Free Republic

Shortened title. Full title: Former CIA Director John Brennan Blames “Messers Trump and Netanyahu” For Deaths of Hamas Supporters in Gaza In 2010 Barack Obama’s former CIA Director John Brennan called Jerusalem “al Quds” in a public speech. Al Quds is the Muslim name given to Jerusalem. On Monday Brennan lashed out at President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the deaths of Hamas supporters in Gaza. Four days ago Hamas terror chief Yahya Sinwar announced what he hoped would be hundreds of thousands of protesters storming the Israeli border with Gaza on Monday.

A Knock on the Door in the Night Nighttime was especially dangerous on the West Bank – we always tried to get back home to Bethlehem in our little VW Beetle before dark. As foreigners living among the Arabs, we felt vulnerable, although our neighbors were friendly and supportive. But they could do little to help us if anyone wanted to visit harm upon us. Even if we had a telephone (which we didn’t) there were no police to call for help. When the first “Intifada” (Arab uprising) erupted, everything changed. The shadowy radicals who controlled things behind the scenes...

The New York Daily News is known for being a bit tabloidy and not exactly a bastion of hard hitting news, but their latest headline is just shameful. Who let this go to print? Good grief. pic.twitter.com/8DbOF2mgUh— Brit Hume (@brithume) May 15, 2018 The nasty headline leaves out that Hamas helped orchestrate Monday's violent protests. The rioters stormed the Gaza-Israeli border, despite being warned, with firebombs and other explosive devices, so IDF confronted them with force of their own. Over 50 individuals were killed and over 2,000 injured in the exchange. Reports reveal that 10 of those killed were members...

Hamas, desperate over its increasingly precarious situation in Gaza and eager to please Iranian paymasters, has escalated the premeditated, openly violent campaign aimed at breaching the Israel-Gaza border and attacking nearby Israeli communities. This while the news media hypes Hamas-provided casualty counts and portrays the Gaza rioters as peaceful protesters frustrated that there is no Palestinian state and angry that the U.S. moved its embassy to Jerusalem. In doing so, the news media are actually advancing Hamas’s cause.

Moscow offered two explanations on Monday as to why its Russian-made Pantsir S-1 missile defense system embarrassingly took a direct hit during an Israeli airstrike last week. "One is that it had already used up its ammunition reserve," Aytech Bizhev, the former deputy commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force, said, according to RT. "The other is that it was simply turned off; it wasn't battle ready." Israeli fighter jets struck dozens of Iranian military sites in Syria last Thursday, killing at least 23 people, including 5 Syrian soldiers.

Thousands have gathered in central Istanbul to protest the United States’ embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognise the city as Israel’s capital, and the massacre of Palestinians that followed. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been among the strongest critics of U.S. President Donald Trump's decision after he announced the embassy move last December. An Extraordinary Session of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC)’s Islamic Summit Conference was swiftly brought together under Erdoğan’s leadership to respond to the announcement, rejecting and condemning “in the strongest terms the unilateral decison by the President of the United States of America recognizing...

A radical cleric who led militia into bloody battles with coalition forces in Iraq is on course to win the country's election. Firebrand Iraqi Moqtada al-Sadr formed the Mahdi Army in 2003 which was responsible for bloodshed on the streets of Basra and the shooting down of coalition planes.

The United States has hammered another nail into the “coffin” of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution that called for the internationalization of Jerusalem.The Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, the Philippines, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, and various other countries are considering to follow in the footsteps of the United States.The Christian evangelical sector of American voters was what finally clinched Trump’s resolve to transfer the embassy from Tel Aviv and recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.The “price” Israel will pay appears to be continued restraint in construction and an occasional building freeze in Jerusalem.The embassy will open in west Jerusalem, with...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country rejects the move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, adding that the U.S. has “lost its role as mediator” in the Middle East in the process. “With its latest step America has chosen to be a part of the problem, not a solution, and lost its mediator role in the Middle East peace process”, Erdogan told the Chatham House global affairs think tank on Monday. “We are rejecting once again this decision which violates international law and which is against UN resolutions,” he said. ‘President Erdogan vigorously defended Turkey’s...

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkish authorities recently banned nine translated books of various scholarly subjects about the Kurds, the owner of an Istanbul-based publishing house that released them told Kurdistan 24 on Sunday.A local Turkish court in the Idil district of the Kurdish province of Sirnak deemed the books’ content in contravention of the anti-terror and press laws, citing articles that deal with “terrorist propaganda.”Editor and founder of the publisher Avesta, Abdullah Keskin, said over the phone that a ruling by the court dated back to September last year. However, he was notified of it on Friday.“To be seized, collected,...

WASHINGTON — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is among a handful of Republican senators expected to attend the controversial opening of the new American Embassy in Jerusalem on Monday, his office has confirmed. The trip comes roughly five months after President Donald Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and announced plans to relocate the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv. Cruz, who has long called for such a move, praised the decision as “courageous and heroic.” But many Arab and European leaders slammed Trump for upending a decades-old foreign policy in which U.S. presidents declined to weigh in...

There’s a major war brewing in the Middle East between Iran and Israel. It is now getting nasty and ugly, and for the first time, Iranian rockets hit Israel mainland targets. After President Trump decided to withdraw the US from the Iran nuclear deal, within hours of his decision, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, fearing a massive buildup of Iranian forces that have been taking place in Syria over the last several months, began to “retaliate” (read attack them on sovereign Syrian territory) via massive missile and air-strikes, pounding positions held by Iranian soldiers (Iran has a mutual defense treaty with...

Iranian forces in Syria did not ask the Syrian government, or even notify Syrian leaders, before launching 20 missiles at Israel just after midnight on Thursday, Fox News reported. “It appears that the regime of Bashar Assad of Syria wants to distance itself from Iran’s military activity in its very own back yard,” Fox News’s David Lee Miller reported from the Golan Heights on Thursday. Miller said that Fox News had learn from European sources that, “The Iranian major general in charge of the Al-Quds Force in Syria, Qassem Soleimani, launched last night’s attack against Israel without the knowledge or...

WASHINGTON — The Bahraini foreign minister said Israel had a right to defend itself from Iran. The message on Twitter Thursday, a day after Israel once again struck targets in Syria believed to house Iranian materiel and personnel, was unusual for an Arab leader in its blunt defense of Israel. Bahrain is one of a number of Gulf states that have in recent decades moderated their views on Israel and allowed Israelis to visit and do business, but expressions of unadorned support for Israeli military action are exceptional if not unprecedented. “As long as Iran has breached the status quo...

Dramatic Break With Arab Precedent Follows Iranian Missile Assault Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa (far right) with fellow Arab foreign ministers in Cairo in July 2017. Photo: Reuters / Khaled Elfiqi. The foreign minister of Bahrain on Thursday issued an unusually forthright defense of Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself, hours after Iranian forces in Syria aimed a barrage of missiles at the Jewish state, inviting a wave of Israeli air strikes in response. “As long as Iran has breached the status quo in the region and invaded countries with its forces and missiles, any state in the...

The media and political elites who pose as defenders of the poor beleaguered Palestinians don't care about them at all.  They are merely pawns in an effort to rid the world of Jews, starting with the half of world Jewry living in the historic homeland of Jews, Israel.  This has been proven beyond a doubt by the reaction – really a lack of any reaction – to Syria's bombing of a large Palestinian settlement, in the course of that nation's civil war and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Sunni Muslims, who stand in the way of Iran's effort to establish a Shia...

Monday’s opening of the U.S. Embassy in contested Jerusalem, cheered by Israelis as a historic validation, is seen by Palestinians as an in-your-face affirmation of pro-Israel bias by President Donald Trump and a new blow to dreams of statehood. The festive inauguration helps harden Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ rejection of Washington as a future mediator in the conflict with Israel, likely ushering in a prolonged period of diplomatic vacuum in which other powers are unwilling or unable to step up as brokers. Such paralysis and loss of hope have been major drivers of Palestinian unrest. Underscoring the conflict’s volatility, thousands...

Khaled al-Batsh, organizer of the “Marches of Return," warned Israel against harming Arabs participating in the events, hinting that this could lead to a military response by armed groups. Speaking to the Hamas site “Al-Risala,” Batsh said, "We have behind us men and guns who know very well how to protect our people ... Our backs will not be exposed ... We have organizations of struggle that protect the body and they will put an end to any attempt to harm the people and attack it." Batsh noted that the marches will set out on Monday wherever “Palestinians” are found...

OH BOY! Iranian Regime Threatens to Release Names of Western Officials Who Took Bribes to Pass Nuke Deal. (Full title). ... Earlier this week President Trump withdrew from the sham Iranian nuclear deal. President Trump knew the deal with the Iranian mullahs was not working. This was despite former Secretary of State John Kerry working against the Trump administration to salvage the weak deal with the Iranian regime. ... Of course, the Iranian regime is very upset with President Trump’s decision. Now this… Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hossein Jaberi Ansari warned Western officials this week that if they do not...

A Kremlin aide said Friday that Russia has walked back its talk of supplying the Syrian government with more missiles, just days after a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Russia had floated giving President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime S-300 ground-to-air missiles after the U.S., Britain, and France launched airstrikes on Syria last month, a punishment for Assad’s chemical attack on his own people, including children. However, Netanyahu may have successfully lobbied Russian president Vladimir Putin this week not to render the extra military aid. The Kremlin now believes the missiles are not needed at this time, according to Vladimir...