Free Republic

If you want to understand what's really going on in the alleged Israel-Palestinian peace process-beyond the babble that progress is being made, it's all Israel's fault, and everyone is working hard on it-here's what you need to know. For the present, the Palestinian leadership isn't interested in pursuing negotiations with Israel because it has a different strategy: get everything it wants from others without making any concessions. First, the Palestinian Authority (PA) came very close to obtaining a European Union (EU) resolution which made it sound like the Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem is an accomplished fact. The...

The Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), a U.S. taxpayer-funded organization noted for the virulent anti-Israeli attitudes of its academic members, held a conference in October at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Most of the conference was apolitical, but two lectures in particular raise (again) the question of whether PARC should be the recipient of taxpayer monies. Indeed, this is not the first time the public has been warned about PARC's questionable scholar-activism. Titled, "Palestine: What We Know," and billed as "a multi-disciplinary survey of the state of scholarship on Palestine," much of the October event was scholarly...

Truthfully, the real reason there is no peace between Israel and the Palestinians is the Palestinians don't want peace. No other country in the world has made concessions the way Israel has. Since 1977, they given up areas of land three times the size of the State of Israel. The Oslo process began in 1993. Sixteen years have passed since then, and they are no closer to a permanent settlement. The Palestinians don't want peace, after all its bad for buisness. It is the hatred of Israel that allows the PA to keep power. It deflects public anger from their...

A prospective juror who is a priori prejudiced will, as a matter of course, be dismissed from serving on a jury pool. Many use this knowledge to be excused from jury service. Israel finds herself in the most peculiar position of always being found guilty before deliberations even begin. The World, itself Judge and Jury, stands and applauds: the harsher the treatment, the stronger the clapping. Israel’s Prime Minister decided to freeze all construction within Jewish settlements for ten months. This created an uproar, first because of the manner which it was done (decided in a cabinet meeting and implemented...

Dividing land with Palestinians or returning it to Mexicans? Politically-correct justice of Obama wants violation of the territorial integrity of Israel, but no violation of the territorial integrity of the US By Julio Severo Barack Obama is the man of inclusivity, plurality and diversity. What does it mean? It means that he respects the politically-correct ideology above traditions, morality and Christianity itself, which is an inseparable and undeniable part of the founding of the United States. PC ideology commands Obama to remind in his speeches the Islamic participation in the building of the US. Even though that participation was insignificant,...

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The EU must put real pressure on Israel to halt settlement growth in East Jerusalem or risk seeing an escalation of the Middle East conflict that could spill into Europe, a Jewish politician on the front line of the peace process has warned. "We have reached the last moment when it is still possible to divide and share Jerusalem. If it [decisive action] does not happen this year, it will become impossible to implement any plan like the two-state solution," Meir Margalit, a Jerusalem city councillor, told EUobserver in a phone interview on Thursday (3 December).

Why did the New York Times scrub out news that it broke about the White House-crashing couple’s ties to an organization that supports Islamic terrorism? Yes, Tareq Salahi, the male half of the couple who crashed the White House State Dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is a Palestinian and likely Muslim. And not only that he’s an activist Palestinian who is likely Muslim, and who is on the board of the Muslim-dominated American Task Force on Palestine...

JERUSALEM -- Israel last year revoked the Jerusalem residency of more than 4,500 Palestinians, far more than in any other year since Israel took full control of the city in 1967, according to government figures obtained under the country's freedom of information act by a local human rights group. In what an official for the group on Wednesday called a "frightening" escalation in the enforcement of Jerusalem residency laws, the Interior Ministry said that a sweep of its files last spring turned up thousands of names of Palestinian Jerusalemites who had left the country for longer than the allowed seven...

WASHINGTON – The UN is currently marking the historic date of November 29 1947, the day in which it approved the partition plan separating Israel into two states – Jewish and Arabic. But while in Israel the date is celebratory, as it marks the end of the British mandate and the beginning of independent rule, the UN headquarters in New York and Geneva are holding ceremonies of mourning and solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Today Bibi Netanyahu played a brilliant move, in Yiddish its called Hey put tuchas offen tisch, literally, Hey put your "arse" on the table (put up or shut up). He offered a ten month freeze in settlement building in exchange for restarting the peace plans. I doubt very strongly the freeze will every happen. The truth is the real reason there is no peace is the Palestinians don't want peace. No other country in the world has made concessions the way Israel has. Since 1977, we they given up areas of land three times the size of the State of...

“Why aren’t priests in this country doing more to help Arab Christian Palestinians?” As we sat down for dinner at the 2009 awards banquet sponsored by the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, the question caught me by surprise. I had been invited by chance, but in all honesty I knew very little about the organization. Thanks to that question, however, I now know much more about why all Christians should be deeply concerned about today’s Christian Palestinians. There should always be a solidarity among Christians, regardless of where we live. As such, when one of us suffers, we all suffer....

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has said some things that would make your scratch your head - like getting a thrill up his leg from a speech given by Barack Obama. However, this one will really make you wonder what he was thinking. On his Nov. 9 broadcast of "Hardball," in an interview with Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, Matthews compared the incident of Maj. Nidal M. Hasan at Ft. Hood to Sirhan Sirhan's 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. "You know, I have a hard time with this because people like Sirhan Sirhan, who is...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared that he wanted to immediately resume negotiations with the Palestinians Monday and rejected the charge that he wasn't interested in reaching an agreement. "We need to move toward peace with a sense of urgency and a sense of purpose," Netanyahu told the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly during a trip to Washington. "My goal is not negotiations for the sake of negotiations; My goal is to achieve a permanent peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, and soon. I cannot be more emphatic on this point." Critics of Netanyahu, particularly in the Arab...

Concerns are growing in Israel's government over the possibility of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence within the 1967 borders, a move which could potentially be recognized by the United Nations Security Council. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently asked the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama to veto any such proposal, after reports reached Jerusalem of support for such a declaration from major European Union countries, and apparently also certain U.S. officials. The reports indicated that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has reached a secret understanding with the Obama administration over U.S. recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Such recognition...

Palestinians Right to Water by Ari Bussel A lecture Downtown Los Angeles by a self-declared “Palestinian from Palestine” was titled: Israel’s control of water as a tool of Apartheid and means of ethnic cleansing.” Following the talk, I was asked for my opinion. I replied: Nothing should surprise me any more. According to the speaker, America’s counterpart, Israel, is thirsting the “Palestinians” out of “their own” land. There is much to learn from Israel about water: from reclamation to desalination methods, from agriculture in arid areas to existence in the desert. Israel has perfected over the last century age-old methods,...

Imam says Fort Hood suspect didn't seem radicalAssociated Press 11/05/09 10:35 PM EST SILVER SPRING, MD. — A Maryland imam at the mosque attended by the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter says the Army psychiatrist never seemed to be an extremist. Imam Faizul Khan says he knew Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan for more than 10 years. They first met at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring. Kahn says Hasan was quiet and reserved. They mostly discussed religious matters, but Khan says Hasan never seemed controversial. They rarely discussed politics. Kahn says they spoke often about how Hasan wanted to...

Just in.

Middle East peace hopes were dealt a blow on Thursday when Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian leader, announced he would stand down within weeks. He expressed frustration over shifts in the White House's policy on Israeli settlement construction as he told colleagues he was not prepared to seek a second term in elections in January. The loss of one of the Palestinian hierarchy's most conciliatory voices left President Barack Obama's Middle East peacekeeping efforts floundering and raised questions about his handling of negotiations in the region. Critics say the US president has fatally undermined Mr Abbas by conceding political ground...

Hasan is a U.S.-born Muslim of Palestinian descent whose parents came to the United States from the West Bank. He joined the military after high school and earned medical degrees as he rose through the ranks, family members said. 'snip' Hasan attended the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring and was "very devout," according to Faizul Khan, a former imam at the center. Khan said Hasan attended prayers at least once a day, seven days a week, often in his Army fatigues.

Tomorrow millions of children across America will be putting on their scariest costumes and going door to door asking for candy. Its that Halloween time of the year once again. An whether you are a parent or not, or whether your children go "trick or treating" or not, I guarantee that your house is going to be swarmed by lots of little ghosts, goblins, spider-men and Pink Power Rangers. Many of the visitors will be carrying the little orange UNICEF boxes, when you see them give up the candy, but please DON'T GIVE ANY MONEY TO UNICEF !! UNICEF money...

Chaos is the only term that can describe the events taking place in Jerusalem these past few days and it doesn’t look like the mayhem will subside anytime soon. Israeli police are in an all out battle with masked Palestinian protesters as stun grenades, stones, petrol bombs and plastic chairs are raining from the sky. The fact that this World War III type of scene is happening outside one of Jerusalem’s most holy shrines shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to those who are familiar with the history between these two enemies. As Israeli riot police tried to extinguish...

Actions and Consequences by Ari Bussel “Protecting evil and elevating it over good is the surest path to destruction. When civilization stresses the rights of the perpetrators more of those of the victims, the balance of humanity will be thrown off and civilization will crumble.” Norma Zager The current generation in Israel hardly remembers what its founders have known. Many do not even fathom the wisdom to study their own core values, dismissing their eternal code of ethics as archaic, lacking modern luster or being ultra-religious (thus possibly poisonous or infectious). Israel needs to go back to basics. It is...

Israeli police firing stun grenades faced off Sunday against masked Palestinian protesters hurling stones and plastic chairs outside the Holy Land's most volatile shrine, where past violence has escalated into prolonged conflict. A wall of Israeli riot police behind plexiglass shields marched toward young men covering their faces with T-shirts and scarves, sending many of them running for cover into the Al-Aqsa mosque, one of the Islamic structures in the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. They remained holed up in the mosque with police outside for several hours until dispersing...

The world finally has a definitive answer to the age-old question about whether intelligence is the same thing as common sense. That answer, in case you've ever wondered, is a conclusive "no."

JERUSALEM – The Palestinian president's political party says all hopes in the Obama administration have "evaporated," accusing the White House of caving in to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby and backing off a demand to freeze Jewish settlement. Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party also accused the U.S. of failing to set a clear agenda for a new round of Mideast peace talks, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday. "All hopes placed in the new U.S. administration and President Obama have evaporated," the document said. Obama "couldn't withstand the pressure of the Zionist lobby, which led...

TEL AVIV – Senior Palestinian Authority officials told WND the Obama administration offered their group guarantees that the U.S. would pressure Israel over a Palestinian state in exchange for the PA's withdrawal of support for immediate U.N. action over an investigation claiming Israel committed war crimes. The PA officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND the guarantees include pressing Israel to agree to a two-year timetable to negotiate a Palestinian state set along the pre-1967 lines – meaning a state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem. The officials said the Obama administration hopes to...

Here is video of a Fox News Crew led by reporter Mike Tobin being caught in a clash between Palestinians and Israeli Security Forces in Jerusalem as tensions rise there. Tensions are mounting as U.S. envoy George Mitchell is seeking to pressure Israel to agree to stop building settlements in disputed areas, something that Israel has refused to agree to. The Fox crew was not hurt seriously, but did get hit with some rocks. . . . (VIDEO)

Should the Palestinian Authority (PA) be the main advocate pushing acceptance of the bizarre Goldstone report in order to demonize Israel at the UN or might it just stand aside and let a couple of dozen Arab and Muslim-majority states take the lead? This is—or should be—a minor issue but it has blown up to once again push the main reality of the Arab-Israeli conflict into everyone’s face. When the U.S. government asked the PA not to be the main sponsors of demanding UN sanctions against Israel, the Palestinian leadership agreed for a few hours. But then, unable to resist...

At least 100 Palestinians on the Temple Mount were refusing to leave the area on Sunday afternoon, despite an Israeli decision made on Sunday morning to shut down the site due to security concerns. The Palestinian Authority and the Waqf instructed the men to arrive at the site on Saturday night and stay put, fearing what they termed a "Jewish takeover." Approximately 150 Arabs hurled rocks and bottles at security forces in the Old City on Sunday morning shortly after the decision to shut down the compound was announced. Border Police closed off roads around the Old City and dispersed...

Westminster Magistrates court in central London postponed on Tuesday evening a hearing over whether to issue an arrest warrant for Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the grounds that he committed "war crimes" due his part in IDF Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip, last January. In the first case of its kind since the publication of the Goldstone Report, a group of Palestinians had appealed to the court seeking Barak's arrest. Despite the petition, Barak decided not to change his plans for his UK visit, with his bureau releasing a statement saying: "No arrest warrant has been issued, and...

Israeli police fired stun grenades on Sunday to disperse 150 Palestinians who hurled stones at Jewish worshipers visiting a sensitive religious site in the Old City before the start of the holiest day for Jews. Two policemen were lightly wounded, a spokesman said, and Palestinian medics said they evacuated a Palestinian man suffering from a head injury. Police restored calm and closed the complex after the incident. The incident occurred before Yom Kippur in the complex known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as al-Harm al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary). It houses al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the...

This is more evidence that the Palestinian leaders have no real desire to make peace, they continue to deny history. You can't negotiate with people with people who deny your legitimacy. Last month Sheik Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority said: Jews have no history in the city of Jerusalem: They have never lived there, the Temple never existed, and Israeli archaeologists have admitted as much. Those who deny this are simply liars. ..his comments come on the heels of those by Shamekh Alawneh, a lecturer in modern history at Al Quds University. On an Aug....

When it was launched last December, Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip looked to most people in Washington to be risky, counterproductive and doomed to futility. 'snip' But today, Operation Cast Lead, as the three-week operation is known in Israel, is generally regarded by the country's military and political elite as a success. The reasons for that are worth examining now that a new and even more hawkish Israeli government is weighing whether to flout Washington's prevailing opposition to a military attack on Iran. Israel's satisfaction starts with a simple set of facts. Between April 2001 and the end of...

Few subjects get written about more often - and inaccurately - than the Palestinians, yet there is curiously little interest in the politics and ideology governing their behavior. The same situation applies to the man slated to become their next leader, only the third to hold that post in 50 years, after Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. The fact that an issue that is supposedly the most important, high-priority question in the world is studied so little has a simple explanation. The contemporary narrative is that the Palestinian leaders yearn for a state, an end to the conflict, and peace,...

It seems Liam has trouble with Jews, perhaps more specifically Israelis. He issued a report for the show on the horrors of Israelis in the West Bank Judea and Samaria. We'll start here: Broadcast on Friday September 18, reporter Liam Bartlett starts with the wholly erroneous statement that "hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers are moving into the West Bank, building new towns on Palestinian land."

IT'S September -- prime time for Israel-bashing as world leaders and dignitar ies convene at the United Nations. This year, Israel's antagonists have intensified their efforts to smear the Jewish state over its operations against Hamas terrorists in Gaza in December and January. The Obama administration is doing nothing to combat that campaign -- even though it could wind up facilitating international "war crimes" prosecutions of American troops. Last week, UN-appointed "fact finder" Richard Goldstone released his report on the Gaza conflict. The UN Human Rights Council initially authorized his mission to investigate only alleged criminal acts committed by Israelis;...

Last year Zbigniew Brzezinski, adviser to former US president Jimmy Carter, described the Bush administration's policy of maintaining the option of military action against Iran as "counterproductive." Now Brzezinski, who advises Obama on foreign policy, is calling for the US to shoot down Israeli jets. Brzezinski is known to be anti-Israel. The Weekly Standard Blog reported: In a little noticed interview with the Daily Beast (presumably little noticed because serious people don't read the Daily Beast), Zbigniew Brzezinski suggests that Barack Obama do more than just refuse to support an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites -- the American president...

JERUSALEM – President Obama is "fed up" with Israel while his administration has given the Palestinians guarantees they will eventually take over Jewish homes and buildings throughout most of the West Bank, a top Palestinian Authority official claimed to WND. "We heard from the U.S. that no matter what Israel is building in the West Bank, it will not affect a final status agreement to create a Palestinian state," said the PA official, who spoke on condition his name be withheld. "The Americans told us (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu might construct in the West Bank for now but we (Palestinians)...

US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice on Wednesday. Senior Palestinian officials who met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas after his meeting with the American statesman Tuesday told Ynet that the US commitment to reach a peace deal within two years was clarified during the meeting.   The Palestinians estimate the Americans are adopting de facto the plan presented by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.  The meeting between Mitchell and Netanyahu started about an hour late on Wednesday. The two discussed the possibility of holding three-way talks between Netanyahu, Abbas,...

(IsraelNN.com) The Israel HaYom newspaper reveals a leftist turn for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Speaking in an interview to be published Thursday, the Prime Minister admitted he had come to terms with dividing the Land of Israel. “The land is already divided. How it will [yet] be divided, that is the question,” the newspaper reports. In the interview, Netanyahu insisted that the new reality required “practical solutions”. “How will the land be divided? Territory-wise, there have been those who predicted the land would be divided according to the 1967 armistice lines, which is not acceptable to me. Israel requires defensible...

United Nations investigator Judge Richard Goldstone said on Tuesday that his commission had found that both Israel and the Palestinians committed war crimes during the offensive on the Gaza Strip earlier this year. Goldstone concluded that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity, during its December 27-January 18 military operations in the Hamas-ruled territory. A summary of his nearly 600-page report on the fact-finding mission's conclusions also said the firing of rockets into Israel by Palestinian militants where there were no military targets would constitute war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity, as well.

Myth 1: "Israel was created because Europe felt guilty about the Holocaust." This left wing myth has been widely repeated, most recently by Desmond Tutu. While blatantly false on a level that even the most serious anti-Israel historian can recognize, it persists because its function is to delegitimize as the product of post-war colonial guilt, rather than longstanding Israeli national aspirations. Israel was not created in 1947. By 1947, Israel already was a functioning country with a language, culture, agriculture, universities, newspapers and military forces which proved capable of defending against the armies of several Arab nations. The only thing...

OSAMA bin Laden? Oh, yeah. Him. The 9/11 guy. Used to be a terrorist star. Now he's just a has-been hiding in a remote cave or compound, too afraid to appear in a video and unable to command much of anything. He can't even get a 9/11-anniversary audiotape to the media on time. Hope we kill him. Sooner, rather than later. He's still unfinished business. But Osama ain't got the licks he used to have. And he's changing his tune -- in a frantic attempt to get the Muslim world to pay attention again. (It's tough being a has-been, when...

President Obama is ramping up his one-sided pressure on Israel in his quest to achieve a middle-east peace plan that will be detrimental to the Jewish State. The Palestinian-leaning POTUS' latest threat is that if Netanyahu doesn't cave on the settlement issue, Obama will not be his friend.... "Netanyahu’s at a pivotal moment,” said a senior U.S. official. “Depending on what he decides, he could wind up with a very strong relationship with President Obama and potentially become a historic figure in Israel."

The story of Sweden's blood libel against Israel gets uglier. Evidence mounts that Swden actually funded the ‘researchers" who charged the IDF with selling body parts of Palestinians. That Sweden was the focal point for this kind of vicious libel is not surprising. But the more important point is that each month now, it seems, new lines are crossed in what is deemed acceptable commentary on Israel in the world press. The demonization of Israel that is breaking out all over, closely resembles the demonization of Jews in Nazi Germany before World War War 2. It is the path to...

The Los Angeles Times has crossed another anti-Israel line. The details below give you everything you need - included the contact information for all the LAT Op-Ed advertisers. Let's "Beck 'em"! This time the paper published in its opinion pages a call for international economic sanctions against the Jewish state. Under the headline "Boycott Israel"(August 20), Neve Gordon, an Israeli academic at Ben Gurion University, leveled the "apartheid" smear and urged support for the "Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement." A veteran defamer of Israel, Gordon repeatedly referred to his Jewish identity as supposed proof of the merit of his fringe...

The latest United Nations anti-Israel report was written solely "to appease the Arab-controlled Human Rights Council," Aharon Leshno Yaar, Israel's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said on Saturday.

The government has imposed new restrictions on visitors to the Palestinian Authority, stamping their passports with a visa that bars them from entering Israel. The new "Palestinian Authority Only" visa is the latest in a growing raft of measures imposed by Israel to restrict the movement of visitors to Palestinian-controlled areas. The government says it needs to make sure that people who pose a security risk are not free to wander around Israel. Critics say the new regulations are a violation of international law and the Oslo Accords. Betty Najjab, an American from Centreville, Virginia, who married a Palestinian from...

Imagine an annual economic growth rate of 7%, declining unemployment, a thriving tourism industry, and a 24% hike in the average daily wage. Where in today's gloomy global market could one find such gleaming forecasts? Singapore? Brazil? Guess again. The West Bank.

The Land Mine of Lies by Ari Bussel What is a person who does not believe in “The Book,” the Jewish Old Testament, to do? Jewish people claim God promised them the land of Israel for all eternity. Christians, by and large, support this claim. More recently, the League of Nations granted Jews their land in an official, legal act. Unlike the covenant with God, when drawn on paper, boundaries were changed at will using green, blue or red markers. Diverse interests and powerful influences resulted in splitting the land between a Jewish state and an Arab one. Palestinian Arabs...