Free Republic

This Friday marks the 15th anniversary of the death of Menachem Begin. He died of a broken heart on March 9, 1992, vilified as a warmonger by the Left and cast off by right-wing purists after he traded the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. The purists also berated Begin for his 1978 Camp David offer of five years of limited self-government to the Palestinian Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, to be followed by final-status negotiations between Israel and a Jordanian-Palestinian negotiating team - a proposal the Arabs rejected. Begin would have been...

Menachem Begin is today widely regarded as one of the most effective and far-sighted statesmen in Israeli history. At one end of the political spectrum, he is fondly remembered for surrendering the entire Sinai peninsula to Egypt and uprooting Israeli communities there. At the other end of the spectrum, he is hailed for taking strong action against PLO terrorists and Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor. But when he was first elected prime minister in 1977, Begin was the object of an unprecedented frenzy of hatred from the international news media. He was called a terrorist, a fascist, a lunatic. To explain...

Jimmy Carter is obsessively fostering hatred for a Ghost. The reason Jimmy Carter Hates Israel because he hates Menachem Begin. Carter feels that Begin cost him the 1980 election and also cost him the opportunity to be known as the greatest peacemaker ever in the history of the world. Carter says the reason Israel STILL will not leave the disputed territories is the legacy of the late Israeli Prime Minister The intransigence of Begin and his successors, Carter believes, was compounded by a failure of U.S. political leaders to pressure the Israeli government to correct its policy. HEY JIMBO! GIVE...

A recent study conducted by the Jewish Electorate Institute found that 67% of American Jewish respondents planned to vote for Joe Biden and 30% for President Trump. Eighty-eight percent of those surveyed claimed to be pro-Israel and 64% said Israel is an important election issue. Most ranked Biden higher on U.S.-Israel relations, the handling of anti-Semitism, and ensuring the security of the Jewish community. The survey results are surprising, given Trump’s stellar record on Jews and Israel. American Jews must reconsider, for Biden’s record and positions on critical topics belie these perceptions. Record on IsraelBiden’s record should dispel any notions...

JERICHO, West Bank - Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Israel on Sunday for treatment of a worsening case of COVID-19, the Palestine Liberation Organization said. Witnesses said Erekat, 65, was on a stretcher when he was placed inside an Israeli ambulance outside his home in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank. Erekat, who is also secretary-general of the PLO, disclosed on Oct. 8 that he had contracted coronavirus. There is heightened concern over Erekat’s vulnerability to the illness because he underwent a lung transplant in the United States in 2017. “Following his...

The Knesset voted to approve the normalization agreement with the United Arab Emirates Thursday night. The agreement was approved by a margin of 80-13. All 13 votes against approving the deal came from the Joint List. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu praised the agreement before the vote, saying that his foreign policy has changed the discourse on peace in the Middle East and brought Israel closer to the Gulf Arab states. “The new order says you don’t wait for the Palestinians to make peace,” Netanyahu said. “This deal brings Arab and Muslim countries closer to us, who have formed a united...

Michael J Cohen, Britain's Moment in Palestine: Retrospect and Perspectives, 1917-1948 - (2014), p.404https://books.google.com/books?id=DLPpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA404 Porath's pioneering study of Palestinian Arab nationalism concluded: The Nazi leanings of the Husaynis were not coincidental. The bestial anti-Jewish attitudes of the Nazis drew the attention of the Palestinian Arab nationalists who regarded the Nazis as natural allies against the Jews. ... It was due to Nazi reticence. A Nazi Party decree of June 1934 had denied membership of foreign Nazi parties to non-Germans... In 1933, Joseph Francis, the Palestine correspondent of al-ahram, wrote on behalf of a group of Palestinian Arabs to Heinrich Wolff, the German consul...

Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s ties to a leading anti-Israel group are generating scrutiny among Jewish voters, particularly in Florida, a perennial swing state populated by a large number of staunchly pro-Israel voters. As California’s attorney general and then as U.S. senator, Harris forged a relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the nation’s top anti-Israel groups and advocates for boycotts of the Jewish state. CAIR advised Harris on community issues during her time in California politics, and she later offered the group her "gratitude and admiration" in a 2018 personal letter to the group. Harris’s association...

In a secret operation that took place last week and was made known to the public on Tuesday, IDF Special Forces crossed the border into the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria and destroyed two outposts belonging to the Syrian army. The operation was carried out following Syria’s continued violation of the disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria from 1974, which determines that a designated buffer zone between the borders would only be occupied by a special UN force called the Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). Recently, however, the Syrian military returned to the buffer zone in the Golan Heights and...

Today's top stories 13.10.20; 1) The Israeli Parliament, or Knesset in Hebrew, formally opened its winter session -- amid domestic reports of a reemerging political crisis that may yet again force the Jewish State into another round of national elections.2) A Cargo Vessel makes a first official maritime transport of Emirati goods to the state of Israel.3) Tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean are once again on the rise, after Turkey announced its decision to conduct exploration works for offshore energy sources in disputed waters, south of the Greek Island of Kastellorizo -- which is situated near Turkey's southern coast.Turkey-Greece tensions...

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh told the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Monday that voting US President Donald Trump out of office is critical for the Palestinians. “The election is very important. God help us, the EU, and the whole world if there are four more years of Trump,” he said. Shtayyeh spoke out against Trump’s peace plan, presented earlier this year. “Trump has wasted four years of everyone’s time,” he said. “The ultimate deal was not delivered. [Trump’s plan] was rejected by the Palestinians, the Arabs and Europe… The US is just too biased.” Shtayyeh called for...

Like Black Lives Matter riots, Muslim mobs don’t spread the virus. Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Every year, Shiite Muslims in Flushing, Queens conduct the Arbaeen, a procession in honor of Mohammed's grandson whose death at the hands of a Sunni caliph marked the pivotal break between Shiites and Sunnis, slapping their faces and chests for their beheaded Imam Hussein. Queens, once the borough that gave birth to President Trump and David Horowitz, now has a large Muslim population, and the...

Lebanon and Israel, formally still at war after decades of conflict, launch talks on Wednesday to address a long-running dispute over their maritime border running through potentially gas-rich Mediterranean waters. The U.S.-mediated talks follow three years of intense diplomacy by Washington and were announced less than a month after the United States stepped up pressure on political allies of the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah. They also come after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to establish full relations with Israel, under U.S.-brokered deals which realign some of Washington’s closest Middle East allies against Iran. Hezbollah, which fought a five-week...

A previously unpublished interview with a Nation of Islam minister has revealed a detailed account of a secret two-hour meeting involving Malcolm X and the Ku Klux Klan that discussed an extraordinary unholy alliance. The conversation on January 28, 1961, detailed in a forthcoming biography of Jeremiah Shabazz, reveals how, on behalf of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X and a fellow minister sought the white supremacist terrorist group’s help in acquiring a “separate state” for black Americans opposed to integration. According to Malcolm X’s fellow minister, the Klansmen offered Nation members the right to wear “purple robes”...

King Salman of Saudi Arabia called for “coexistence among all the region’s peoples” and endorsed President Trump’s Middle East diplomacy just days after the signing of historic agreements between Israel and two other Gulf Arab states. “Peace in the Middle East is our strategic option,” the oil-rich monarch told the United Nations General Assembly. ”And we will spare no effort to work together towards achieving a bright future where peace, stability, prosperity, and coexistence among all the region’s peoples prevail.” His recorded comments seemed to indicate that Saudi Arabia approves of the recent normalization of ties between Israel and two...

To a West where no one seems to want to fight anymore or care anymore about their own traditions, where they spit on their own history, topple their statues and erase their own culture, where the land no longer sends any echo, the Armenians, small, scattered around the world, forgotten and barricaded, now at war for Nagorno against the Islamic Ummah led by Turkey, show us a path in which we do not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed. Half of Nagorno's population, 75,000 people, has been displaced due to Turkish-backed Azerbaijan attacks. We must hope they resist. I have just...

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, one of the most widely recognized and respected Saudi officials in the world, gave a three-part interview to the government-controlled Al Arabiya news network and proceeded to tear down 70 years of myths about the leadership of the Palestinian national movement. Bandar spent 22 years as a Saudi ambassador to the U.S. and is known to speak for the government. It was an extraordinary series of interviews — a brutal assessment of the numerous self-inflicted wounds by Palestinian leaders going all the way back to the 1930s. It was broadcast in Arabic with English subtitles...

Israeli actress Gal Gadot has been slammed on social media after she was cast to play Cleopatra in the upcoming historical epic about the iconic Egyptian queen. The 35-year-old on Sunday confirmed she will play the titular role in a new movie after Paramount Pictures won the rights to the film in a bidding war between Universal, Warner Bros., Apple and Netflix. The casting however, immediately drew outrage from confused social media users who wrongly assumed Cleopatra was black and North African.

A 2,000-year-old mikvah (ritual bath) was recently uncovered in the Lower Galilee. Most people probably would never have heard about the discovery if not for the dramatic photos of the entire structure being carried by truck to a nearby kibbutz for preservation. The remarkable sight of a truck-borne mikvah, however, also makes one pause and reflect on the remarkable implications of the archeological find. It means that 2,000 years ago, the residents of the Lower Galilee were practicing the exact same religious rituals that Orthodox Jews throughout the world practice today. Those Galileans, in other words, were Jews. They weren't...

An organized campaign is under way against US targets. Who is responsible? The ongoing, steady tempo of rocket attacks against US and official targets in Iraq continued this week. On Monday, two Katyusha rockets fell on the Jadriya neighborhood of Baghdad, close to the fortified Green Zone. There were no casualties.Earlier, on September 27, five civilians (two women and three children) were killed when a Katyusha aimed at Baghdad airport fell short and fell on a private house. The five were members of the same family. On September 30, in an additional escalation, four rockets were launched at the Iraqi...