Free Republic

A series of maps of Judea and Samaria, focusing on the placement of Jewish communities and Israeli military facilities in the area, provoked a dramatic change in the Obama administration’s policies vis-à-vis Israel, a report by The New Yorker claims. According to the report Monday, a presentation by then-Secretary of State John Kerry to President Barack Obama in the waning days of the administration ‘shocked’ the president into taking a more aggressive stance towards Israel, withholding America’s veto on a United Nations Security Council resolution critical of Israeli policies in Judea and Samaria. The Obama administration, like its predecessors, had...

Crude oil prices could jump as high as US$250 a barrel if Iran goes through with its threat to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to U.S. pressure on oil buyers to cut their Iranian purchases to zero, RT reports, quoting analysts. The most bullish among these analysts was Artem Avinov from online broker TeleTrade, who saw prices skyrocketing to US$250 a barrel if the Strait of Hormuz is blocked, disrupting about 17 million bpd in seaborne oil trade. Avinov, however, added that this course of events is very unlikely, suggesting Iran would instead opt for “a quick economic...

The Gulf Arab state of Qatar has called on Israel to issue thousands of entry permits to Gazans living in the Hamas-ruled Strip, allowing them to work in Israel, arguing that such a move would reduce tensions and end the ongoing wave of “kite terrorism” and balloon bomb attacks. Since March 30th, tens of thousands of Gaza rioters have gathered on the Israel border, clashing with IDF forces and attempting to breach the security fence. In recent weeks, however, the rioters have shifted from direct attacks on the border to the use of improvised explosive or incendiary devices, attached to...

In a post on her now-defunct blog, MSNBC anchor Joy Ann Reid attacked CNN’s Wolf Blitzer for treating Jewish guests with too much understanding. Blitzer is a “former flak for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),” reads the post from July 16, 2006. “He doesn’t even try to hide his affinity for his Israeli guests, or his partisanship for their cause, while turning instantly to prosecutorial mode when questioning any guest who has the dumb luck to be an Arab or Muslim in King Blitzer’s court,” Reid continues. “It’s actually quite stunning how brazen Blitzer’s bias has become.” In...

The U.S. Navy stands ready to ensure free navigation and the flow of commerce, the U.S. military’s Central Command said on Thursday, as Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned they would block oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz if necessary. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and some senior military commanders have threatened in recent days to disrupt oil shipments from the Gulf countries if Washington tries to cut Tehran’s exports.

As Syrian government forces press on with a furious offensive against rebel-held areas in the country's south, Israel is quietly acknowledging that President Bashar Assad's forces will soon be on its doorstep, laying down red lines for postwar relations with the Syrian leader. Israel's main concern is to keep archrival Iran, an Assad ally, as far away from its border as possible — along with its proxy, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. "Our demand is that the Iranian forces will go out or withdraw from Syria as a whole, and in it specifically southwest Syria," said a senior Israeli military official.It...

Germany has been brokering an exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, and in recent weeks has proposed a concrete arrangement, the London-based Arabic language Al-Hayat newspaper said Thursday. In the deal, Israel would release Hamas terrorists it is holding in prison, in exchange for the remains of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin, Hy”d, and Oron Shaul, Hy”d, along with Israelis Avraham Mengistu and Hisham a-Sayad. According to the report, Germany has been trying to broker a deal for the past three years — almost since the end of Operation Protective Edge, when both Goldin and Shaul went missing in a battle...

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The lawyer of Kurdish death row prisoner said a group of lawyers, including himself, had signed a letter to the President of Iran to stop the execution of the “innocent” man.Amid fears of Ramin Hossein Panahi being on the verge of execution, “60 lawyers of Persian and Kurdish ethnicities quickly wrote a letter to the President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, also the head of Supreme National Security Council,” Mohsen Ahmadi, Panahi’s lawyer, told Kurdistan 24 on Tuesday.Describing Panahi’s arrest as “illegal,” Ahmadi, asserted that there were hidden hands that pushed for his client’s death sentence.Panahi was...

An Iranian general has accused Israel of ‘manipulating weather’ to prevent rain over the Islamic republic – aka, stealing the country’s clouds. Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran’s Civil Defence Organisation, alleged that his country was facing cloud ‘theft’ during a press conference. However he was later contradicted by the nation’s weather chief.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel has denied entry to a Jewish-American activist for advocating boycotts of the Jewish state. Israel’s immigration authority says the activist, Ariel Gold, arrived to Israel Sunday and was refused entry at the airport. Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan said “whoever works consistently for a boycott against Israel will not enter here.” Gold is the national co-director of CODEPINK....

Federal Judge Rosemary Collyer refused the Fraenkel family's request to reconsider the low compensation imposed on Iran and Syria as those responsible for the kidnapping and murder of their son Naftali, along with Eyal Yifrach and Gil-Ad Sha'ar. The verdict set a compensation of $ 4.1 million, while the suit demanded $ 340 million, an amount that was common in previous similar suits. The suit was based on the fact that Naftali's family had American citizenship. The judge explained her decision with an outrageous statement that also imposed responsibility on the Fraenkel family, which she asserted had exposed itself to...

An Iranian general has accused Israel of stealing its clouds in order to manipulate weather and cause drought in the Islamic Republic. Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran's Civil Defence Organisation said that the changing climate in Iran is 'suspect'. 'Foreign interference is suspected to have played a role in climate change,' said Jalali, who insisted results from an Iranian scientific study 'confirm' the claim. 'Israel and another country in the region have joint teams which work to ensure clouds entering Iranian skies are unable to release rain,' he said. 'On top of that, we are facing the...

The Obama administration granted citizenship to 2,500 Iranians, including family members of government officials, while negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, a senior cleric and member of parliament has claimed. Hojjat al-Islam Mojtaba Zolnour, who is chairman of Iran’s parliamentary nuclear committee and a member of its national security and foreign affairs committee, made the allegations during an interview with the country’s Etemad newspaper, cited by the country’s Fars News agency. He claimed it was done as a favor to senior Iranian officials linked to President Hassan Rouhani, and he alleged the move sparked a competition among Iranian officials over whose...

My friends, we will stand together. We will stand firm. We will not submit. Never. Not in Israel, not in Europe, not in America. Nowhere. We will survive. We will stop islam. We will defend our freedoms. We will remain free. via A warning to America -- Speech Geert Wilders, Cornerstone Church, Nashville, 12 May 2011 Dear friends from Tennessee. I am very happy to be in your midst today. I am happy and proud to be in this impressive church. My friends, I am here to speak words of truth and freedom. Do you know why America is in...

WILL TRUMP TOPPLE THE AYATOLLAH? Barack Obama pursued the fantasy of a U.S.-Iran alliance and sought to build up Iran as a regional power. Trump has sought to weaken them both externally and internally. This Reuters report suggests that he may be succeeding far better than I, for one, imagined: Mounting pressure from the Trump administration combined with discontent among many Iranians at the state of the economy are rattling the Islamic Republic, with little sign that its leaders have the answers, officials and analysts say. The rail hasdropped 40% in value. Odd that this hasn’t been more widely reported:...

Israel is rushing to secure its northeastern border after the latest onslaught from Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad drove 120,000 people to flee their homes. A war monitoring group said today that most of the refugees are heading towards the border with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. A senior Israeli minister said refugees gathering at the Golan frontier must be prevented from crossing into Israel.

The socialist congressional candidate whose primary-election upset of a Democratic House leader made national news this week claimed Israel committed a “massacre” of Palestinians in Gaza, despite the admission of Hamas that most of the dead were Hamas operatives. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, wrote in a May 14 tweet that the killing of some 60 Palestinians in “March of Return” protests that day was a “massacre” and that “no state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters,” reported the Jewish News Syndicate. “There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else,” she said. “Democrats can’t...

At least 17 civilians have been killed in an air strike on a basement shelter in south-western Syria, activists say, as warplanes pound rebel-held areas. A monitoring group reported that five children were among those who died when aircraft identified as Russian bombed Musayfira, east of the city of Deraa. Russia is backing an army offensive in the region, which borders Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. More than 90 civilians are said to have been killed since it began 11 days ago. The provinces of Deraa and Quneitra had been relatively calm for almost a year because of a...

A progressive Democrat in New York who called Israel’s killing of violent Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border a “massacre” scored a major upset over incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a contentious party primary. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, defeated Crowley, 56, by a margin of 58-42 percent in Tuesday’s election, toppling a lawmaker who was viewed as the successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ocasio-Cortez belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America and is a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who ran as a Democrat in the 2016 presidential primaries. New...

Four Arab countries are backing Donald Trump’s plan for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, according to an Israeli newspaper, and are willing to sideline the PA’s President Mahmoud Abbas to see it done. According to a report in Israel Hayom, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan told Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law and the man charged with solving the Israel-Palestine issue, and envoy Jason Greenblatt they were behind Washington’s so-called “deal of the century”. Israel Hayom, a daily newspaper owned by billionaires Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, reported that it spoke to officials from...