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"Thus saith the LORD: I return unto Tzion and will dwell in the midst of Yerushalayim; and Yerushalayim shall be called the city of truth; and the mountain of the LORD of hosts the holy mountain." Zechariah 8:3 (The Israel BibleTM) On Friday, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Executive Board in Paris adopted a resolution erasing Israel's ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The UNESCO resolution referred to the Temple Mount area solely as the Al-Aqsa Mosque or Al-Haram Al Sharif, ignoring the Jewish claim to the site. The resolution called Israel "the...

Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales will travel this week to Qatar, and the trip is drawing criticism that the mayor is breaking his own directives. Qatar is known for its anti-LGBT laws, and Gonzales' trip was announced just days after the mayor reaffirmed Santa Fe's ban on city employee travel to states that have passed what advocates say are discrimination laws against the LGBT community.

Santa Fe Mayor Javier Gonzales will travel this week to Qatar, and the trip is drawing criticism that the mayor is breaking his own directives. Qatar is known for its anti-LGBT laws, and Gonzales' trip was announced just days after the mayor reaffirmed Santa Fe's ban on city employee travel to states that have passed what advocates say are discrimination laws against the LGBT community.

Editors note: We at the USA Transnational Report has been covering the thawing of relations between Israel and the Arab countries for some months. The geopolitical map in the Middle East has changed totally. In a true sign of change in the Arab world, Kuwaiti media personality Yousuf ‘Abd Al-Karim Al-Zinkawi called on all Arab and Muslim states to recognize Israel, openly and without delay, and stop calling it “the Zionist Entity” or “the Israeli occupation,” terms which undermine Israel’s legitimacy. In an article published in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa on Saturday, he argued that by sitting alongside Israel at...

American B-52 Stratofortress bombers have been sent for their first Middle East operational deployment since the 1991 Gulf War 26 years ago. The aircraft are flying from Qatar to bomb Islamic State targets. An undisclosed number of B-52s have arrived at the Al Udeid Air Base on Sunday, the US Air Force said. “The B-52 will provide the coalition continued precision and deliver desired airpower effects,” Lt. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., commander, US Air Forces Central Command said in the statement. The B-52 is a long-range multi-purpose heavy bomber. The Central Command last used them during Operation Desert Storm...

The U.S. Air Force deployed B-52 bombers to Qatar on Saturday to join the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the first time they have been based in the Middle East since the end of the Gulf War in 1991. U.S. Air Forces Central Command said it last flew the long-range bombers operationally in the region in May 2006 as part of the war in Afghanistan, and during a U.S.-led military exercise in Jordan in May 2015. "The B-52 demonstrates our continued resolve to apply persistent pressure on Daesh and defend the region in any future contingency," said...

Migrant workers building a stadium for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar "have suffered systematic abuses, in some cases forced labor," a new report from Amnesty International claims. The report, titled "The ugly side of the beautiful game: Exploitation on a Qatar 2022 World Cup site", paints a damning picture of conditions for migrant laborers.

DOHA, Qatar (Christian Examiner) – A female Arab journalist who lives in Qatar has penned a bold article that asks Muslims in the Middle East how they would respond if Christian suicide bombers struck their public markets, collapsed their tall buildings or tried to force Muslims to convert to Christianity. Liberal Saudi journalist Nadine Al-Budair writes in Kuwait's Al-Rai newspaper that Arab countries have refused to address the problem of terrorism and have yet to create a climate that matches the liberal, humanitarian climate of the West. She asked Muslims to consider what their world would be like if Christians...

Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based broadcaster, said Sunday it is slashing about 500 jobs a little more than two months after announcing the closure of its U.S. offshoot. The cutbacks come as 2022 World Cup host Qatar refocuses its spending priorities amid a steep drop in prices for oil and gas, the backbone of the OPEC nation’s economy. The Al-Jazeera Media Network described the cuts as part of a “workforce optimization initiative” tied to an evolving media landscape. …

The fate of the F-15 assembly line in St. Louis, and thousands of jobs tied to it, may hinge on the White House’s attitude toward a tiny oil-rich monarchy that sometimes riles its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf. The Emirate of Qatar wants to buy at least 36 of the air-superiority jets, and possibly 72, but the purchase has been held up for two years as the administration of President Barack Obama ponders whether to allow it. The issue is entangled in the shifting geopolitics and strained alliances of the Middle East, along with Israel’s concern that the sale...

BEIRUT -- A Saudi-dominated political bloc on Wednesday formally designated Lebanon's Hezbollah militia a terrorist organization, a move that signals dangerously escalating tensions between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. The Gulf Cooperation Council's decision against the Iranian-allied group comes two weeks after Saudi Arabia canceled $4 billion aid package for strengthening Lebanese security services. Saudi Arabia and other GCC member states have advised their citizens to leave Lebanon. An announcement posted on the GCC website accused Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim movement, of unspecified hostile acts in the six states in the bloc: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,...

One of the few interesting items in the New York Times' whitewash of Hillary and Obama's illegal Libyan war is the confirmation of weapons shipments. ... The story blames the problem on Qatar aiding Jihadists and Obama's unwillingness to defy the terror oil state. But the claim that we had to arm terrorists to fight Qatar's arming of terrorists doesn't hold up too well. Furthermore we already know that US forces were told to turn a blind eye to Qatar's weapons shipments. We could have blocked them instead. ... Qatar was backing the Muslim Brotherhood. Just like Hillary and Obama.

Russia's energy ministry says it has agreed with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela to freeze oil production levels if other producers do the same. [...] Getting other producers to go along with that could be tricky. Prices have fallen sharply slump in prices since summer 2014, leaving producers scrambling to win market share from competitors. ...

Qatar Airways has announced plans to launch the world’s longest direct flight: a 9,034-mile schlep from Doha to Auckland. Should the route get the green light, it would beat the current record holder – Qantas’s Dallas-Sydney service – by almost 500 miles. The journey time would be an estimated 18 hours and 34 minutes, according to the journey planning website travelmath.com.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump has broken just about every rule of conventional US presidential campaigning. Short on a long-term political vision to help shape the destiny of the nation, he has gleefully insulted Muslims, Mexicans, women and virtually all of his opponents. A Trump-in-the-White-House scenario poses high stakes for the Gulf region. Gulf Arabs could pull billion in investment money from the US if Trump, who triggered a global outrage when he advocated a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the US, wins the presidency later this year, prominent UAE businessman Khalaf al-Habtoor said. Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal,...

Qatar asked for clearance from the U.S. Government to purchase 72 F-15E Strike Eagle derivatives, but the request has been slow-rolled. Now, almost two years later and after the Iran Nuclear Agreement has been implemented, there are high hopes the deal may finally be allowed to move forward. Considering that Qatar remains a close ally of the U.S. in the region, and their fighter business has traditionally gone to European manufacturers, penning a deal for dozens of F-15 Strike Eagles seems like a no-brainer. Yet, politically, this would seem not to be the case. Aside from Israel and Saudi Arabia,...

The White House has appointed pro-Muslim Brotherhood Robert Malley as a new special assistant to President Barack Obama. As if this is not bad enough, Malley is in charge to cover the whole kitten caboodle: The Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf region. This appointment happens to be at the same time that Erdogan of Turkey and Qatar had a millstone breakthrough in reviving the Muslim Brotherhood by gaining special provisions for the Islamist organization in Saudi Arabia and the Arab gulf. Malley, who now works as Senior Director of National Security Council of the White House (NSC) on...

A stunning new Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that one of the United States Navy’s top commanders was relieved of his command a few hours ago after he sent out an “email/posting” revealing that President Barack Obama was in the process of purchasing a multi-million dollar seaside luxury villa in the United Arab Emirates city (UAE) of Dubai. According to this report, the Commander of the US Navy’s Carrier Strike Group 15, Rear Admiral Rick Williams, posted a “pointed” query on 8 January [since deleted] to the US Naval Institute’s “Readiness Kill Chain” “recipients/responders”...

By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann January 06, 2016 One thing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have in common -- they both like to have big things named after them. The latest batch of emails released by the State Department uncovers a massive ego trip by the former secretary of state. Anxious to etch her name in glass, as well as in history, she and her closest aides raised $37 million from corporations and foreign governments to build a U.S. Diplomacy Center to be named after Clinton. In a Feb. 1, 2013 email -- the last days of Clinton's tenure...

Amid financial hardship, Erdogan looks to Qatar as 'rich daddy' Zülfikar Doğan Posted December 29, 2015 A series of controversial steps in the region has left Turkey increasingly isolated in its neighborhood. As a result, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has gone on a hunt for new "friends." Normalizing ties with Israel is now back on the agenda. The second door the government has knocked on is Qatar's. Yet, even Qatar's friendship could not stop the Arab League from adopting a joint statement last week condemning the Turkish troop deployment in Bashiqa, near Mosul, and urging Ankara to...