Free Republic

SHEAR YASHUV, Israel (AP) — A missile fired by the Lebanese Hezbollah group struck an Israeli military convoy on Wednesday, an apparent retaliation for a deadly airstrike attributed to Israel that killed six Hezbollah fighters in Syria earlier this month.

President Obama will forego a visit to the Taj Mahal during his visit to India in order to travel to Saudi Arabia for King Abdullah’s funeral, the White House announced early Saturday morning. Vice President Biden was initially scheduled to lead the U.S. delegation, but he will instead now remain in Washington and Obama will add the stop onto his return from India, where the president is embarking on a three-day trip to foster economic ties with the nation. “President Obama and the First Lady will travel to Riyadh on Tuesday, January 27 in order to pay respects to King...

Tony Badran, Now Lebanon January 23, 2015 Israel dealt Iran a painful blow on Sunday when it struck a convoy of senior Iranian and Hezbollah commanders in Quneitra in the Golan Heights. Some Israeli former security officials have explained the strike as preemptive action against an imminent attack on northern Israel. They pointed to an interview by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah three days before, in which he talked about his fighters making incursions into the Galilee in the next war with Israel. Another anonymous Israeli official claimed that the presence of a high-ranking Iranian general in the convoy was a...

Yemen faced a dangerous power vacuum Friday after its president announced his resignation over a deadly standoff with Shiite militia controlling the capital and lawmakers called an emergency weekend session. President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, a key US ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda, said late Thursday that he could no longer stay in office as the country was in "total deadlock". Prime Minister Khalid Bahah also tendered his resignation, saying he did want to be part of the collapse of the country. The fall of Hadi's Western-backed government would raise fears of complete chaos engulfing Yemen, strategically located next to...

The longtime king of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, passed away on Friday. But the death of the 90-year-old monarch didn’t seem to come as much of a shock to the Saudi establishment. When royal officials acknowledged Abdullah’s death, it was also revealed that Crown Prince Salman would succeed his brother. For the time being, the succession process seemed to have preserved stability in the Saudi Kingdom. Within hours, traders who speculated that the new king may take a critical look at Saudi policies, which have allowed crude prices to collapse in recent months, created a rally in the oil...

An Iranian general killed in an Israeli air strike in Syria was not its intended target and Israel believed it was attacking only low-ranking guerrillas, a senior Israeli security source told Reuters on Tuesday. The source declined to be identified because Israel will not confirm or deny whether it carried out the strike. Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Mohammed Allahdadi was killed along with a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group's late military leader, Imad Muughniyeh, in Sunday's attack on a Hezbollah convoy near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

[Editor's Note: Gayle Trotter was able to sit down for an interview with Iraq's Ambassador to the United States, for his perspective on the unrest in the Middle East, terrorism, and America's role in fighting ISIS.]Gayle TrotterTell me a little bit about your background and how you find yourself in Washington, D.C., as the representative of your country Iraq? Lukman Faily My major is in mathematics and computer science so my background was always technical. I worked in various companies in the United Kingdom and worked in IT-related industries, primarily consultancy. I moved on into project management, program management and...

The documents kept by the Iraqi Intelligence Service were meticulous in detail and sweeping in scope. In some, Iraqi intelligence officers in the United States are directed to use informers to track the "criminal'' actions of one current and one former Chicago area resident, both Assyrian Christians from Iraq who founded an anti-Saddam Hussein political party. Another accuses the group of being influenced by "imperialists'' and "Zionists.'' Others include the exact dates of the group's meetings and conventions in Chicago and elsewhere, the names of the people who ran the events, those in attendance and what statements were made. Trips...

In his yearly address to the Vatican Diplomatic Corps on Monday, Pope Francis decried the breakdown of society “spawning violence and death.” Referencing the “tragic slayings which took place in Paris,” Francis blamed enslavement to “deviant forms of religion.” This fundamentalism, Francis said, which uses religion as a pretext for evil, is “born of a corrupt heart, a heart incapable of recognizing and doing good, of pursuing peace.”

Some Yazidi and other Christian communities trace their Syrian and Iraqi roots back nearly 2,000 years. Now they are being systematically exterminated. Not merely driven out. Exterminated – along with Jews, Baha’is and even Muslims insufficiently fundamentalist to suit Islamic State (ISIS) butchers. While they have not yet attained the scale of Nazi and Communist slaughters, these Islamofascist savages may have surpassed their Twentieth Century predecessors in depravity. They ask terrified children, “Who wants to be beheaded first?” then butcher them in front of the others. They bury people alive. Islamist “soldiers” teach little boys how to slice the heads...

Publishing giant HarperCollins has been criticised for omitting Israel from an atlas. The country is not labelled on the map - bought by English-speaking schools in the majority-Muslim Gulf, while Gaza and Jordan are clearly marked. Collins Bartholomew, the subsidiary of HarperCollins, told The Tablet that including Israel would have been 'unacceptable' to their customers in the Gulf and the amendment incorporated 'local preferences'

On the day after Christmas, I wish those I meet a “Good St. Stephen’s Day.” Personal quirk? Surely. But it’s also been my small homage to my faith’s first martyr. And this year his all-but-forgotten feast day has a special relevance.

A message of truth going out to a world drowning in lies. “Thanks to Israel, I Can Have a Merry Christmas,” by Father Gabriel Nadaf (translated by Avi Woolf), Mida.org, December 24, 2014:"Right now, while Christians the world over are celebrating Christmas, entire communities of the followers of Christ cannot rejoice. The Middle East and parts of Africa continue to drown in rivers of blood, with various minorities being targeted by radical Islamic organizations such as ISIS, Hamas, Jabhat al-Nusra, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and others.

... While the U.S. does not export crude oil, its increased production has curbed imports, resulting in excess supply. Although the fracking boom has helped to increase supply and steal market share from the Middle East, it is the Saudi response to the increased production from North American shale that has sent the price of oil tumbling. In September 2014, in the face of falling oil prices, Saudi Arabia chose to increase oil production by half a percent. Days later on Oct. 1, they discounted oil exports to leading Asian customers. These actions set off a rapid decline in international...

Speaking to the Saban Forum in Washington on Saturday, Vice-President Joe Biden said that the talks with Iran, which began about a year ago and recently were extended for another seven months, had “brought significant benefits” and slowed down Iran’s nuclear program.

Pastor Paul BEGLEY just posted a You Tube with this breaking report.

United States military and intelligence officials are still piecing together what happened early Saturday that sabotaged an attempt to rescue two hostages from al Qaeda in Yemen. Despite being ready with a roughly 40-man special operations team and days to plan the operation, U.S. photojournalist Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korki both died shortly after the midnight raid. The key problem, officials told the Wall Street Journal, came when some kind of sound alerted militants who were holding the hostages that the special operations team was nearby. The militants were part of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,...

President Obama on Saturday condemned the "barbaric murder" by al Qaeda of U.S. hostage Luke Somers in Yemen during a rescue attempt by U.S. forces. "On behalf of the American people, I offer my deepest condolences to Luke’s family and to his loved ones," he said in a statement. "As this and previous hostage rescue operations demonstrate, the United States will spare no effort to use all of its military, intelligence, and diplomatic capabilities to bring Americans home safely, wherever they are located. And terrorists who seek to harm our citizens will feel the long arm of American justice," he...

An American kindergarten teacher who is the mother of twins was stabbed to death in the bathroom of an Abu Dhabi shopping mall by a robed figure dubbed the "Reem Island Ghost," police said Wednesday. The teacher was identified by her family as Ibolya Ryan. The attack comes just weeks after the U.S. embassies in the Middle East warned citizens of an anonymous posting on a jihadist website encouraging attacks against teachers at American schools in the Middle East.

The distribution of the most recent video of a Westerner murdered by Islamic State, or ISIS, militants should serve as a stark reminder of the threat we face in the Middle East. The execution by beheading of American aid worker Peter Kassig makes it very clear that the fight must continue. In spite of President Obama’s tough talk that ISIS would be “degraded and destroyed,” the insurgent force grows only more emboldened by the West’s minimalist response to its aggression in Iraq and Syria. The killing of Kassig, who served as a U.S. Army Ranger before dedicating himself to humanitarian...