Free Republic

Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Saturday rejected a proposal to include a statement in the party's platform calling for Israel's "end to occupations and illegal settlements," CNN reported. ... While the committee voted against the addition 95-73, CNN reported that the move garnered the loudest negative response of the day from the audience. ... One crowd member was escorted out of the meeting after he stood up and yelled that the party had "sold out" to AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).

Franks said that one strategic strike could create blackouts nationwide. And the consequences of this could be a field day for hackers, cripple our military defense system, and that’s not even mentioning what life would be like for normal Americans if they had no power. The risk of an EMP attack has been around since the Cold War but according to Franks, “we’re a thousand times more vulnerable than we were even 50 years ago.”

A senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently threatened Israel, saying the ground is ready for the annihilation of “the Zionist regime”. The comments by IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami were made at a sermon in Tehran this past Friday prior to prayers marking Al-Quds Day. He also declared that Iran has over 100,000 missiles waiting in Lebanon alone and that tens of thousands of other missiles were placed throughout the Muslim world in order to wipe "the accursed black dot" – that is Israel – from the map of the world. Salami also threatened Kurdish leaders...

President Hassan Rouhani said the last year’s nuclear deal “was the cheapest way to achieve Iran’s goals and interests.” Speaking in Tehran on Saturday at an iftar meal breaking the Ramadan fast, Rouhani said the pre-Iran nuclear-deal era is past and Iran now needs to take advantage of the new atmosphere to pursue its “national interests more than before,” Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday called for student associations to establish a “unified anti-US and anti-Zionist front” among the Muslim world’s students, Tasnim News Agency reported. “By using advanced means of...

WASHINGTON -- Frustrated over a stall in an arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Obama once questioned the necessity of maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge in the region, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Monday. Panetta was confirming a report from Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who attributed the claim to him in an article on Obama's foreign policy doctrine published last March. The former Pentagon chief said the White House, at the time, was deeply concerned that Israel was preparing to unilaterally strike Iran. Simultaneously, the administration was also hoping to complete with Riyadh a significant sale of fighter jets....

Three years into the tenure of Hassan Rouhani who himself and many in the West promised to be a “moderate” and “reformist” poised to bring about change in Iran, we have only witnessed an unprecedented spike in human rights violations, including horrendous public floggings and especially executions. Overt 2,400 executions in the past three years is the report card Iran and Rouhani carry, with Amnesty International and many other international human rights organizations registering Iran sent nearly 1,000 people to the gallows in 2015 alone. Various religious minorities, including Arabs, Baha’is, Christians, Jews and others have also been targeted...

Istanbul governor: 28 killed and 60 wounded We have just received an update on the casualties from the attack from Istanbul's governor. At least 28 people have died, with approximately 60 more wounded.

Using funding from Western taxpayers, and Americans in particular, United Nations schools are teaching Arab children to glorify terrorism and wage constant war against their Jewish neighbors, according to a new film. In the explosive documentary released late last month by a pro-Israel watchdog group, schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) are even exposed offering military-style training to young children. That training, combined with a curriculum that teaches fervent hatred of Jews, is a recipe for disaster, the producer said, citing the recent wave of attacks. But now, U.S. lawmakers are speaking out, with media reports...

The Israeli military has demolished the home of the Palestinian terrorist who fatally stabbed American tourist and former U.S. Army officer Taylor Force in a terror attack back in March. Ten others were also wounded in the attack. The troops entered the West Bank village of Hajjah early on Tuesday to knock down the residence of Bashar Masalha. […] Force was a Vanderbilt University graduate student visiting Israel during a school trip. He previously graduated from West Point and served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Masalha was killed by police after the attack. The assault was part of...

Following the Orlando terror attack, Professor Ahmad Nofal of the University of Jordan said in his weekly program that gunman Omar Mateen was a "sick personality" with "perverse tendencies" and that "[homosexuality] is controlled and imposed upon the world by global Zionism, Allah's number one enemy on Earth." Professor Nofal added that Mateen "evoked the Western model of heroism," represented in the massacre of Native Americans. His address aired on the Jordanian Yarmouk TV channel on June 17. Ahmad Nofal: "(Omar Mateen) is a dramatic character that requires a film - a Hitchcock-style horror movie, like 'Psycho' from over 50...

Sensational reports of Russian government spies hacking into the Democrat party’s computers weren’t the usual anti-Moscow smear job. Republican presidential contender Donald Trump also took a hit in the double whammy. The abrasive business tycoon may have a popular following among grass roots voters, but he has managed to garner powerful enemies within the American establishment. Not least large sections of the corporate news media, the military and foreign policy arms of US government.

Quoting unnamed administration officials, CNN host Jake Tapper revealed that the White House is “concerned” that Russia could invade South and East Ukraine “possibly as soon as this weekend.” He said that, in spite of Russia’s assurances that the large numbers of troops and military equipment amassed along the Ukrainian border are there merely for training exercises, the White House believes that Moscow could be planning a broader incursion into Ukraine. “There is now real apprehension that Vladimir Putin could push even further into Ukraine, perhaps as soon as this weekend,” Tapper said. He quoted anonymous administration officials who are...

Finian Cunningham, a British freelance journalist working on international affairs, spoke to Sputnik in an exclusive interview saying that the US move is not aimed to counter ISIL, but rather restrict Russia’s air operations against the jihadist group. “It would be a complete violation of the international law if the US sends its troops into Syria no matter what number of troops,” Cunningham said. Talking about the real purpose of this mission he said, “I am very skeptical about it just like the yearlong air campaign that the US led coalition has allegedly been running to defeat ISIL. That was...

British officials have made an unseemly leap to speculate on a terrorist plot in the Russian airliner crash over Sinai last weekend. And Russia has understandably reacted furiously to the speculation, saying that it is too early to make such an assessment when crash investigators have not even compiled, let alone evaluated, evidence. American officials, including President Barack Obama, are also now echoing the British claims of a bomb on the plane. The question is: why the haste? ........................... Cameron and Obama are evidently being fed intelligence assessments of a bomb being stowed in the airplane's hold by terrorists. But...

"The US and its allies would like to see Russia’s military operations in Syria go horribly wrong as Russia’s success heralds a crushing defeat for Western regime-change machinations. It would also signal the balance of power shifting away from US hegemony. . . . From the outset of Russia’s aerial bombing campaign against terror groups in Syria, beginning on September 30, Washington and its Western allies have sought all possible ways of discrediting and derailing the intervention. US President Obama poured scorn saying “it was doomed to fail,” while Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron labeled the Russian move as “a...

Last fall, amid concerns that the Iran deal would result in a financial windfall for Iran’s proxy terror organization, Hezbollah, Congress passed the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act. It mandated new, stringent sanctions against banks and other financial institutions doing business with Hezbollah.The bill passed unanimously in both the Senate and the House, leaving President Obama little choice but to sign it into law on December 18.Though less in the spotlight recently than the Islamic State, Lebanese-based Hezbollah has killed more Americans than any terror organization except al-Qaeda; has a vast global reach encompassing Europe, Africa, and Central and South...

A Preoccupied Western Media Fails to Appreciate the Historic Revival of Ties Between Russia and Israel Putin Netanyahu.JPG The recent meeting in Moscow between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin marks a milestone in the continuing rapproachment between Israel and Russia. The growing engagement between these former bitter adversaries has attracted limited attention in the Western media, obsessed as it is with Israeli-Palestinian issues. In its prior embodiment as the Soviet Union, the Russian government armed and abetted Israel's enemies and had a central role in the worldwide campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. Ironically, while...

Russia is not ruling out using its veto power at the United Nations Security Council to thwart anti-Israel resolutions, an unnamed Israeli diplomatic official involved in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow last week told the Israeli news site nrg. However, the official did qualify his statement, saying that the chances of Russia wielding its veto power in such a manner were very low. The official noted that the high level of respect Russian President Vladmir Putin demonstrated toward Netanyahu and his traveling entourage last week was unprecedented and indicated Russia’s deep desire to bolster its relationship with Israel....

Tens of thousands of Russian dual nationals are being effectively stripped of their Russian citizenship via a quiet policy of Russian consulates worldwide refusing to renew their passports. Under new regulations the consulates are enforcing, anyone seeking to renew a passport who was not registered as living in Russia on February 6, 1992, will be rejected, even if his or her passport had been renewed on previous occasions. It is unclear just how many people this new policy will affect. But it will certainly apply to thousands of Jews who emigrated from Russia after July 1, 1991 — the date...

In 2001 a group of Castroite spies in south Florida known as the Wasp Network were convicted of charges ranging from espionage to conspiracy to commit murder (of U.S. citizens.) They were sentenced to terms ranging from 15 years to two life sentences. According to the FBI’s affidavit, the charges against these KGB-trained Communist spies included: • Compiling the names, home addresses, and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers and that of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key West.• Infiltrating the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command.This past April, on Obama’s orders,...