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On Friday, President Obama spoke at a Jewish American Heritage Month celebration being held at the Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, D.C. Wearing a yarmulke, Obama addressed his Jewish gravitas, citing his two Jewish former chiefs of staff, saying he has been called America's "first Jewish president" by Jeffrey Goldberg, who recently interviewed him for The Atlantic. Goldberg was in attendance.

Deep into the seventh year of his tenure, Barack Obama is thinking about his post-presidential legacy. We know this because he’s telling us so. In an interview this week with The Atlantic about the potential deal with Iran regarding its nuclear program, the president sought to use the fact of his relative youth and his consciousness about how history might judge him to his advantage: “Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this. I think it’s fair to say that in addition to our...

The Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) has published an article in the latest issue of its magazine, Dabiq, by jihadi bride Umm Summayyah, estimating that First Lady Michelle Obama is only worth $40 on the terrorist group’s slave market. Summayyah also defends the rape of thousands of Yazidi females.

US and Hizballah coordinate spy drone flights over Qalamoun, share US combat intelligence Another strange pair of bedfellows has turned up in one of the most critical Middle East battlefields: the United States is helping Hizballah, Iran’s Lebanese surrogate, in the battle for control of the strategic Qalamoun Mountains. ...a US special operations unit, stationed at the Hamat air base on the coast of northern Lebanon, is directing unarmed Aerosonde MK 4.7 reconnaissance drone intelligence-gathering flights over the Qalamoun Mt arena, 100 km to the west. However, it turns out that the data the US drones pass to Lebanese army...

A rare glimpse into Hezbollah's underground tunnels was provided on Friday by Lebanese publication As-Safir, which is associated with the militant organization. The report praised Hezbollah's activities and painted it as a strong army ready for battle. While it is difficult to verify the claims in the article, it contained a rare discussion of the tunnels by Hezbollah members. The reporter wrote that in order to meet Hezbollah fighters near the Israeli border in southern Lebanon, he travelled from the city of Tyre and was required to stop at a house known to locals as a Hezbollah headquarters, where he...

ISLAMIC State (ISIS) are poised to buy its first nuclear bomb "within a year", the terror group claimed tonight.The jihadists are looking to get hold of an atomic weapon or thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate explosive. The merciless organisation says it hopes to purchase a nuclear device “through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials” in Pakistan. But it admits that obtaining the deadly weapon may be a challenge and says it would settle for a “few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive”. The chilling boast was made in the latest edition of its propaganda ‘magazine’ circulated to publicise...

Russia came in for harsh criticism last week when state-owned jet producer MiG delivered 12 MiG-29 planes to Sudan. Amnesty International suggested that the jets could be used against civilians in Sudan's western region of Darfur, where attacks against indigenous black tribes by the government-backed Arab janjaweed militia over the last 15 months have left at least 30,000 people dead, forced villagers into refugee camps and left some 2 million people without sufficient food and medicine. U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton blasted MiG for selling modern weapons to a government the United States considers a sponsor of international terrorism....

They say the Cold War is over, but Russia and the U.S. remain the leading supplier of weapons to countries around the world and are the two biggest military powers. Lately, tensions have been pretty high, too. The U.S. supplies much of NATO and Middle Eastern allies like Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Russia supplies many BRIC nations, as well as Iran, much of Southeast Asia, and North Africa.

MANY in the West believe that Russia’s support for Syria stems from Moscow’s desire to profit from selling arms to Bashar al-Assad’s government and maintain its naval facility at the Syrian port of Tartus. But these speculations are superficial and misguided. The real reason that Russia is resisting strong international action against the Assad regime is that it fears the spread of Islamic radicalism and the erosion of its superpower status in a world where Western nations are increasingly undertaking unilateral military interventions. Since 2005, Russian defense contracts with Syria have amounted to only about $5.5 billion — mostly to...

Palestinian rhetoric and behavior reflect their honest intentions: their official organs and most of their leaders seek Israel’s destruction. State of Palestine A Palestinian supporter wears Palestinian and Union Jack flags outside the Parliament in London during October's vote on recognizing a state of Palestine. (photo credit:REUTERS) dShare on Facebook hShare on Twitter With the Palestinians taking Israel to the International Criminal Court and trying to kick Israel out of the international soccer league, FIFA, while still boycotting normal, constructive, personal, economic or cultural ties with Israel, their war against the Jews continues. Even if Pope Francis – whom I...

WASHINGTON — THE fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi on Sunday, and of the Syrian city of Palmyra on Wednesday, is a big gain for the Islamic State, but not an utter disaster, as many observers fear. Rather than inducing panic in Western capitals, it should lead to a realistic assessment of the Islamic State’s strengths and weaknesses. One setback in a long war must not trigger hasty strategic shifts that lead to foreign countries’ becoming mired in Iraq once more. Palmyra has economic and cultural significance, as it sits among gas fields and is home to renowned ruins....

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is ready to supply weapons to Iraq, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday, as the country struggles to halt advances by Islamic State militants. Speaking ahead of talks in Moscow between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, Lavrov told reporters Moscow would make every effort to help the Baghdad government push back the militants. Islamic State insurgents overran the Iraqi city of Ramadi last weekend in the most significant setback for the Baghdad government in a year, exposing the weakness of Iraq's army and the limitations of U.S. air strikes. On...

On Monday, the Right Honorable David Cameron, prime minister of Great Britain, gave his first major speech after being reelected to his high office — once held by Pitt, Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Churchill and Thatcher. Confronting a world of challenges — including Greece’s possible exit from the euro, a massive migration crisis on Europe’s shores, Ukraine’s perilous state, Russia’s continued intransigence, the advance of the Islamic State and the continuing chaos in the Middle East — Cameron chose to talk about . . . a plan to ensure that hospitals in the United Kingdom will be better staffed on weekends. Okay,...

The US Department of Defense “Pentagon” accused the Iraqi army of leaving behind large quantities of weapons and ammunition when it pulled out of the city of Ramadi on Sunday. The weapons, which have been seized by ISIS, include tanks, armored vehicles and heavy guns. After the fall of the city of Mosul at the hands of ISIS last June, the latter have seized massive amounts of American weapons and sophisticated gear left by the Iraqi army. After this date ISIS became stronger; it doubled its strength and its fighters became roaming by “Humvee” vehicles and American tanks and they...

For all the horror of the reports coming out of the ‘Islamic State’, there seems to have been a fairly widespread assumption that ISIS is, if not beaten at least contained, and that in due course it will burn out/be burnt out. Historical parallels are dangerous to draw and they often lead to some wildly incorrect conclusions, but ISIS’s position in Syria and Iraq reminds me more than a little of the situation in which the nascent soviet state found itself during the early years of the Russian Civil War. The Bolsheviks were encircled by hostile forces, who, on paper,...

The Islamic State terror group now controls over half of Syrian territory after seizing the village and archaeological site of Palmyra Thursday, activists monitoring Syria's civil war said. Rami Abdurrahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the Associated Press the extremists overran the archaeological site, just to the southwest of the modern settlement on Palmyra, shortly after midnight local time. In Damascus, state TV acknowledged that pro-government forces had withdrawn from the town. A Facebook page close to ISIS published a statement Thursday, purportedly from the group, saying "the soldiers of the Islamic State" completed their control...

An east-end Montreal college is gaining a reputation as a breeding ground for jihadis after four of its students were arrested at the airport Friday, allegedly on the verge of taking off to join an overseas terror group. The latest arrests bring to 11 the number of Collège Maisonneuve students who since January have either left to join jihadi groups overseas or have been arrested on suspicion of planning to leave. The four were among 10 students from various CEGEPS — post-secondary institutions unique to Quebec — and high schools arrested at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport Friday, the college confirmed....

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested a group of young Montrealers on Friday on suspicion they were planning to travel to Turkey and then Syria to join jihadi fighters, Radio-Canada is reporting. Ten youths, who were arrested at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, were questioned and then released without being charged. All had their passports confiscated ... Radio-Canada also reported that the authorities had established a link between the youths and a group of six teenagers from Montreal and Laval who were reported missing in January and suspected of flying to Turkey to cross into Syria to join the terrorist...

ISIS is sending the ‘prettiest virgins’ they capture to slave markets in the Syrian city of Raqqa, where they are sold as sexual objects to the highest bidder, the United Nation’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict has said. After the depraved militants attack their villages, they strip the girls naked, conduct virginity tests, evaluate their bodies and send them to twisted auctions, Zainab Bangura claims. She discovered the gruesome extent of Islamic State’s sexual crimes against young women – particularly from Iraq’s Yazidi minority community – after collecting information from Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. ISIS carries...

Islamic State insurgents stormed the historic Syrian city of Palmyra on Wednesday, fighting off pro-government forces who withdrew after evacuating most of the civilian population, state television said. The capture of Palmyra is the first time the al Qaeda offshoot has taken control of a city directly from the Syrian army and allied forces, which have already lost ground in the northwest and south to other insurgent groups in recent weeks. The central city, also known as Tadmur, is built alongside the remains of a oasis civilization whose colonnaded streets, temple and theater have stood for 2,000 years. Islamic State...