Free Republic

President Donald Trump sent a clear message to European allies and senior administration officials Tuesday when he fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson:  the President remains steadfast on implementing his strategy to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means dismantling the 2015 Iran nuclear deal established by President Obama, sources told this reporter.Trump, who ‘begrudgingly’ recertified the Iran deal January, will not re-certify in May if Germany, France or Great Britain back down from the conditions the administration set in place at the beginning of the year to hold Tehran accountable for its nuclear program, a White House official...

Dan Shapiro, who the US ambassador to Israel during President Obama's term, estimated in an interview with Kol Rama radio that there is no chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority at present time. "The administration is full of problems, and Netanyahu is busy with investigations, and I do not see it happening," Shapiro said....

The abrupt firing Tuesday of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson follows months of infighting between the State Department and White House over efforts by Tillerson to save the Iran nuclear deal and ignore President Donald Trump's demands that the agreement be fixed or completely scrapped by the United States, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon. In the weeks leading up to Tillerson's departure, he had been spearheading efforts to convince European allies to agree to a range of fixes to the nuclear deal that would address Iran's ongoing ballistic missile...

Palestinian Authority officials did not attend the meeting, which focused on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. WASHINGTON – Israeli national security officials sat around the same table on Tuesday morning with their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, discussing a dire humanitarian situation unfolding in the Gaza Strip. The summit on Gaza, called by Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law and senior adviser on Middle East peace, as well as Jason Greenblatt, his special representative for international negotiations, marks an unprecedented moment for Israeli diplomacy, as their dialogue with officials from Arab states is...

The Turkish foreign minister says Turkey and the United States have reached an agreement on a plan to jointly station Turkish and U.S. forces in the Syrian Kurdish-held town of Manbij. Washington has not confirmed any such plan — and a small contingent of U.S. forces is already in Manbij. Turkey is riled by U.S. support to the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG, and accuses the U.S. of allegedly not fulfilling a promise to move the Syrian Kurdish fighters in Manbij east of the Euphrates River. Ankara has threatened to expand its current offensive in northern Syria to...

Leaked audio recordings said to be of Russian mercenaries in Syria capture expressions of lament and humiliation over a battle in early February 2018 involving US forces and Russian nationals. Published by Polygraph.info — a fact-checking website produced by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, news organizations that receive funding from the US government — the audio recordings paint a picture of Russian mercenaries essentially sent to die in an ill-conceived advance on a US-held position in Syria. Polygraph says the audio recordings are from a source close to the Kremlin. ... First clip: “The reports that are...

Leaked audio recordings said to be of Russian mercenaries in Syria capture expressions of lament and humiliation over a battle in early February involving US forces and Russian nationals. Published by Polygraph.info — a fact-checking website produced by Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, news organizations that receive funding from the US government — the audio recordings paint a picture of Russian mercenaries essentially sent to die in an ill-conceived advance on a US-held position in Syria. Polygraph says the audio recordings are from a source close to the Kremlin.

The United States is still unsure who directed a February 7 attack on US and US-backed forces in Syria, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Saturday, even as he acknowledged accounts that Russian civilian contractors were involved. Reuters has reported that about 300 men working for a Kremlin-linked Russian private military firm were either killed or injured in Syria. The US has estimated about 100 pro-Syrian government forces were killed by US strikes to repel the Febuary 7 attack. Russian military officers told the United States during the incident that Moscow was not involved. The Pentagon has declined to comment...

A Turkish newspaper close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling party is urging 57 Islamic nations to build a joint army specifically to attack Israel, notes a new report in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin. The Middle East Media Research Institute reports the article appeared on the paper’s website under the title “What If an Army of Islam Was Formed against Israel?” It was published shortly ahead of a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which has 57 members, MEMRI reported. The article notes, MEMRI said, “that such a joint army will greatly exceed the Israeli army in...

Police pulled three security guards away on Thursday afternoon after they marched on the Israeli stand at the ITB Berlin tourism fair shouting “Free Palestine.” The men, who were employed at the ITB Berlin fair by a private security firm, surrounded the Israeli tourism board’s stand and shouted “Free Palestine” and “Freiheit für Palästina”, according to Tagesspiegel. Police pulled the men away and they were later suspended from their jobs. According to witnesses spoken to by Tagesspiegel, the three men appeared to be of Arabic background. …

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday invoked President Donald Trump's name multiple times in response to a question about what advice he can give progressive leaders who have a tough time condemning noted anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Several House Democrats have come under fire in the last week for their association with Farrakhan, including Democratic National Committee vice chairman Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.), who recently earned a "Four Pinocchios" rating from the Washington Post Fact Checker concerning his interactions with the controversial Nation of Islam leader. Sanders sat down with CNN's Jake Tapper at the South by Southwest conference in Austin,...

Meet Ammar Campa-Najjar, a 2018 primary candidate for California’s 50th Congressional District: According to his website, he’s just your run-of-the-mill southern California Democrat. He’s a gun-grabber from the word go, utterly dedicated to a woman’s right to murder the fruit of her womb, and celebrates the full range of possible psycho-sexual unions, including, generously, the one likely to bear such fruit. He favors Medicare for all without a hint of how to pay for it, and he demands the total abolition of any meaningful border between California and the drug cartels. Oh, yes -- he happens to be the grandson...

A recent article in The Atlantic about “The Tragedy of Mahmoud Abbas” noted: “In him, the world saw a reformist, a leader who could get the Palestinians to the table and possibly clear the hurdle of the two-state solution.”This was the mythical Abbas who never really existed. But this myth allowed the Palestinian Authority president to become the world’s favorite Palestinian.Only now, according to the same article, has the world woken up to the realization that Abas has “morphed into a bureaucratic tyrant at home, hostile to America and downright incendiary towards Israel.”The truth is that Abbas was never a...

The European Union (EU) on Friday issued a sharply worded statement in which it criticized the law that was approved this week in the Knesset, which allows the permanent residency of terrorists to be revoked. “This week, the Israeli Knesset adopted legislation which empowers the Israeli Minister of Interior to revoke the permanent residency status of persons involved in terrorism, treason or espionage,” the statement said. While the EU stressed it “rejects terrorism in all its forms”, it warned that “the new law could make the residency status of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, a protected population under International Humanitarian Law,...

The progressive Zionist group Zioness has condemned three leaders of the Women’s March movement for aligning themselves with antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Noted for years for his ferocious hatred of Jews, Farrakhan’s most recent tirade — at last week’s 2018 Saviour’s Day event in Chicago — was particularly vicious. In it he said that “Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men. … And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and I’m here to...

On his return from a recent two-day trip to Israel -- where he met with high-level officials -- Adonis Georgiadis, the vice president of Greece's opposition party, New Democracy, declared his support for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. In an interview with Skai Radio on March 7, Georgiadis called it "almost funny to discuss whether Jerusalem is a Jewish city or not." "[It] was founded by the Jews... in ancient times. You can read Flavius Josephus or read Diodoros Siceliotis and see the references to the city of Jerusalem, where there was the High Priest of Solomon's Temple and that...

The Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit urged Guatemala to cancel its decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem on Thursday, according to the official Palestinian Authority news site Wafa. In an urgent letter to Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, Aboul-Gheit expressed his dissatisfaction with the president's decision to relocate its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Spokesman for the Secretary-General Mahmoud Afifi said in a statement. Guatemala was one of a handful of countries that backed a UN vote on US President Donald Trump's December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Last Sunday, President Morales confirmed at AIPAC...

The Republican Jewish Coalition is calling for the resignation of seven Democratic members of Congress whom it claims are "connected" to controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The group describes him as a "known anti-Semite." Farrakhan has routinely spoke disparagingly about Jews over the years, as well as white people, in general. He was thrust into the mainstream spotlight again this week after excerpts from a speech he gave last week on the Nation of Islam's Saviour's Day surfaced online. During the speech, he once again described Jewish people -- who he says "are my enemy" -- in a...

Actor and former Obama staffer Kal Penn (Kumar of Harold and Kumar fame) ripped into Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for his support for the state of Israel. Standing before this week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Schumer not only came out in strong defense of Israel but spoke the truth about Arabs not wanting peace with the Jewish state: Now, let me tell you why – my view – why we don’t have peace, because the fact of the matter is that too many Palestinians and too many Arabs do not want any Jewish state in the Middle East....

Actor and former Obama staffer Kal Penn (Kumar of Harold and Kumar fame) ripped into Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for his support for the state of Israel. Standing before this week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Schumer not only came out in strong defense of Israel but spoke the truth about Arabs not wanting peace with the Jewish state: Now, let me tell you why – my view – why we don’t have peace, because the fact of the matter is that too many Palestinians and too many Arabs do not want any Jewish state in the Middle East....