Free Republic

A project management official at the Dutch National Cyber Security Center has been suspended after tweeting that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), now known as the Islamic State (IS), was a “Zionist plot”. According to the English-language NL Times website the employee, Yasmina Haifi, wrote, “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam. It is a preconceived plan of Zionists who want to deliberately make Islam look bad.” […] In an interview with the local Radio 1 on Wednesday, Haifi said she will not take back her statements, saying she has the right to speak her mind....

If Hamas attacks Israel with rocket fire and Israel retaliates, the British government has threatened to suspend some arms exports to Israel. This is, as Yuval Steinitz points out here, tantamount to inviting Hamas to launch new jihad attacks against Israel, knowing that the response from the West will be more excoriation of Israel, not resistance to jihad terror. “UK Govt ‘Encouraging Hamas To Fire At Israel,’” by Tom Rayner, Sky News, August 12, 2014 (thanks to Hiro): An Israeli cabinet minister has accused the UK government of ‘encouraging’ Hamas to re-start rocket fire from Gaza, following a decision to...

The bizarre story of a man who died after trying to have sex with a donkey is circulating all over Middle Eastern news sites. Lebanese website Beiruting recently reported that a Saudi Sheikh man died after attempting to sodomize a donkey. But other sites have picked it up as well. Reports say that the man tied the donkey to his car, took off his pants and attempted the have sex with the animal. The donkey, however, was not about to let that happen, and allegedly, it proceeded to kick the Sheikh man in the face following by three strong kicks...

Gaza terrorists fired a barrage of rockets towards southern Israel on Wednesday night, just moments before one ceasefire was set to end and a new one to begin. The Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepted one rocket over the city of Netivot. Two other rockets exploded in the Sdot Negev region. […] The latest rocket fire came just before midnight, when a 72-hour ceasefire was set to end. Moments before midnight, Israel and the Palestinian Arabs agreed to extend the 72-hour ceasefire. …

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri on Friday laid the blame on Israel for the ceasefire in Gaza not being extended, saying the Jewish state did not provide a clear response to Hamas’s conditions. Speaking at a news conference in Gaza City and quoted by the Ma’an news agency, Abu Zuhri said that the lack of response undermined Palestinian demands and that “Israeli stubbornness led to not extending the ceasefire.” He accused Israel of stalling and wasting time, adding that it must accept all of Hamas’s conditions. He said that Israel rejected the establishment of an airport or a seaport and...

VICE News has been reporting from inside Iraq, releasing chilling footage of ISIS terrorists. In the latest footage, which we saw on America’s Newsroom this morning, a young boy delivers a warning to the United States. On the translation, the boy declares, “I swear to God, we will divide America in two and destroy all the enemies of our religion and the Islamic State. The Caliphate will remain until the end of the world and God willing, we will fight for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” …

Leaders of major Jewish organizations on Wednesday accused U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of being one-sided in his handling of the crisis in Gaza. A delegation of 11 Jewish organizations met with the U.N. chief to express their concerns, presenting a letter that listed what they said were 19 violations of international law by Hamas that have gone ignored, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group with an office in New York. Chief among their demands was a need for the U.N. to investigate rocket attacks by Hamas, which controls the...

American Muslims Demonstrating Against ISIS And there you have it folks. America's fifth column hibernating in their sleeper cells.

Egypt’s deposed President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday denied that he ordered protesters killed during an uprising in 2011, in his first lengthy speech to a court as his year-old retrial draws to an end. The 86-year-old Mubarak was speaking from a gurney inside a cage that holds defendants, listing the achievements of his 29-year rule. He said he was not forced from power in 2011 but gave it up voluntarily so that Egypt would avert an “abyss.” “Mohammed Hosni Mubarak would never order the killing of protesters … or shedding the blood of Egyptians,” he said in an emotional plea...

Australia’s prime minister has held open the possibility of sending a combat force to Iraq in addition to military transport aircraft to airlift humanitarian aid to refugees trapped by insurgents in northern mountains, though the defense minister played down the prospect. Prime Minister Tony Abbott told reporters in London after meeting with British officials on the Iraq crisis on Tuesday that his government would not rule out taking military action in Iraq. […] The suggestion that Australian combat troops could return to Iraq was widely attacked by the government’s political opponents. Abbott was a minister in a previous conservative government...

On July 23rd, the prestigious and world-renowned medical journal The Lancet published an editorial entitled “An Open Letter to the People of Gaza” signed by medical professionals around the globe. The essay uses inflammatory language to accuse Israelis of indiscriminately massacring Palestinian children, fabricating the reason for Israel’s military engagement in Gaza, and implying the use of gas to murder civilians. While there is always room for critique and dialogue, these extreme allegations are one-sided, unreferenced and unfounded. More shockingly, the authors state that since only 5 percent of Israeli academics signed a petition against the current military operation, the...

Early surveys were confirmed. Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be the first popularly elected president of the Turkish Republic, a state founded in 1923 on the basis of the secular ideas of Kemal Ataturk. About 52 per cent of the electorate chose again Erodgan's style of politics. Based on an authoritarian and arrogant use of power, and an instrumental use of popular support, such a style is equally informed by contempt for those who think differently. Erdogan's support is found among a majority of Turks, mostly devout Muslims and conservative, who began to share in the spoils of political and economic...

The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has issued a statement deploring the upsurge in violence in Iraq, calling on religious leaders, those involved in interfaith dialogue and on all men and women of good will, to unequivocally condemn terror in the name of religion. The Council also calls on religious leaders “to exercise their influence with the authorities to end these crimes, to punish those who commit them and to reestablish the rule of law throughout the land, ensuring the return home of those who have been displaced."Below please find the English translation of the original French text:The whole world...

There has been a lot of throat-clearing by the media when it comes to the terror organization Hamas during the current Gaza conflict. Reporters and pundits criticizing Israel want you to know they are not defending Hamas.Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States since 1997. It has the destruction of Israel as a charter goal, has employed suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, and openly urged Gaza citizens to remain in their homes to serve as “human shields” against Israeli shelling.So it’s strange that so many have had to qualify their comments on the...

In a newly translated interview, Hamas spokesperson Husam Badran declared that his terror organization is holding truce talks in Cairo with Israel being held “at gunpoint” to accept the group’s demands. Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the interview from Al Jazeera, which is sponsored by Qatar, a key provider of Hamas funds. In it, Badran relates being asked in jail in 2002 by then-deputy head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Service) whether Hamas will ever negotiate with Israel. “I said to him outright: If we ever negotiate with you, whether directly or indirectly, we will do so...

The British government is "terrified" of intervening militarily in Iraq ahead of elections due next year and is happy to posture rather than take real action, an ex-senior general who previously helped lead NATO missions said on Tuesday. Former general Richard Shirreff, who retired from the British army last week and was NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe until March 2014, told the Times of London that British action was insufficient and he chided policymakers. "We have politicians who want to posture, who make a lot of noise but do not have any stick,” said Shirreff. “This government is...

There was a time not so long ago when President Barack Obama boasted of how he had “ended” the Iraq War. It was, in his telling, a sign of his stalwart fidelity to his word. A video produced by his 2012 presidential campaign was titled “Ending the War in Iraq: A Promise Kept.” In December 2011 his website said: “This month, President Obama is making good on his promise to bring the last American troops home from Iraq in time for the holidays.” The president portrayed the complete withdrawal of U.S. troops as testimony to his exemplary political character. “You...

Just two weeks after the Obama administration asked Congress to repeal the Iraq war authorization, the White House is failing to adequately explain to lawmakers the legal justification and concrete objectives for its airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), according to congressional insiders apprised of off-the-record briefings on the matter.Questions are now being raised on Capitol Hill about how the White House intends to legally justify its military campaign, particularly in light of its efforts to repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq (AUMF).Obama administration officials waited to brief senators...

Fire authorities suspect “political motivations” for a late night blaze in a mosque in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. More than 60 firefighters were called to the scene of a burning construction site at the Mevlana Mosque. No one was at the site when the fire broke out and no one was injured. …

Prof. William Schabas, a Canadian law professor chosen to helm a United Nations commission examining possible war crimes in Gaza scoffed Monday at charges he's biased against Israel, but his past utterances leave little doubt as to his lack of objectivity. According to the Canadian Press, Schabas once suggested in a speech that he believes Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should be "in the dock of an international court." He also wrote in a law journal article that the Israeli prime minister could be regarded as "the single individual most likely to threaten the survival of Israel." "The suggestion that...