Free Republic

Thousands of French citizens living in Israel recently received official letters from the French foreign ministry calling on them to vote in the French presidential elections. Channel 2 reported this morning that among those who received letters were hundreds of French-Israelis living over the “Green Line,” who were surprised to find that their place of residence was not addressed as being located in “Israel” — but rather, the “Palestinian Territories.” French parliament member Meir Habib, who represents French citizens living in Israel, sent a harsh letter to French President François Hollande — as well as to leading presidential candidate Emmanuel...

Most union-busting techniques are explicit, like legal challenges and anti-union campaigning. But when all else fails, go for the gut. Yale University's local College Republicans chapter held a barbecue on Friday near the fasting site of campus union organizers participating in a hunger strike directed against the university. Bragging about the wafting, delicious smells on Facebook, it appears to have been a move to torment the fasting grad students, who have thus far gone days without food in a protest for their worker's rights struggle. "It'll taste (and smell) delicious!" the event description said on Facebook. The tactic drew comparisons...

The West Bank-based Palestinian Authority has told Israel that it will stop paying for electricity supplied to the Gaza Strip, Israeli officials say. There was no confirmation from the PA. But President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened "unprecedented steps" to end the political division with the rival Hamas movement, which dominates Gaza. Hamas called Thursday's move "a grave escalation and an act of madness".

TEL AVIV – The Trump administration is gearing up for major cuts in U.S. foreign aid across the world with the notable exception of the Palestinian territories, which will receive increased funding, State Department documents obtained by Foreign Policy magazine show. The documents, part of an internal budget proposal for 2018, seem to confirm the State Department and USAID’s 28 percent budget cut announced in March. While many countries will suffer from major cutbacks or else have aid cancelled entirely, funds to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will see an increase of 4.6 percent for the 2018 fiscal...

Palestinian leaders have continued to issue threats of suing the UK government over the declaration, with Hassassian reportedly saying that there are a “number of attorneys in the UK” who are already making steps to sue the government.

Jesus: social justice warrior? Apparently so, if you believe Jacqui Lewis, senior minister of the very liberal Middle Collegiate Church in NYC. During her appearance on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show this morning, Lewis described Jesus as a “brown-skinned Palestinian man who understood he needed to resist.” The notion that Jesus was Palestinian has been thoroughly debunked. He was Jewish, after all. But that hasn’t stopped anti-Semites like Barack Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, from also making the claim. View the video here.

Despite an incessant terrorist campaign that left thousands of Israelis dead and more injured, the Arabs, now called Palestinians, were projected as victims Nothing has changed in attitudes against the Jews in the last century. From the pogroms of a hundred years ago to the strain inflicted on Israel today there is an eerie similarity.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu revealed in a Knesset committee meeting that former US President Barack Obama requested Israel not send ground forces into Gaza during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge. The meeting’s purpose was to critique how Israel fought Operation Protective Edge, and use that to see how to make the progress of the next war against Hamas, if needed, better. Netanyahu related, “I explained to President Obama that if they continue not accepting the ceasefires, we will have no choice but to send in ground forces. He told me, ‘I am asking you not to send in ground forces.’...

Since 2104, and despite their intense terror campaign, more Palestinians have been killed by Palestinians than Israelis. When they are not attempting to kill Israelis they are killing themselves A frustrated Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Liberman, criticized the United Nations for ignoring the issue of Palestinians killing Palestinians. In a phone conversation with Nikolay Mladenov, the UN Middle East envoy, he complained that while the UN regularly condemns “justified Israeli actions against terrorism” they have nothing to say about decades of intra-sectarian rivalries in which Palestinian kill and injure each other.

Russia on Thursday publicly recognized West Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel. The announcement was made in a statement by Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that addressed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In the statement, Moscow reaffirmed its "support for the two-state solution" while acknowledging that East Jerusalem should be the capital of the future Palestinian state.

Israel sharply condemned a Dublin city council decision to fly the Palestinian flag above the capital’s city hall next month in solidarity with the Palestinian people “living under brutal occupation.” “If the Dublin municipality approves the decision, it will essentially be waving a white flag of surrender to terrorist organizations, hatred and extortion,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon told the Ynet news site. “This is a hostile decision that affects first and foremost the decent citizens of Dublin, and also places a stain of shame on the city,” he added. A Dublin city council subcommittee passed the motion...

Two Arab inhabitants of Bethlehem were arrested last week on suspicion of throwing stones and firebombs at Rachel’s Tomb. One of them was indicted and is being held under arrest until the end of proceedings. Police have recently been conducting a covert investigation of Arabs who on several recent occasions arrived at the fence near the Rachel’s Tomb compound and are suspected of throwing stones and firebombs at security forces operating there. As the investigation progressed and an evidentiary infrastructure was established, two Arabs aged 18 and 21 were arrested on suspicion of planning, preparing, and throwing firebombs and stones...

The cash-strapped Palestinian Authority on Wednesday said it was slashing by nearly one third the salaries of tens of thousands of government employees in the Gaza Strip who have been sitting idly since the rival Hamas militant group took over the coastal territory a decade ago. The decision deepened the divide between the West Bank and Gaza — two territories that the Palestinians hope to turn into an independent state — and increased hardship in already impoverished Gaza. “This cut has worsened our situation. I don’t know how I will get by until the end of the month. Shall I...

Another day, another anti-Israel resolution at the United Nations — this one dressed up in the faux trappings of an assist to Palestinian women. What this resolution really amounts to is one more reason for America to stop funding the UN. Lest that sound overwrought, let’s peer into the UN boudoir whence came this resolution, which passed by a wide margin last week under the anodyne and oh-so-UN title: “Situation of and Assistance to Palestinian Women.” Sounds reasonable, perhaps?

The leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement denounced the United Nations on Saturday as weak after the withdrawal of a report accusing Israel of imposing an "apartheid regime" on Palestinians.A senior U.N. official resigned on Friday after the secretary-general asked her to remove the report, published by the United Nation's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), from the internet.U.N. Under-Secretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf said she was leaving after "powerful member states" had pressured the world body and its chief with "vicious attacks and threats". Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised speech...

NOTE: I could not sleep last night so I turned on a program called DEMOCRACY NOW without knowing what it was. As an aside, I only have TV to watch FOX NEWS and football. Back to the point. I was amazed at the crap I was watching. TRUMP IS RIGHT --- DEFUND PUBLIC BROADCASTING ASAP. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For the first time, a United Nations agency has directly accused Israel of imposing an "apartheid regime" on the Palestinian people. The report also urges governments to "support boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS] activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives." The findings...

At least 64 Americans have been killed in Palestinian terror attacks since 1993, but U.S. authorities up until now have never prosecuted any of the perpetrators in U.S. courts. On Tuesday, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment and warrant of arrest for an Arab terrorist involved in a 2001 suicide bombing in a Jerusalem pizza restaurant in which two Americans were among 15 people killed. The indictment against Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi, who has been living freely in Jordan since her 2011 release in an Israeli-Hamas prisoner exchange, has been under seal since July 15, 2013. …

A law to muffle mosques’ amplified calls to prayer in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem won preliminary approval on Wednesday in a charged parliamentary session where Arab legislators denounced the measure as racist. Supporters of the bill say it is aimed at improving the quality of life of people living near mosques who have been losing sleep. The calls usually begin sounding a little before 5 A.M. through loudspeakers mounted on minarets Opponents say the legislation, sponsored by right-wing parties, impinges on the religious freedom of Israel’s Muslim minority. Arabs make up almost 20 percent of the population and have...

House and Senate Republicans on Tuesday introduced legislation that would cut off U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority under certain conditions. The bill would halt funding “to the Palestinian Authority if they continue their policy of paying monetary rewards to terrorists and their surviving family members,” a release about the measure says. Language for the bill, which replicates its previous version, says it would limit assistance to the West Bank and Gaza only until the secretary of State certifies that the Palestinian Authority has taken steps “to end acts of violence” against U.S. and Israeli citizens, that it publicly condemns...

The head of a Palestinian terrorist group in Lebanon said he would like to see Iranian soldiers take part in an “all-out war” to liberate Palestine, and that the future Palestinian conquest would include an invasion of both Israel and Jordan. Ahmad Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, told Hezbollah’s Al-Mayadeen TV on February 17 that his group wants “to see the revolutionary fighters from [Iran] in the Galilee.” Jibril spoke of spoke of creating “an axis of resistance” against Israel that would include Syria, Iraq, Iran and Hezbollah — all devoted to “the...