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NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES RAMALLAH, West Bank, March 29 — Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank early Friday as the Israeli cabinet met in an all-night session to debate a military strike designed to drive him into exile. The attack came only hours after Arafat made a last-ditch promise to work for “an immediate cease-fire” with Israel and after Palestinian security forces began arresting militants in the West Bank. NBC NEWS correspondent Dana Lewis, reporting from Ramallah, said he could hear heavy machine-gun fire and blasts similar to tank rounds. Some of the...

Newly unearthed photos of President Obama in Muslim garb underscore his deep ties to the faith -- and possibly help explain his reluctance to call out radical Islam, Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly said Wednesday. The photos, aired on “The O’Reilly Factor,” were taken at the wedding of Obama’s half-brother, Malik Obama, in Maryland sometime in the early 1990s, O’Reilly said. They were not offered as evidence that Obama is Muslim, as some of his critics insist, but to show his “deep emotional ties” to the religion of his father and stepfather, O’Reilly said. (img src=”http://a57.foxnews.com/images.foxnews.com/content/fox-news/politics/2016/07/07/photo-obama-in-muslim-garb-shows-deep-ties-to-faith-oreilly-says/_jcr_content/article-text/article-par-2/images/image.img.jpg/880/558/1467920534070.jpg?ve=1&tl=1”>

O'Reilly claims the President Obama's failure to identify the terrorist threat facing America has allowed ISIS to run amok in the Middle East, a mistake he claims the Commander-in-chief will not acknowledge. 'There is no question the Obama administration's greatest failure is allowing the Islamic terror group ISIS to run wild, murdering thousands of innocent people all over the world, including many Muslims,' said O'Reilly. 'Mr. Obama has never, never acknowledged that mistake, nor does he define the ISIS threat accurately. 'That group is killing innocent people in order to impose a radical version of Islam on the world. The...

Franks said that one strategic strike could create blackouts nationwide. And the consequences of this could be a field day for hackers, cripple our military defense system, and that’s not even mentioning what life would be like for normal Americans if they had no power. The risk of an EMP attack has been around since the Cold War but according to Franks, “we’re a thousand times more vulnerable than we were even 50 years ago.”

A senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently threatened Israel, saying the ground is ready for the annihilation of “the Zionist regime”. The comments by IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami were made at a sermon in Tehran this past Friday prior to prayers marking Al-Quds Day. He also declared that Iran has over 100,000 missiles waiting in Lebanon alone and that tens of thousands of other missiles were placed throughout the Muslim world in order to wipe "the accursed black dot" – that is Israel – from the map of the world. Salami also threatened Kurdish leaders...

President Hassan Rouhani said the last year’s nuclear deal “was the cheapest way to achieve Iran’s goals and interests.” Speaking in Tehran on Saturday at an iftar meal breaking the Ramadan fast, Rouhani said the pre-Iran nuclear-deal era is past and Iran now needs to take advantage of the new atmosphere to pursue its “national interests more than before,” Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday called for student associations to establish a “unified anti-US and anti-Zionist front” among the Muslim world’s students, Tasnim News Agency reported. “By using advanced means of...

WASHINGTON -- Frustrated over a stall in an arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Obama once questioned the necessity of maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge in the region, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Monday. Panetta was confirming a report from Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who attributed the claim to him in an article on Obama's foreign policy doctrine published last March. The former Pentagon chief said the White House, at the time, was deeply concerned that Israel was preparing to unilaterally strike Iran. Simultaneously, the administration was also hoping to complete with Riyadh a significant sale of fighter jets....

Bright colors and breezy fabrics of traditional tunics and trousers floated across the sidewalks of Navy Pier, which housed the first Eid Expo, bringing together diverse denominations and ethnicities Wednesday. The two-day event celebrated Eid al-Fitr, a holiday that concludes Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. Thousands of Muslims from the Midwest attended the event to pray, mingle and eat halal food. Imam Zaid Shakir, who led Muhammad Ali's funeral prayers, led the Eid prayers. Asma Ahad, director of market development for the Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America, one of the co-sponsors along with the Council of Islamic...

“…So you see, YOU are not safe- and it is not because the violence is random and not because Jihadis are only trying scare us into altering our behavior- They really want to kill YOU they want to kill all of us. They are not just aiming to create a fearful response. What they are doing is a slow process of conquest. If you are still alive, it is because they have not gotten to you yet. We are all the target, including you, yes, you. And don’t bother to remind me that there are more peaceful and moderate Muslims...

Three years into the tenure of Hassan Rouhani who himself and many in the West promised to be a “moderate” and “reformist” poised to bring about change in Iran, we have only witnessed an unprecedented spike in human rights violations, including horrendous public floggings and especially executions. Overt 2,400 executions in the past three years is the report card Iran and Rouhani carry, with Amnesty International and many other international human rights organizations registering Iran sent nearly 1,000 people to the gallows in 2015 alone. Various religious minorities, including Arabs, Baha’is, Christians, Jews and others have also been targeted...

“Generously donate to the brave young men of the Jaish-e-Muhammad who are fighting for the victory of the name of God and Islam.” The Jaish-e-Muhammad is soliciting funds from congregated Karachi mosques to send jihadists to fight in India and Afghanistan, footage obtained by The Indian Express reveals. ...Jaish’s fund collectors operating with impunity, even though the organisation is officially proscribed in Pakistan. “Help the mujahideen of the Jaish-e-Muhammad, the mujahideen of Islam, fight jihad in Kashmir against India, and in Afghanistan against the Americans,” one man can be heard saying in footage shot Friday night, outside a mosque in...

The call came in late May, just weeks before Ramadan began: ISIS told supporters to make the Holy period 'with God’s permission, a month of pain for infidels everywhere'. That call has turned what should have been four weeks of peace and charitable giving into a bloodbath which has spread from Florida to the Philippines, leaving more than 800 dead at the hands of Islamic State's supporters across the globe. Extremists have killed people as they sat with friends in a cafe in Bangladesh, executed Syrian families for trying to flee their clutches and stabbed a policeman to death in...

MAKHACHKALA, Russia—For decades, the rugged province of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea cradled an Islamist rebellion so vicious that police once feared putting on their uniforms. But that insurrection has sputtered, thanks in part to the departure of young men to join the jihad in Syria and in part to a police crackdown that human-rights campaigners have called murderous. Public parades and concerts, once avoided by locals because of terror attacks, are drawing crowds as the weather warms. Officials have developed a strategy to keep the peace: Prevent men who left for Syria from returning and round up those who...

Link to FULL PRESS CONFERENCE - Philip Haney When recently retired DHS frontline officer and intelligence expert Philip Haney bravely tried to say something about the people and organizations that threatened the nation, his intelligence information was eliminated, and he was investigated by the very agency assigned to protect the country. The national campaign by the DHS to raise public awareness of terrorism and terrorism-related crime known as If You See Something, Say Something effectively has become If You See Something, Say Nothing. In this well-documented, first-person account of his unique service with DHS, Haney shows why it's imperative that...

On July 1, 2016, a group of seven militant Muslims attacked the Holey Artisan Bakery in the Gulshan diplomatic area of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The attackers shouted “Allahu Akbar!” Bangladesh has been rocked by a wave of deadly attacks on secular writers and against the few Christians, Hindus and Buddhists who remain in the country. According to witnesses, Islamic radicals stormed the cafe armed with assault weapons, pistols and “sharp objects” before taking more than 30 people hostage. The terrorists then hacked 20 people to death, sparing only those who could recite the Koran. The cafe was eventually stormed by Bangladeshi...

We know what the recent terrorist attack in Orlando was not. Forty-nine people were killed and fifty-three wounded not due to the violent outburst of a right-wing zealot. The shooter, Omar Mateen, was a second-generation Afghan-American, a registered Democrat, and a fierce critic of American politics and culture. Nor were the killings caused by easy access to “assault weapons.” The vast majority of American terrorist casualties have not involved firearms. Box-cutters and planes, not rifles, led to the 9/11 attacks and some 3,000 deaths. The two Tsarnaev brothers used explosives to kill and maim during the Boston Marathon, a tactic...

A new law will come into effect in Sweden after Christmas 2014, that will allow people to be prosecuted for criticizing immigration or politician’s unwillingness to tackle the issue. The Constitutional Committee’s report has been voted for in parliament, seen in a letter from the Parliamentary Offices. Member of Parliament Andrew Norlén, member of the Constitutional Committee, has been pushing the issue and he says it will rapidly become a deterrent. ... Without freedom of speech there can be no democracy. If you are not allowed to say certain things then parties that support your ideas cannot exist and Sweden...

In an early Wednesday attack, Niger Delta militants have blown up two Chevron oil wells in Warri, leading a shut down in the wells and promising further output drops for Nigeria. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have claimed responsibility for the attack via their Twitter feed, not that they “blew up Chevron oil well RMP 23 and 24 [at] 3:44 am this morning.” These are Chevron’s Bibi oil wells, run by Chevron Nigeria Limited. The militant group also noted that it had a “heavy presence of 100 gunboats, 4 warships and jet bombers,” and that the attack was meant “to...

The absence of strong Western leadership against the Boko Haram terror state has created an opportunity Iran seems ready to exploit. The Premium Times of Nigeria reports that Iran is stepping forward to offer assistance to the African Union against the savage caliphate spilling out of northern Nigeria into Cameroon and menacing the entire region: ... Abdollohian said the activities of the Boko Haram militants and that of Al-Shabaab in the Somalia were similar to that of Al-Qaeda and the ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. ... Iran was willing to share its experiences on terrorist activities...

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...