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Let’s consider for a moment the consequences of giving seventh-century savages who are hellbent on destroying 21st civilization advanced 21st century weaponry. Ponder that, if you will. How many tens of thousands of jihad attacks must we suffer to face reality? How many millions of non-Muslims and secular Muslims have to die in order for us to face the truth? Advanced weapons to these devout Muslims waging jihad — nuts, I tell ya. The only people we should be arming are the religious minorities in Syria. The Kurds have established an independent state. Arm them. Protect them. What is Obama’s...

It also follows a reorganization of Western-backed fighters aimed at creating a more effective military force and increasing protection for Christian and other religious minorities—something of particular importance to Washington. This shift is seen as a test of whether the U.S. can find a trustworthy rebel partner able to keep sophisticated weapons out of the hands of extremists, Saudi and Syrian opposition figures said. The U.S. has long feared that if it does supply advanced arms, the weapons will wind up with radical groups—some tied to al Qaeda—which have set up bases in opposition-held territory.

First published on FrontPage Magazine. By Enza Ferreri Some of the “freedom fighters” who are at war against the evil tyrant Assad in Syria, the “rebels” whom both Obama and Cameron wanted to help, have now been re-classified as “the biggest threat to Britain's security” and a “greater threat than al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan”. The British Home Office identifies Syria as “the most significant development in global terrorism.” More than half of anti-terror investigations by the UK security service MI5 involve “Britons” who went to fight in Syria. Charles Farr - the Home Office’s terror chief -...

JNS.org - Syrian Christian refugees from the ancient town of Maaloula are seeking to return to their home after it was recaptured by Syrian government forces this week. “I would love to go back and celebrate Easter there, but it’s still a bit early,” said Fadi Mayal, a former Maaloula resident who currently lives in Damascus’s Christian quarter, Lebanon’s Daily Star reported. “There are still sleeper cells in Maaloula,” Mayal said, referring to jihadist groups in the area. Maaloula, located 56 kilometers from Damascus, is an ancient Christian town where many of the residents still speak Aramaic, the same language...

The Royal Jordanian Air force strike Wednesday, April 16, against a combat vehicle convoy from Syria destroyed an Al Qaeda raider force on its way to attack US military targets in the kingdom, DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal. Jordan’s first assault on a target outside the country took place on the Syrian side of the border opposite the eastern town of Ruwaished. This episode brought to the fore how dramatically the threat al Qaeda-Iraq poses to Jordan, the US forces based their and Israel has escalated. Amman has not disclosed where the air strike took place, who rode in the destroyed...

Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu initiated a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday to discuss bilateral issues, Iran and Ukraine, the Kremlin said in a statement. ... Netanyahu does speak to Putin by phone from time to time, so Tuesday night's conversation - though not a regular occurence - is by no means unprecedented. Russia is a major player in three areas of major concern to Israel: Iran, Syria and arms sales to the Middle East. ... On Monday, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki denied a Haaretz report last week...

Syria's opposition fighters have been supplied with U.S.-made anti-tank missiles, the first time a major American weapons system has appeared in rebel hands. It is unclear how the rebels obtained the wire-guided missiles, which are capable of penetrating heavy armor and fortifications and are standard in the U.S. military arsenal. The United States has sold them in the past to Turkey, among other countries, and the Pentagon approved the sale of 15,000 of the weapons to Saudi Arabia in December. Both countries aid Syrian opposition groups. U.S. officials declined to discuss the origin of the weapons but did not dispute...

The prime minister of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Tuesday praised a shooting that killed an Israeli and wounded his wife and son as they drove through the West Bank the previous evening en route to a Seder, the traditional Passover meal that starts the week-long Jewish holiday. Speaking in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh said the attack outside the city of Hebron “brought back life to the path of resistance” against Israel and warned of more attacks in the territory. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest incident to threaten peace talks with the Palestinians. […] “We tell the...

Russia and Israel seem to have a growing affinity for each other. A few weeks ago, Israel abstained from a vote in the UN censuring Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported [link at URL] that this is a sore spot for the White House and a diplomatic novum on the world scene. A senior Israeli official said that Israel's absence from the United Nations vote was viewed around the world as an extremely irregular measure, a departure from a long-standing Israeli policy of voting with the United States in the UN. While the Americans viewed...

Jordan’s air force has destroyed military vehicles trying to cross from Syria, Jordanian state television said Wednesday

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Kerry: Our Goal is Not Eliminating Iranian Nuclear CapabilityPosted By Daniel Greenfield On April 15, 2014 @ 7:30 pm In The Point | No Comments Sometimes a choice of words can be extremely revealing. That was the case with Kerry’s contentious testimony in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Under pressure, Kerry tends to slip and say revealing things. That was how the infamous, “for it and against it� clip was born. Kerry dismissed breakout as “just having one bomb’s worth, conceivably, of material, but without any necessary capacity to put it in anything,...

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz likes to say that if you are for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights, basic freedoms of speech, press, association, open democracy, and an independent judiciary, there is only one country in the Middle East that espouses those values you support: Israel. And he is absolutely correct. But there appears to be a major disconnect among American Jews. Today, too many Jewish Americans are ambivalent about Israel, or even openly hostile towards it, believing erroneously that Israel acts in ways that contradict their “progressive” or “liberal” ideals. Jews are even at the forefront...

Dozens of Palestinian protesters and an Israeli policeman were wounded Wednesday morning on the Temple Mount after the site was opened to Jewish visitors. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP that Palestinians threw “stones and firecrackers” at police when they opened the walled compound’s gates. Police responded with stun grenades, Rosenfeld said, and closed the complex to the Jewish visitors after a small number had toured the site. An AFP correspondent at the scene said dozens of Palestinians were wounded by rubber-coated bullets and stun grenade canisters, and were staying inside the Al-Aqsa mosque out of fear they would be...

The government of Syrian President Bashar Assad has accused the United States, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the rebels fighting to overthrow it, of being responsible for chemical weapons attacks in the country, Syria’s state news agency SANA reported on Tuesday. In letters to the UN Security Council as well as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Assad regime cited “reports, studies and documented researches” that allegedly implicate the US and Turkish administrations, as well as several other countries, “whether directly or indirectly in these appalling carnage in Syria, including Khad al-Assal on March 15, 2013.” …

In the aftermath of the disastrous, for both the US and Saudi Arabia, false flag campaign to replace the Syrian regime with one which would be amenable to allowing a Qatari gas pipeline to pass underneath the Al-Qaeda rebel infested country, there were numerous rumors that the reign of Saudi's infamous former ambassador to the US and current intelligence chief, Prince Bandar "Bush" bin Sultan - the man who we suggested was the puppetmaster behind the entire failed operation - had come to an end. Some two months ago, Shia Post reported that "News sources announced that the chief of...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) went after fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and President Barack Obama on This Week With George Stephanopoulos sunday morning, telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl that Obama’s “five years of weakness� had emboldened Putin and that the U.S. needed to defend its values across the globe, in contrast to Paul’s less-interventionist foreign policy. “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul,� Cruz said, “but I don’t agree with him on foreign policy. I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. I agree with him that we should be very reluctant to deploy military force abroad. But...

The Army veteran who fought alongside rebels in Syria, only to be later accused of joining Al Qaeda-linked terrorists by the U.S., has died in Arizona of unknown causes, his family told ABC News. Eric Harroun, 32, succumbed to an "accidental overdose" according to his sister, but an official cause had not yet been released. The Phoenix-born man was first spotted in late 2012 by U.S. intelligence after he appeared in Youtube videos alongside Syrian fighters. In one such video, Harroun was the lone English speaker celebrating amongst rebels who had apparently downed a regime helicopter.

Police have “lost control of the Temple Mount,” Temple activists charged Monday morning, on the eve of Pesach. Dozens of Hamas men have taken over the Mount, waving Hamas flags, and are “not allowing Jews and tourists into the Mount,” said the activists. […] The Temple organizations called for the police commissioner to resign, following his failures on the Temple Mount. …

The Messiah (as Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon referred to U.S. Secretary John Kerry) is not having a good month. According to his formerly good buddy U.S. Sen. John McCain, Kerry is presiding over a “trifecta” of foreign policy disasters. The Geneva Peace negotiations with the “generous reformer” President Bashar al-Assad. The P 5+1 Negotiations with the Mad Mullahs of Iran. And the Israeli-Palestinian “Peace Process.” But I think this is unfair. At least for two of these disasters, President Barack Obama-Costanza is much more at fault for them than is Kerry. It was the president who set his...

In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.​＊ Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s...

Each side in the Syrian conflict blamed the other Saturday for an alleged poison gas attack that reportedly injured scores of civilians in the central province of Hama. There was no independent confirmation of a chemical strike, which reportedly hit the village of Kfar Zeita, an agricultural center northwest of the provincial capital, Hama. Fierce clashes between rebel and loyalist forces have been reported in the area. Various pro-opposition accounts said a government air raid Friday in Kfar Zeita included bombardment with an unspecified chemical agent, causing choking and suffocation among scores of residents. But state-run television said Al Qaeda-affiliated...

Unearthed: the humble origins of world diplomacy By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent 19 January 2003 Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an invasion of the Middle East by one of the world's first superpowers, which destroyed much of the region 33 centuries ago. Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria they have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years. Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to...

The brutal winter ebbs at last, giving way to the season of hope, deliverance and renewal. The celebrations of Passover and Easter, marking the beginning of spring, overlap this year, as they often do. Jewish children practice reciting the four questions and dream of finding the hidden Passover mazoh. Christian children celebrate the Resurrection of Christ, decorating eggs and hiding them for a hunt. Nature awakens, and suddenly all things look possible again. Just not for a lasting peace in the Middle East. President Obama, with Secretary of State John F. Kerry as his messenger and chief instigator, badly misjudged...

There are reports of a possible chemical weapons attack in at least one area of Syria, but possibly more. Below we will be analyzing the information as it comes in. 2034 GMT: A potentially very important video. This claims to have been taken this evening in Kafr Zita, and it is uploaded by a channel that has posted videos nearly exclusively from Kafr Zita. It claims to show a helicopter dropping a barrel bomb filled with the chemical weapons. SNIP- Just today, the Local Coordination Committees reported that five people were killed in Harasta and several more were injured in...

Republicans, I come in peace.Until very recently, Rand Paul’s project of insinuating himself comfortably within the Republican Party, and positioning himself as a plausible presidential nominee, had gone along with remarkable ease. Yes, the author of his campaign book turned out to be an unreconstructed neo-Confederate. That was a speed bump. (Who among us has not entrusted the explication of his worldview to a man who has cheered on the assassination of President Lincoln?) Paul had staged a masterful piece of political theater with his marathon Senate speech denouncing the Obama administration’s drone policy. He has assembled a top-tier campaign...

Obama waited too long to help the Syrian FSA against the monstrous Assad regime. When some sort of intervention was talked about: (bombing, indirect support, arms, etc) it was TOO late to help, and it would most likely have helped (either directly or indirectly) terroristic elements and possibly Al Qaeda elements which had taken the lead in Syria against Assad. NO WAY ON DOING THAT. PERIOD. And, once again, it is too late to help the Ukrainians against the thug Putin. (strike one against helping them). And as long as the Ukrainian gov't hasn't ran Svoboda and Right Sector and...

Hezbollah and the Syrian Army's five-month campaign to clear rebels from the strategic Qalamoun region is approaching its final stand. The allies have seized one village and town after the other, gradually moving southward through the corridor between Damascus and Homs which links the Syrian capital to the Mediterranean coast. According to Syrian state media, Syrian troops and Hezbollah fighters are set to launch an offensive against Rankous in central Qalamoun after seizing high ground overlooking the town and encircling it. Once Rankous is seized, only a tract of mountainous terrain stands in the way of the regime's final objective:...

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Eric Holder was pressed about why the case against ex-CIA Director David Petraeus is still under investigation. Indications are that members of Congress are concerned that the case is still hanging in limbo to prevent Petraeus from revealing what he knows about the Benghazi attacks. If, as has been relayed by Shoebat.com, the details of an extensive report published in the London Review are correct, Petraeus was the man in charge of the logistics of an operation in Benghazi that involved shipping weapons from Libya to Syria through Turkey and that...

[Caption:] U.S. Senator John McCain, center, speaks as Democratic Senator from the state of Connecticut, Chris Murphy, second left, and Opposition leader Oleh Tyahnybok [All Ukrainian Union "Svoboda" leader], stand around him during a Pro-European Union rally in Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013. Sen. John McCain (R. Ariz.) advocated for sending arms to Ukraine Tuesday [link at URL] on Fox News. McCain acknowledged the arms would not likely enable Ukraine to defeat the Russians in open war, but emphasized it could improve the Ukrainian military's morale and ensure that the Russians would have "a real fight...

Long gone the days when the U.S.-led so-called "Friends of Syria" could plausibly claim that two thirds of Syria was controlled by rebel forces, that Syrian capital Damascus was under siege and its fall was just a matter of time and that the days of President Bashar al-Assad were numbered and accordingly he "should step down." The war on Syria has taken a U-turn during the past year. Assad now firmly holds the military initiative. The long awaited foreign military intervention could not take off; it was prevented by the emerging multi-polar world order. Syrian and non-Syrian insurgents are now...

Dozens of Fatah supporters demonstrated in Ramallah on Wednesday in support of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The demonstration is the first of its kind in the West Bank since the beginning of the uprising in Egypt. RELATED:For Palestinians, Egyptian unrest is bittersweet The demonstration coincided with the attack that was launched by Mubarak's supporters against anti-government protesters in Cairo. Sources in Ramallah said that the demonstration was initiated by the PA leadership, which has banned anti-Mubarak protests in the West Bank. The demonstrators shouted slogans condemning Egyptian opposition figure Mohammed ElBaradei as a “CIA agent” and warned against foreign...

BERLIN (AP) -- German authorities have banned an organization they say has raised millions of dollars for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which the European Union considers a terrorist organization. Emily Haber, a deputy interior minister, said police raided 19 locations early Tuesday in six German states used by the so-called "Orphaned Children Project - Lebanon."

Look At What America Is Giving To Terrorists By Ted on April 8, 2014 in General By Theodore Shoebat Look at what America is giving these terrorists in Syria. This is a BGM-71, one of the most widely used anti-tank guided missiles.The weapon is used in anti-armor, anti-bunker, anti-fortification and anti-amphibious landing roles. The TOW is in service with over 45 militaries and is integrated on over 15,000 ground, vehicle and helicopter platforms worldwide. In other words, its serious weaponry, and its in the hands of these savages all thanks to politicians like Obama and McCain.

John Kerry Defends His Diplomatic Efforts: ‘I May Fail – I Don’t Care’ By Ali Weinberg Apr 8, 2014 4:03pm Appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State John Kerry defiantly defended his diplomatic efforts, saying that while ambitious, they were better than doing nothing. While the purpose of Tuesday’s hearing was to pick through the State Department’s budget, it was Kerry’s record that came under scrutiny as his old colleagues on the committee accused him of taking on too many responsibilities with too few results. “I think you’re about to hit the trifecta,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.,...

If Sen. Rand Paul has any hope of capturing the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, he'll have to convince the conservative base he can be trusted on foreign policy -- which is exactly why Sen. Ted Cruz is his most dangerous critic.Though they have often been allies on domestic policy, anybody paying close attention knew that there was always a big gulf on foreign policy issues between Cruz, R-Texas, and Paul, R-Ky.Whereas Cruz has a much more traditional Reaganite view of a strong role for America in the world, Paul seeks to advance his father's brand of non-interventionism, which advocates...

BEIRUT — An activist Jesuit priest who spent three years living alongside besieged civilians and rebels in the Syrian city of Homs was assassinated Monday, according to the Vatican, which said he was abducted by unidentified gunmen who beat him before executing him in front of his monastery.Father Francis Van Der Lugt, 75, a Dutch Jesuit priest, came to Syria in 1966 and eventually founded a home for children and adults with mental disabilities outside Homs, where he lived before the three-year-old civil war started. After fighting began, he relocated to the rebel-held neighborhood of Bustan al Diwan in...

A Muslim gunman saw a jesuit priest named Fr. Frans van der Lugt in the Syrian city of Homs, opened fire on him and shot him to death. He was killed in the Bustan al-Diwan neighbourhood. Fr Frans van der Lugt He was trapped in the city, alongside numerous other Christians and Muslims, who were all suffering of mass starvation. He lived in Syria for fifty years, and refused to leave his flock. Just a few months before he was murdered, he stated: As long as there is one person from our community left here, I will stay with them....

The government of Syrian President Bashar Assad is no longer in danger of falling, the leader of Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group said in an interview with a Lebanese newspaper. In an interview with daily newspaper As-Safir, Hassan Nasrallah also said the threat of bombings in Lebanon “has dropped considerably” because of the “measures adopted along the Lebanese-Syrian border.” …

The U.S. government is finalizing a plan to increase training and small-arms shipments for Syrian rebels, two U.S. security sources said on Friday, as Syrian government troops gain momentum following the collapse of U.S.-backed peace talks.

After being publicly sacked by al Qaeda leader Aymann al-Zawahiri and accidentally beheading a fighter from one of their main allies in Syria, it’s fair to say the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)’s PR campaign has suffered in recent weeks. So, like any half decent group of militant extremists, they obviously want to address this slip. Unfortunately, a traditional media outreach is very difficult for them, given ISIS’s policy of kidnapping journalists. So they've turned, like many before them, to social media. Over the past few weeks, foreign fighters from ISIS and their subgroup the Muhajireen Brigade have been...

<p>The State Department has no idea what happened to $6 billion used to pay its contractors.</p>

The leader of a Syrian rebel group feted as an alternative to the tide of Islamism which dominates most other rebel brigades has said he has no interest in fighting Al Qaeda. Jamal Maarouf's Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) had received cautious support from western powers for its prominent role in fighting Al Qaeda-breakaway group ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), but speaking to Britain's The Independent he clarified that as far as he was concerned the wider fight against Al Qaeda is "not our problem". Moreover, Maarouf - who has been forced to flee the front lines...

The empire of the Antichrist is very near, and it will be Turkey. Before we examine the issue of Turkey, we must first examine the monumental problems in much of what circulates the prophecy arena in the West. Perhaps the major problem with modern Bible Prophecy Analysts in the U.S. is that they are mostly ahistorical who also invest in a crowd that is also ahistorical. Another problem is that the Bible is mostly focused on the Middle East and most Western Prophecy writers have a scant understanding of the Middle East demography, sectarian rifts and religious aspirations in the...

The Libyan civil war did more harm to the country, its people, economy and its neighbors in North Africa when NATO intervened at the behest of U.S. President Barack Obama, concluded a University of Texas-Austin professor Alan Kuperman. He gave his remarks at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute. Associate professor of public affairs Alan Kuperman is an associate professor of public affairs and he criticized NATO’s intervention in the Libyan civil war. The civil war pitted rebels against government forces loyal to dictator Muammar Qaddafi. Kuperman was grateful to Obama for outlining the definition of success in Libya for...

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

A student who went to visit family in Iran has been locked up for five months over comments she made to friends on Facebook, her family say. Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, from Stockport, was arrested as she stepped off a plane in the provincial city of Shiraz and accused of being a spy, husband Daryoush Taghipoor told the M.E.N. Daryoush said his 47-year-old wife has been detained at Evin, an infamous prison in Iranian capital Tehran, on suspicion of plotting to commit crimes against security and insulting Islam. He claimed her arrest was over comments she made on an internet...

Over 150,000 people have lost their lives since the March 2011 outbreak of the devastating civil war in Syria, according to new figures. The London based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which closely monitors the conflict using a network of activists and medical staff in Syria, has documented the deaths of 150,344 people. More than a third of those killed in Syria – by shellfire, air strikes and bullets – are civilians, the rights group said. Now in its third year, the war, which continues, unabated, has ravaged entire cities, leaving whole civilian neighbourhoods flattened by shell fire and...

Conflict in Syria kills hundreds of thousands of people and spreads unrest across the Middle East. Iranian forces battle anti-Shi'ite fighters in Damascus, and the region braces for an ultimate showdown. If the scenario sounds familiar to an anxious world watching Syria's devastating civil war, it resonates even more with Sunni and Shi'ite fighters on the frontlines - who believe it was all foretold in 7th Century prophecies. From the first outbreak of the crisis in the southern city of Deraa to apocalyptic forecasts of a Middle East soaked in blood, many combatants on both sides of the conflict say...

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Conflict in Syria kills hundreds of thousands of people and spreads unrest across the Middle East. Iranian forces battle anti-Shi'ite fighters in Damascus, and the region braces for an ultimate showdown. If the scenario sounds familiar to an anxious world watching Syria's devastating civil war, it resonates even more with Sunni and Shi'ite fighters on the frontlines - who believe it was all foretold in 7th Century prophecies. From the first outbreak of the crisis in the southern city of Deraa to apocalyptic forecasts of a Middle East soaked in blood, many combatants on both sides of...

Is the Republican Party's Middle East policy up for bid? For four days ending Sunday, a quartet of presidential hopefuls trooped to Las Vegas to attend the annual gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Impresario: Sheldon Adelson, the Vegas-Macau casino mogul whose fortune is estimated at $39 billion -- 8th richest man on the planet -- and who dumped $92 million into the election of 2012. Adelson kept Newt Gingrich alive with a $15 million infusion of ad money, gutting Romney, and then sank $30 million into Mitt's campaign. This time Sheldon wants to buy himself a winner. Ari Fleischer,...