Free Republic

First Turkey-backed operation against IS becomes a fiasco Turkey recently proposed that the United States abandon Syrian Kurdistan's People's Protection Units (YPG) and "let us wipe out the Islamic State [IS] jointly with the moderate opposition." Turkey then made its first such move last week at al-Rai, Syria, with a composite force of Turkmens, Free Syrian Army factions and Salafists. That force took the town with Turkey’s support, winning much acclaim, but was trounced four days later when IS retook the city April 11. As the Syrian army was preparing for a major move at Aleppo with the support of...

Washington has jumped at the opportunity to provide massive amounts of weapons to Syria's so-called moderate rebels amid the ongoing ceasefire; it seems that the White House is not bothered by the fact that half of its arms have found their way into the hands of al-Qaeda, Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams note. Rebel fighters from the First Battalion under the Free Syrian Army take part in a military training on June 10, 2015, in the rebel-held countryside of the northern city of Aleppo The Syrian ceasefire is hanging in the balance, former Republican congressman Ron Paul and political analyst...

Two years ago today the savage barbarians of Boko Haram, an Islamic jihadist organization, kidnapped 276 Christian schoolgirls in Nigeria. At the time, this was but the latest example of Boko Haram’s reign of terror. Up to that point, Boko Haram specifically targeted and slaughtered Christians–especially Christian worshippers on Christian Holy Days, such as Christmas, Palm Sunday and Easter. In fact, Boko Haram is said to be directly responsible for more deaths than the Islamic State (ISIS). But it wasn’t until they kidnapped these hundreds of schoolgirls that the world was finally awoken to the danger that Boko Haram posed....

Sunday, April 10, 2016 Islam is Colonialism, Palestine is Colonialism Posted by Daniel Greenfield At Israeli Apartheid Week, campus haters claim to be fighting “colonialism” by fighting Jews. Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, dedicated to a country that doesn’t exist and which has produced nothing worth studying except terrorism, features diatribes such as Palestine Re-Covered: Reading a Settler Colonial Landscape”. This word salad is a toxic stew of historical revisionism being used to justify the Muslim settler colonization of the indigenous Jewish population. You can’t colonize Palestine because you can't colonize colonizers. The Muslim population in Israel is a...

Senator Lindsay Graham opened the evidence session of the Senate Appropriations Committee which hosted U2 singer Bono yesterday by telling the room that you don’t win wars against terrorists by killing them, or “dropping bombs on their head” but rather, by spending U.S. tax payer cash attempting to keep migrants un-radicalised. He said that non governmental organisations and charities in the Middle East and North Africa “can do just as much good as any battalion of soldiers”.

The Central Intelligence Agency and its regional partners have drawn up plans to supply more-powerful weapons to moderate rebels in Syria fighting the Russia-backed regime in the event the country’s six-week-old truce collapses, according to U.S. and other officials.

The Fate of Syria Rests in Aleppo Analysis April 12, 2016 Summary Syria's cease-fire is crumbling under the weight of current and pending military operations in the country. Focused on the province and city of Aleppo, the operations stand to play a decisive role in determining the direction of the civil war. In the coming weeks, the results of these battles could change the balance between rebels and loyalists, alter the Islamic State's position in the region, and influence the relationship between the United States and Turkey as they pursue conflicting objectives in Aleppo. Analysis With major military operations already...

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...

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Bono, the lead vocalist of rock band U2, offered warning about the refugee crisis taking place due to turmoil in the Middle East and in Africa. Bono told “Morning Joe” this crisis threatens the existence of Europe and could be a hurdle for the next president of the United States to overcome. “What I learned from my trip along the border of Somalia and these camps along the borders of Syria saying – but what I learned from that trip with a lot of this work to get undone and furthermore, that it threatens the...

Texas is taking the gloves off when it comes to the fight over Syrian refugees by suing the federal government. Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office announced the lawsuit yesterday, saying the Obama Administration’s plans go against federal law. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton today announced that he has filed suit on behalf of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) against the federal government to halt the relocation of refugees from Syria in the state, citing the Refugee Act of 1980, which requires that the federal government consult with state authorities in advance of such relocations. The federal government...

The Muslim sovereign has sent a donation to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem as a contribution towards the costs. This is another of the Jordanian royal family's expressions of support to Christians. It is also a political move that aims to underline Amman's prerogatives over Jerusalem"His Majesty King Abdullah II has issued a Royal Benefaction (makruma) to provide for the restoration of Jesus' Tomb in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, at His Majesty's personal expense." The news was announced by Jordanian press agency Petra, which says that the Hashemite Court sent an official letter to the...

A majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza approve of attacks against Israeli civilians and believe that an armed intifada would help them on the path to statehood, a recent poll has found. The survey, carried out by the the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and published on April 4, found that 60 percent of Palestinians support “armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel,” while 65 percent think that escalating the current wave of violence into an armed intifada would help Palestinian national aspirations in a way that negotiations could not. A plurality also believes...

Ever wonder why the federal government would be sending hundreds of foreign refugees to a relatively small town in Idaho? Wonder no more. They’re sent there, many of them, to work in the world’s largest yogurt factory. As WND previously reported, Twin Falls is in line to receive about 300 refugees this year, many of them Muslims from Syria. And the state of Idaho, despite its reputation as a mostly white, conservative farm state, has been a popular destination for refugees in recent years. Boise Mayor David Bieter has gone on record as a huge supporter of President Obama’s welcoming...

The Times of Israel reports a story of Israeli devotion to the sanctity of life in “Israeli doctors, spies rally to save 5-year-old Syrian girl.” If you follow the news from Israel, you may be familiar with Israel’s dedication of resources to save casualties of the Syrian civil war, but this story of a young girl adds a novel wrinkle: Some two weeks after she arrived at the hospital, after her wounds had nearly healed, [Haifa’s] Rambam [Medical Center] doctors discovered the young girl had cancer. They refused to release her, insisting that they could not let her cancer go...

MK Zouheir Bahloul tells MK Avi Dichter: 'This is the Jews' country and not the Arabs' country.' Claims attacks on soldiers are justified. MK Avi Dichter (Likud) and MK Zouheir Bahloul (Zionist Union) shared a stage in Acre to discuss the ongoing issue of the IDF soldier who shot a neutralized terrorist. During their talk, Dichter criticized Bahloul for declaring that the would-be stabber was not a terrorist. "Over the past few months I have become concerned with the statements by Arab MKs, and I ask myself what is going on here?" Dichter said. "I would not dare make these...

Syrian rebels massacre Kurdish civilians in Aleppo April 6, 2016 Syria ARA News ERBIL – Dozens of civilians, including women and children, were killed on Tuesday in attacks by Arab rebel groups on a Kurdish neighborhood in Syria’s northern Aleppo city, officials and activists told ARA News. The Kurdish neighborhood of Sheikh Mqsoud in Aleppo –held by fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG)– was exposed to heavy shelling by Islamist rebels on Tuesday. At least 70 civilians were reported dead in the bombardment of Sheikh Maqsoud. “The situation in Sheikh Maqsoud is very bad, the attacks of these rebel...

Big Brother is alive and well and will remove from the playing field anyone who fails to follow accepted political policy. Obama doesn’t need to worry about negative stories if his followers can stop criticism by low level analysts and flush it down the memory hole. The Daily Beast recently reported that U.S. Central Command forced two senior intelligence analysts out of their jobs because they told the truth about U.S. backed rebel groups in Syria. The analysts had expressed doubts about the rebel’s capability and commitment to U.S. objectives in the region. Their reports placed them at odds with...

Documents released by the US government's Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website have provided an indication of the types and numbers of Eastern European weapons and ammunition the United States is providing to Syrian rebel groups as part of a programme that continues despite the widely respected ceasefire in that country.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: CNN has reported that the two men supported of doing the attack in the Brussels airport have been captured alive in Brussels. One of the men, Mohamed Abrini, is thought to be the guy in the white coat and the blue hat that we've seen in that tape from the day of the attack. One of these guys arrested had come to Europe via Greece -- the Ellis Island of Europe now -- and stayed in a refugee camp. Did you hear that? He stayed in a refugee camp, and we had this big ceremony yesterday where...

ISIS militants massacred 175 workers who were captured at a cement factory Northeast of Damascus, a Syrian military source said on Friday. No further details were provided on the nature of the killings.