odeh, leader of the Joint List, told President Rivlin that his alliance's priority was to prevent Mr Netanyahu from serving another term. The Joint List won 13 seats in the election. If Mr Gantz had the endorsement of all...

The statement was given after an impromptu meeting with Liberman ahead of Rivlin-brokered talks with Netanyahu Blue & White leader Benny Gantz may be ready to concede his party's position against joining a government with incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he faces possible indictment in a number of corruption cases. "We'll see what happens," Gantz told i24NEWS when asked if he would form a unity government with incumbent Prime Minister Netanyahu ahead of their meeting with President Reuven Rivlin Tuesday night. The statement was given following an unannounced meeting between Gantz and Yisrael Beitenu's Avigdor Liberman in Jaffa. Meanwhile,...

Deven Anderson, who recently joined Pete Buttigieg's (D.) presidential campaign as a regional organizing director in Columbia, S.C., has a history of praising anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and attended a sermon where Farrakhan said "You can walk with a Jew, but you can't walk with me." Between April 2010 and August 2013, Anderson tweeted more than 20 times about Farrakhan, praising his sermons and tweeting out quotes. Two days before Farrakhan spoke at Union Temple Baptist on April 25, 2010, in southeast Washington, D.C., Anderson tweeted about planning to attend the sermon. Deven D. Anderson @BrothaBlackMan So...

Jews Hate Bernie Sanders -- But Like Trump Only 4% of Jews in New York support Bernie. Mon Sep 23, 2019 Daniel Greenfield 11 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. New York has more Jews than any place outside Israel. It’s one of the few places with enough Jews for them to show up as a distinct group in polls and surveys. In the latest Siena College poll, Jews expressed their opinion about Senator Bernie Sanders. 14% of white voters in New...

After ousting other leaders over anti-Semitism, the Women’s March selected another individual who had to be quickly removed when her hateful anti-Israel tweets were exposed. By United With Israel Staff Lawyer Zhara Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was set to fill an empty seat on the board of the Women’s March group following the resignation of its previous leaders who faced persistent accusations of anti-Semitism. After her appointment, Billoo’s history of vehemently anti-Israel remarks, including several that many viewed as crossing the line into anti-Semitism, was revealed. She...

The US media coverage of the Israeli election has misrepresented the results of Tuesday’s vote. This isn’t necessarily deliberate. Israeli elections are inscrutable for most foreigners, particularly for Americans who are used to the clarity of the presidential system and two-party system. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not lose and his challenger, former IDF chief of general staff and Blue and White faction chief Benny Gantz did not win. Despite the fact that Blue and White won 31 seats in the 120-seat Knesset to Likud’s 31 seats, Gantz cannot form a government under any circumstances. He cannot build a majority...

Unless he convinces Israeli lawmakers from outside his party to join him in a national unity government, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 10-and-a-half-year run in office may soon end following inconclusive results inhis country’s parliamentary elections this week that appeared to deprive him of a governing majority in the Knesset. President Donald Trump took a hands-off approach when asked about the elections in America’s foremost ally in the Middle East. “Our relations are with Israel, so we’ll see what happens,” he told reporters while touring California. In Israel, Netanyahu has leveraged his ideological affinity with Trump as a selling point...

Center-left candidate Benny Gantz declares victory over Benjamin Netanyahu in the Israeli elections, and is rejecting the prime minister’s call for negotiations over leading the government. Gantz issued a statement Thursday saying, “I am interested in and intend to form a broad and liberal unity government under my leadership.” He also said, “the process of building a government has begun, and we will not be dictated to.” This comes after Netanyahu offered to build a broad coalition government with Gantz amid a tight election. Netanyahu proposed a rotating premiership among the two leaders. “The people chose unity, the people want...

A New Jersey man is accused of being a secret Hezbollah operative in the United States for more than a decade, surveilling potential attack sites in New York City, Boston and Washington, prosecutors said Thursday. Alexei Saab, 42, from Morristown, was charged under a nine-count indictment in connection with a range of alleged terror activities. They included providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO) and receiving military-style training from that group, the Justice Department said. “Even though Saab was a naturalized American citizen, his true allegiance was to Hezbollah, the terrorist organization responsible for decades of terrorist...

In 1844, when the Ottoman Empire still controlled the Holy Land, a census was conducted, which revealed that Jews constituted a majority of the population of Jerusalem. Where were the "Palestinians"? Where were the Canaanites? The census count reported the presence of three groups in the city: Jews, Muslims, and Christians. Canaanites were apparently not present. But suddenly, inexplicably, all Palestinians were spontaneously transformed into Canaanites in 2019, just as quickly as all Jordanian and Egyptian Arabs in Israel were spontaneously transformed into Palestinians in 1967. It took nothing more than the word of Yasser Arafat to create Palestinians out...

Organization. The Jordan Armed Forces were under King Hussein while the Palestine Liberation Organization was under the leadership of Yasser Arafat. The conflict was at its peak between September 16 and 27, 1970. There was, however, some tension and aggression up to July 1971. The Black September was brewed by the Palestinians presence and aggression in Jordan.

BEIRUT, LEBANON (2:00 P.M.) – The Russian Armed Forces have allegedly given the Syrian military the green light to use their S-300 system against Israeli warplanes that enter their airspace, the Russian aviation publication Avia.Pro reported. “Against the background of how Israel was repeatedly seen striking at Syria despite the previously reached agreements between Russia and Israel, a source told Avia.pro that the Syrian military received permission to use its air defense systems in case of the slightest threat from Israel, provided that the Syrian side bears responsibility for such actions,” Avia.Pro said. Despite completing the installation of their S-300...

According to Channel 13, 97.6% of the votes from Tuesday's elections have already been counted, Blue and White stands at 33 seats and Likud at 31 seats, with Blue and White leading by a narrow margin. It is important to note that these are still not the final results. Overnight, the committee was counting the near quarter of a million soldiers' votes cast by Israeli soldiers. The Central Election Committee (CEC) has been updating its website since the close of the polls at 10 p.m. on Tuesday. The last update was at 10:40 a.m. on Thursday: 4,354,991 votes had been...

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu skillfully “played” US President Donald Trump by plying him with inaccurate information, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson said. Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political life after close elections, was “a bit Machiavellian” and would share “misinformation” with the United States, according to Trump’s former top diplomat. […] “They did that with the president on a couple of occasions, to persuade him that ‘We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys.’ We later exposed it to the president so he understood, ‘You’ve been played,’” Tillerson said, according to the newspaper. […] Tillerson said he...

We wanted to find out what appeals to Donald Trump’s supporters and why they believe he deserves another term. The economy, the judges and a get-the-job-done attitude is just part of it. Here are their stories. BOSTON — His critics call him dangerous, unhinged and unstable, and 10 leading Democrat contenders and three Republican challengers would like to replace him. But less than five months from the Iowa caucuses, President Donald Trump enjoys the support of a solid majority of Republicans, and they have sound reasons to stick with their man despite the furor that continually surrounds him. According to...

A leader of an Evangelical Christian movement in the US blasted Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar Sunday, attacking the Democratic lawmaker's failure to condemn the apparent arson which destroyed a century-old synagogue in her state. Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN) and show host of the popular Christian television program “Focus on Israel” which reaches a global weekly audience of over 2 billion, blasted rookie Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for her silence after the Adas Israel synagogue in Duluth burned down last Monday in an apparent arson. “The historic Adas Israel Congregation in Minnesota was burnt to the...

How is 56 greater than 60? Call it Netanyahu’s new math. “After we established the right-wing bloc, there are only two options,” Netanyahu said. “Either a government led by me, or a dangerous government leaning on Arab parties.” Netanyahu’s only chance to remain prime minister is by making sure that his potential coalition partners don’t start wandering over to Blue and White’s side. The way to make sure they don’t do that is to promise he will stay with them and not follow what seems like the more obvious path to a coalition, to reach across the aisle himself.