Free Republic

President Trump, please don't fall for FAKE NEWS! In your recent interview with the Yisrael HaYom newspaper, you answered a question about settlements by saying: "We will be talking about settlements. The settlements are something that very much complicates and always have complicated making peace, so I think Israel has to be very careful with the settlements." When I read this, I was puzzled. Was this President Trump being interviewed, or was it President Obama?! President Trump! The settlements are NOT "something that very much complicates and always have complicated making peace"! This is FAKE NEWS! The exact opposite is...

What does an Israeli “settler” who lives in Judea and works in Jerusalem think about Kerry’s speech? Daniel Luria is a resident of Ma’ale Adumim, a city of 40,000 people in Judea – barely three miles from the Israeli capital. He works in eastern Jerusalem. According to Kerry, Luria’s residence and workplace are located in “occupied territory” that belongs to the Palestinians. Luria expressed disbelief at the “historical ignorance” of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech last week at the State Department. According to Kerry, Luria’s residence and workplace are located in “occupied territory” that belongs to the Palestinians....

Zeev Elkin has faced a wave of criticism since he was made the de facto chief of Israel's Foreign Ministry two months ago: He isn't prepared for compromise with the Palestinians. He doesn't speak English well enough. He is a West Bank settler. But Israel's deputy foreign minister, who is the top official until a new foreign minister is named, makes no apologies for his ideology or background, and in fact thinks they are an advantage. Claiming to reflect the "real positions" of most Israelis, Elkin says the world should get used to dealing with Jewish settlers and right-wing Israeli...

Two Arab children from the Silwan neighborhood of Jerusalem were injured after they were hit by a car driven by Elad director David Be’eri. Be’eri, head of a group that advocates for Jewish families to live in the predominantly Arab neighborhood, claimed that the youths were throwing rocks at his car and he hit them accidentally in an attempt to flee from the area. “His car was surrounded with tens of people with rocks,” Elad spokesman Udi Ragones told the Jerusalem Post. “When they started throwing them, and he hit them when he tried to flee from the area. It...

Hundreds of West Bank settlers would likely act violently against Palestinians in response to Israeli government sanctions such as an extension of the freeze on settlement construction, according to the latest assessments in the IDF Central Command. On Friday morning, Palestinians from a village near Kedumim discovered two vehicles that had been set on fire the night before; one of them was spray-painted with the words “Price Tag,” a term indicating that the rampage was the work of settlers angry over the government’s curbs on settlement construction. In an effort to prevent retaliation, the Israel Police and the Shin Bet...

A day after the security cabinet announced a 10-month moratorium on housing starts in the settlements, Defense Minister Ehud Barak moved swiftly on Thursday to order the most dramatic crackdown on Jewish West Bank construction in the history of the settlement movement. Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Barak suspended all permits for building projects in the settlements where contractors have not yet broken ground. The order, valid for 10 months, is intended to enforce the Security Cabinet's decision to restrict settler-home building in this period to the 3,000 housing units that are already under construction.

Settler leader: Outpost deal a betrayal Head of Kedumim local council protests against meeting between Amana'chairman and defense minister, who tried to negotiate evacuation of illegal outposts. 'We will fight this issue along with our youth at full force,' says Weiss Efrat Weiss Published: 10.19.06, 14:39 Daniella Weiss was angry Thursday, angry at the Yesha Council and feeling betrayed by Amana Chairman Ze'ev (Zambish) Hever in particular. "The meeting between Zambish (Ze'ev Hever) and Defense Minister Amir Peretz and their attempt to reach an agreement on the illegal outposts issue is an act of betrayal," said Weiss to Ynet, "the...

Palestinians: We kidnapped settler in West Bank Popular Resistance Committee spokesperson tells Ynet his group kidnapped settler in West Bank. IDF says they are aware of report but cannot yet confirm it Ali Waked A spokesperson for the Popular Resistance Committee told Ynet on Monday evening that his group kidnapped a settler in the West Bank. Spokesperson Mahmoud Abed Alal said he would release more information on the kidnapping later Monday night. The Israel Defense Forces said it was aware of the announcement but could not yet confirm that an Israeli citizen had been kidnapped, adding that they had received...

Judges rule testimony by alleged Palestinian victims was unreliable, contradictory The Kfar Saba District Court cleared the leader of the so-called "hilltop" settler youths, Avri Ran, along with two settlers from Itamar, of charges of attacking a Palestinian shepherd last year. The judge ruled testimonies by the Palestinians allegedly attacked in the incident were unreliable, contradictory, and defied logic. A fourth settler, Victor Lezidansky, is accused of being involved in the incident, and is still being tried. He has admitted that charges against him were true. Ran, a hilltop resident near Itamar in the northern West Bank, was incarcerated for...

Jewish settlers set up 13 makeshift outposts in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday in a show of strength ahead of Israeli elections that could swing on the growing debate over the territory. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vowed to keep major West Bank settlements but has said that some isolated communities may one day have to be dismantled as a way of ending decades of conflict with the Palestinians. Jewish ultranationalists, furious at Sharon for pulling troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip this year, stake a biblical claim to the land Israel captured in the 1967 war. Palestinians...

A woman has set herself on fire at a roadblock in southern Israel. The woman is believed to be a right-wing activist protesting at Israel's Gaza Strip withdrawal, said police spokeswoman Sharon Brown. Haaretz newspaper reported that the woman, whose name has not been revealed, suffered burns on more than 60% of her body. The incident occurred near the southern Israeli town of Netivot. The woman suffered life-threatening burns on 70 per cent of her body, police and hospital officials said. The 54-year-old woman, whose name was not revealed, was taken to a hospital in southern Israel in serious condition,...

Jul. 21, 2004 22:08 | Updated Jul. 21, 2004 22:18 Settler as a human being By TZVI BEN GEDALYAHU A hitchhiker from Tekoa in Gush Etzion was riding with me a few years ago when we spotted an Arab youngster standing by the side of the road with rocks in his hand. This was back in the days when Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak were helping Bill Clinton create a New Mideast. I glanced at him long enough for him to know we had spotted him, and he dropped his "toys" and ran away. The hitchhiker, some screwball American, informed...

Tests reveal Amesbury Archer ‘King of Stonehenge’ was a settler from the Alps The man who may have helped organise the building of Stonehenge was a settler from continental Europe, archaeologists say. The latest tests on the Amesbury Archer, whose grave astonished archaeologists last year with the richness of its contents, show he was originally from the Alps region, probably Switzerland, Austria or Germany. The tests also show that the gold hair tresses found in the grave are the earliest gold objects found in Britain. The grave of the Archer, who lived around 2,300BC, contained about 100 items, more than...

Veteran settlement movement figure and former MK Elyakim Haetzni, responding to an opinion poll showing a majority of Israelis in favor of the road map peace plan, Monday compared supporters of the peace plan with the Holocaust-era Jews that he said "willingly boarded those trains [to concentration camps], believing everything that the Germans told them." Haetzni, a Hebron resident, blasted as an act of "national treason" and a "national catastrophe" the Sunday decision of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet to conditionally approve the road map, a U.S.-UN-E.U.-Russian- endorsed peace outline. It was a historic day "in the same sense that...

GAZA, Nov. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- One Jewish settler was killed and another wounded on Saturday evening after a roadside bomb exploded close to their car near the Nitzarim junction south of Gaza City, Israel Radio reported. The radio reported that one of the wounded was seriously injuredand later died of his wounds at an Israeli hospital. Witnesses said they heard a huge explosion in the area, and thenthey saw an Israeli ambulance arriving there and an Israeli army helicopter carrying the two wounded Israelis flying up from the area. They said Israeli soldiers in the area fired several tanks shells...

In the first couple of weeks after a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up outside our local pizzeria, killing three teenagers, I spoke with my parents every couple of days. Each time, one or both of them would make the same request: pack up the four children and "come back home" to Cleveland, Ohio. Four months later, I talk to my parents once or twice a week. We don't talk about suicide bombers or leaving Israel, but I can still hear it in their voices -- Come home, come home. My mother and I e-mail each other every day. If...