Free Republic

In the coming days, construction will commence on a new church in Egypt dedicated to the martyred Coptic Christians beheaded by the Islamic State in Libya in February.The new church, bearing the name “Church of the Libyan Martyrs,” will be built in the Minya Governorate, south of the capital, Cairo. The church will cost $1.3 million, half of which has already been raised.Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi granted permission for the construction of the church last February after Islamic State militants murdered 21 Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach.According to Father Rafic Greiche, spokesman for the Catholic Church in Egypt,...

The Syrian Civil War is entering a third and potentially very dangerous phase in its continuing evolution. It began as a purely domestic crisis, became steadily internationalized as other countries intervened, and it now risks becoming a full blown Russian-American cold war proxy conflict. This is a conflict that could turn hot very quickly given the proximity of American and Russian military forces in the same theater of operations. The civil war started as an Arab Spring sparked revolt by elements in the Syrian military, under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, against the Assad government. There has been...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians carried out two stabbing attacks in Jerusalem on Saturday before being shot dead by police, while another two Palestinians were killed during a violent demonstration near the Gaza border fence, as violence continued to spread following a series of attacks against civilians and soldiers in the past week. Jerusalem has seen a wave of stabbing attacks linked to tensions over a sensitive holy site in the Old City that is sacred to Jews and Muslims. In recent days the attacks have spread to the rest of Israel, while violent protests have erupted in the West Bank...

Dr. Ben Carson recently asserted that if guns had not been confiscated from Jews then Hitler would have had more trouble orchestrating the Holocaust. Jonathan Greenblatt, National Director of the Anti-Defamation Leauge, quickly objected, stating that there were few firearms available to Jews in Germany in 1938 and that surrendering them did not measurably contribute to the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.   Ben Carson is right, and Jonathan Greenblatt is wrong. For the record, I have hosted a fundraiser for Dr. Carson, but I was also born a Jew and have studied the Holocaust.  And I have spoken...

President Richard Nixon was drunk during the height of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, according to veteran journalist Tim Weiner writing for Politico magazine. Weiner’s book, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, makes the charge. The former New York Times reporter claims that a call recorded by Henry Kissinger proves Nixon was drunk on the fifth day of the crisis after Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel which caught their Intelligence agency by surprise. It became clear in the hours after the 1973 Yom Kippur attack that the Arabs had surprised Israeli forces...

Facebook not only considers Jewish areas of Judea and Samaria (Shomron), but also parts of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, as outside of Israel, according to exposé published Sunday. The social network updated its advertising system recently allowing editors of popular pages the chance to gear their posts toward a specific geographical location. […] Channel 2 tested the new system to aim posts in eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem, for example, and saw that the rest of the State of Israel became automatically “greyed out.” The same happened during any attempt to aim posts toward areas over 1949 Armistice lines or...

April 13, 2015, Monday TurkeyÂ’s Islamists betrayed Uyghurs, damaged ties with China Turkey's relations with China that were upgraded to a strategic partnership in 2010 were dealt a significant blow a year later when increasingly assertive political Islamists in the Turkish government started playing a game of proxies with the Uyghurs of Chinese nationality as part of their short-sighted vision of a regime change in their southern neighbor, Syria. This sudden turn of policy with respect to China's Xinjiang region, shaped at the highest level of the government with chief Islamist Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan setting the bar, has been a...

Billions of barrels of oil have been discovered in Israel, and this discovery could essentially make Israel energy independent for many decades to come. But there is just one problem. This discovery was made in the Golan Heights. If you are not familiar with the Golan Heights, it is an area that Israel took from Syria during the Six-Day War of 1967. The government of Israel considers the Golan Heights to now be part of Israeli territory, but the United Nations does not recognize Israel’s claim. Instead, the UN still recognizes Syrian sovereignty over that area. So now that massive...

The death toll in Saturday's bombing in Turkey's capital, Ankara, has risen to 97 and over 400 other people have been injured, according toTurkish Medical Association. "In total 97 people have been murdered, 68 of them died right after the blast, whereas 29 of them were severely wounded and sent to the hospitals, where they lost their lives," said Dr.Huseyin Demirdezen, a member of head council of Turkish Medical Association. Two powerful bombs exploded near the main train station in Ankara on Saturday morning, targeting a peace rally and causing carnage, killing at least 86 people and injuring 186 others...

NEW YORK—Ankara is ready to work with the international community to combat the Islamic State (ISIS), Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Rudaw on Sunday, insisting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad is the real cause of Syria’s turmoil. “We are ready to work with any country to combat ISIS because ISIS is a threat to all of us,” said Davutoglu in New York. “But we should not forget that three years ago there was no ISIS. Who created ISIS? Assad’s crimes and tyranny created ISIS.” He said that by bombing moderate Syrian opposition forces, the Assad regime had...

The United States has pulled the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier that has been central in the fight against the Islamic State, from the Persian Gulf, military officials said Thursday. NBC News reported that the U.S. Navy now, for the first time since 2007, has no aircraft carrier in the sea. The aircraft carrier was taken out late Thursday so that it can undergo maintenance, but its temporary removal is also part of budget cuts. The nuclear-powered USS Theodore Roosevelt, which houses approximately 5,000 troops and 65 combat planes, has played a large role in the Obama administration bomb...

Washington (CNN)A number of cruise missiles launched from a Russian ship and aimed at targets in Syria have crashed in Iran, two U.S. officials told CNN Thursday. Monitoring by U.S. military and intelligence assets has concluded that at least four missiles crashed as they flew over Iran. One official said there may be casualties, but another official said this is not yet known.

The Obama administration has privately reminded foreign governments and U.S. bankers that sanctions against Iran remain in effect, cautioning against a rush by Western companies to invest in Iran's oil industry and other businesses until the country fully complies with the July nuclear agreement. The U.S. State Department recently cabled a message, known as a demarche, to embassies around the world to reiterate that sanctions on Iran are still in place, diplomatic and government sources told Reuters on Friday. The demarche stressed that sanctions on Iran would not be lifted until the International Atomic Energy Agency verifies that Tehran has...

WASHINGTON — Americans following this year's presidential campaign would never know it from mainstream media coverage, but the commander in chief we hired four years ago has set the United States on a course for unilateral disarmament. The following people hope you won't notice until after Nov. 6: Vladimir Putin, Liang Guanglie, Kim Jong-un, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, A.Q. Khan and of course, Barack Obama. The 10 individuals above share a common fascination: nuclear weapons. Vladimir Putin, Russia's modern czar; Liang Guanglie, minister of national defense for...

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance was ready to deploy troops in Turkey. Meanwhile, Ankara threatened to terminate the natural gas contract with Russia. According to Stoltenberg, the NATO army may appear in Turkey to protect the country from threats coming from the south. The statement was made against the background of reports of violation of Turkish airspace by Russian fighter jets. According to Stoltenberg, NATO is ready to protect all of its allies, including Turkey, from any threats. He added that the Russian operation in Syria was a "cause for concern," Pravda.Ru reports. Turkey has accused...

Russian jet SHOT DOWN by Turkey after it flew into their airspace, according to reports A RUSSIAN jet has been shot down by Turkish forces after it flew into the country's airspace, according to as yet unconfirmed reports circulating on social media.

Russia told Assad to shoot down Turkish plane, murder captured pilots, ‘leaked Syrian documents’ show. Devastating intelligence papers purport to prove jet was downed on Moscow’s orders, pilots captured alive by intelligence unit and then killed; Damascus had claimed June incident was an accident October 1, 2012 DAMASCUS,— Contrary to previous reports, the two pilots of a Turkish F-4 Phantom which was shot down by Syria in June were not killed in the crash, but were murdered by the Assad regime on Russian orders, according to a devastating series of alleged Syrian intelligence documents leaked to and published by Al-Arabiya...

Turkish forces are said to have shot down a Russian jet after it flew into the country's airspace, according to unconfirmed reports on social media. It has been claimed by eyewitnesses that there was a large explosion in Huraytan, northern Syria, while three fighter planes were seen overhead. Rumours of a jet being shot out of the sky come amid heightening tensions between Russian president Vladimir Putin and the West.

Two bomb explosions targeting a peace rally in Turkey's capital Ankara on Saturday killed at least 30 people and injured 126 others, Turkey's Interior Ministry said.

On Thursday, Republican 2016 presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson stated on CNN that the Holocaust would have been less likely had Jews been armed. In his new book, A Perfect Union, Carson contends, “Through a combination of removing guns and disseminating propaganda, the Nazis were able to carry out their evil intentions with relatively little resistance.”