Free Republic

It was mid-May, about six weeks after Trump appointee Mari Stull began her new job as senior adviser at the State Department’s Bureau of International Organization Affairs. As senior adviser at the bureau, Stull was in charge of making sure President Trump’s agenda was represented at the many international organizations the U.S. participates in and mostly funds, such as the United Nations and its various agencies. Stull and her boss, Amb. Kevin Moley, had just left for a trip to Geneva for the World Health Assembly. Back at the State Department, Erin Barclay, a senior career diplomat at the IO...

The hearing would be the former Trump national security adviser's first court appearance since pleading guilty more than seven months ago. A pair of legal filings suggesting that special counsel Robert Mueller's office is almost-but-not-quite ready to set a sentencing date for former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn have prompted a federal judge to order Flynn and lawyers for both sides to make an unexpected trip to court next week. than seven months ago. The hearing set for next Tuesday would be the first court appearance for Flynn since last December, when the former Defense Intelligence Agency chief appeared...

New Zealand's role in promoting a UN Security Council resolution against Israel may have some economic payoff, a foreign policy analyst says. . . . . ."New Zealand also trades with the Arab states, is about to sign a free trade agreement with the Gulf Co-operation Council. "There's huge profits being made to export lamb and other dairy products, other food products to the Arab states. "If there was to be a big trade payoff, the calculations would be in favour of going with the Arab and the Muslim countries." Meanwhile, a pro-Palestine group urged New Zealand to pull out...

Oh the shame of it all. Last month, 1,300 pro-Palestinian activists from the US and Europe came to the region in the name of peace and social justice to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. Led by the self-declared feminist, antiwar group Code Pink, the demonstrators' plan was to enter Gaza from the Egyptian border at Rafah and deliver "humanitarian aid" to the Hamas terrorist organization. But it was not to be. Led by Code Pink founder and California Democratic fund-raiser Jodie Evans, the demonstrators were not welcomed by Egyptian authorities. Many were surrounded by riot police and...

Obama’s Israel Support Means Standing with Boycotters and Terror SupportersPosted By Ronn Torossian On April 17, 2015 @ 12:15 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments The media crows about Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealing to Americans across all political lines about the danger of the Iran deal – a deal which Israelis across the political spectrum maintain is a mistake.  Apparently, democracy matters – except when it comes to Israel.Along these lines, just released data from White House visitor logs [1] unveils the fact that Israel’s Ambassador, Ron Dermer is persona non grata at the White House.   That...

An anti-Israel activist who served as an expert witness on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in a recent terrorism trial was hosted for a meeting with senior White House officials, according to visitor logs released by the Obama administration and media reports.Michael Sfard, an anti-Israel activist who has reportedly been paid by the PLO to serve as an expert witness in terrorism trials against it, met in December 2014 with a senior White House National Security Council (NSC) member for a meeting about the Middle East, according to the logs and reports.Sfard, a lawyer, serves as the legal...

Here’s a story which seemed to get lost in the shuffle this month, what with so many other alerts devouring the news cycle. A memo was sent out from the Obama administration early in January directing a change to how products from Israel are labeled. As Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon explains, this has riled up many folks on both sides of the aisle. A memo issued earlier this month by the Obama administration directs the U.S. "trade community" and government partner agencies to explicitly label Israeli-made goods that have been produced in the West Bank.The Jan. 23...

"NEW EMAIL shows adviser telling Hillary to CREATE PALESTINIAN UNREST in order to pressure Israel!!" The Free Beacon caught a pretty remarkable email that went to Hillary and recommended that she spark fake protests among Palestinians in order to pressure Israel: Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton considered a secret plan created by her then-advisers to foment unrest among Palestinian citizens and spark protests in order to push the Israeli government back to the negotiating table, according to emails released as part of the investigation into the Democratic presidential frontrunner’s private email server. In a Dec, 18, 2011, email, former...

U.N. gives mixed signals on Tehran cooperation as nuclear talks intensifySenate Democrats on Tuesday backed away from a bipartisan push for immediate new sanctions on Iran, bowing to President Obama’s call not to undercut international talks to get Tehran to curb its nuclear programs in the coming weeks. The shift, announced Tuesday by Sen. Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat and one of the party’s outspoken hawks on Iran, came amid a series of mixed signals from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency over the question of whether Tehran was honoring promises to put its suspect nuclear programs on hold as...

Ten Senate Democrats warned the White House in a letter Tuesday that they will support legislation imposing new sanctions on Iran if a framework to roll back the country’s nuclear program isn’t reached within two months. "In acknowledgement of your concern regarding congressional action on legislation at this moment, we will not vote for this legislation on the Senate floor before March 24," said the letter, led by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who is the co-author of Iran sanctions legislation. "After March 24, we will only vote for this legislation on the Senate floor if Iran fails to reach agreement...

Unless there is any doubt, the vast majority of Democrats value partisan support for a failed president over support for our own national security and for that of Israel. Hence, they want to delay once again a vote on the Menendez-Kirk bill imposing sanctions on Iran unless it agrees to an acceptable final deal. The bill was introduced more than a year ago. The timing just isn’t right, you see. Will it ever be? A letter by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) signed onto by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.),...

Everyone involved seems to be trying to put the best face on it, but Barack Obama went so far as to suggest senior Democrats like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who take a hard line on Iran, are doing so purely to appease their donors. Obama said that as a former senator himself, he understood how outside forces — like special interests and donors — can influence senators to act, one of the senators recounted.

Menendez: Obama Admin Statements on Iran 'Sound like Talking Points Straight out of Tehran'

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A heated exchanged between President Barack Obama and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-New Jersey) broke out Thursday over whether the U.S. should reimpose sanctions on Iran amid ongoing negotiations over the country's nuclear program, according to two senators who were in the room. Menendez, the leading Democrat pushing for additional sanctions against Iran, forcefully pressed Obama on the need for additional sanctions during a meeting in which Obama urged Menendez and other senators to drop their efforts to pass sanctions legislation. Additional sanctions, Obama argued, could torpedo ongoing negotiations over Iran's nuclear program. The unusually sharp exchange, between...

Published: 06/13/07, 1:55 PM Hamas Publishes Fatah Hit-List, Confiscates US-Supplied Weapons by Ezra HaLevi (IsraelNN.com) The civil war between Hamas and Fatah terrorists raged on in Gaza Wednesday, with Hamas on the verge of victory. Hamas seized thousands of weapons and vehicles granted to Fatah by the Oslo Accords. A Hamas spokesman said that a decision had been taken to kill all of Fatah’s leading officials, who he referred to as “dogs beholden to their Israeli masters.” Hamas has distributed a list of at least 30 Fatah officials it seeks to have killed for complicity, they say, in a US-backed...

The United Nations found troves of rockets hidden in three UN schools since the conflict began. “We condemn the group or groups who endangered civilians placing these munitions in our school,” Chris Gunness, spokesman for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, said Wednesday. “This is yet another flagrant violation of the neutrality of our premises. We call on all the warring parties to respect the inviolability of U.N. property.” Earlier this month, the United Nations also found rockets piled inside one of its vacant schools — near other schools used to accommodate displaced people. Inside a Gaza Strip mosque in...

OBAMA AWOL IN TERROR WAR By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN Published on DickMorris.com on February 19, 2009 President Barack Obama's record in battling terrorism has proven so weak that one wonders if he really takes the issue seriously. Since he has taken office, the president has: • Announced closure of Guantanamo. • Declined to prosecute the mastermind behind the USS Cole bombing. • Closed all overseas CIA interrogation centers. • Appointed an Attorney General and Justice Department officials on record as opposed to the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques in terror investigations. • Granted Al Arabia television his first...

The Israeli office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories slammed UNRWA and accused the United Nations organization of creating a provocation. Despite not having received Israeli approval, UNRWA drove several trucks carrying supplies from Jerusalem to the Gaza border crossing and coordinated their arrival with several media outlets, which filmed the trucks being turned away.

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) -- Gaza government officials on Tuesday urged school children to leave classrooms if human rights lessons included information about the Holocaust. The Hamas-led government said it would do everything it could to prevent children being taught about the Holocaust in UNRWA schools in the Gaza Strip. It accused the UN agency of overstepping its humanitarian and relief role. UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness explained that human rights education has been part of the agency's curriculum in schools across the region since 2002. In Gaza, the agency runs 228 schools, educating over 200,000 children. "Because of the situation in...

'Extreme' desert runner Max Calderan's "Run for Love" may be more about politics than peace, despite claims by United Nations spokesman Chris Gunness that the event has little to do with religion or politics. Nonetheless, Calderan found out the hard way that not all marathons are alike, when he encountered a snag at the Erez Crossing into Gaza, where IDF officials stopped him right in his tracks.