Free Republic

RABAT (Reuters) - Morocco softened its rhetoric on Syria on Wednesday, with its foreign minister signaling support for calls among some Arab states for a return of Damascus to the Arab League. {snip} ...Arab states, including some that once backed rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, are seeking to reconcile with him after decisive gains by his forces in the war, aiming to expand their clout in Syria at the expense of non-Arab Turkey and Iran. The Moroccan position on Syria comes after Lebanon’s caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil called last Friday for reinstating Syria ...

John Kerry on his message to Trump: 'Resign' By Owen Daugherty - 01/22/19 12:18 PM EST Former Secretary of State John Kerry had a simple message for President Trump on Tuesday, saying he should “resign.” Kerry was speaking on a discussion panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, when he was asked what his message to Trump would be, according to CNBC. Kerry was at first hesitant to answer the question, saying Trump "doesn't take any of this seriously.” “He doesn’t have an ability to have that kind of conversation,” Kerry said after debating whether to answer or...

The ban is a huge win for the administration and lays down another marker in its effort to tighten the sanctions noose around Tehran. A top Trump ambassador is winning kudos for his part in convincing Germany to ban Iranian airline Mahan Air amid allegations 'it ran weapons to Syria.'......Iran’s Mahan Air is shut down in Germany, immediately. “Since arriving in Berlin, Ambassador Grenell has literally hit the ground running delivering on the president’s priorities,” said a key ally and senior Senate Republican aide. “At the top of that list has been to ensure Europe doesn’t circumvent President Trump on...

he Women’s March lost a lot of supporters last year, from Alyssa Milano to the Democratic National Committee, over charges that the organizers had an anti-Semitism problem — one they haven’t done much to counter, what with Tamika Mallory still refusing to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. The organizers insisted the first Women’s March wasn’t an anti-Trump march, which is exactly what it was: Hillary lost, and lots of women were angry and needed to vent, and the Women’s March was there for them. What was said from the stage didn’t really seem to matter, which was good, because there...

The undeclared war between Israel and Iran is heating up as, in a nearly unprecedented move, the Israeli government announced it had struck Iranian targets in Syria. Iranian troops belong to the Quds Force were hit along with targets near the Damascus airport. We have started striking Iranian Quds targets in Syrian territory. We warn the Syrian Armed Forces against attempting to harm Israeli forces or territory. The Quds Force is an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards that operates almost exclusively on foreign soil. Iran deployed the Quds Force to work closely with the Lebanese terrorist group Hezb'allah,...

The Israeli Defence Forces on Sunday confirmed that its missiles are “currently targeting Iranian Quds in Syrian territory” just before midnight local time as reports from the Syrian News Agency confirms massive explosions in capital Damascus. “We warn the Syrian Armed Forces against attempting to harm Israeli forces or territory,” the statement released by the IDF said. It marks the first time Israel has confirmed they are striking Iranian targets in Syria and that it is happening in real time. There have been unconfirmed reports since that Syrian forces are engaging with their weaponry by the Golan Heights — a...

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkish prosecutors demand aggravated life imprisonment for a local US Consulate employee, Metin Topuz, who they charge with espionage for a foreign nation, membership in a terrorist organization, and participation in conspiracies to overthrow the government of Turkey.Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Parliament Speaker Binali Yildirim, former ministers Ali Babacan, Muammer Guler, and Zafer Caglayan – the last two themselves targets of a high-level corruption investigation in 2013 – and former Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag are among 30 officials who claimed victimhood and are plaintiffs in an indictment released this weekend against Topuz.The Turkish national who...

A Republican congressman is urging Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to block freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress, from leading a delegation to the West Bank, arguing that the trip would hurt U.S.-Israel relations. Tlaib's planned delegation to the West Bank, which is set for the same time as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) trip for new members of Congress, would be "inconsistent with our national values," Texas Rep. Brian Babin (R) argued in a letter. "I am writing to express my extreme concern that a newly elected Member of Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib,...

Anti-Semites are violating federal law by boycotting Israel and Israeli companies and institutions. Activists in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, one of the highest-profile global projects of the left, are subject to criminal and financial penalties, including jail time of five years and fines up to $50,000. A U.S. exporter can lose the right to export any products to any country. So why isn’t the U.S. Department of Justice enforcing the anti-boycott laws? President Donald Trump should order the Office of Antiboycott Compliance to come out of cryogenic stasis and get back to work, and order DOJ to...

On Tuesday, Islamist terrorists affiliated with the Somali group al-Shabaab attacked an upscale hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 21. It wasnÂ’t the groupÂ’s first attack in Kenya. The radical group, which at one point was affiliated with al Qaeda, has used KenyaÂ’s heavy Somali refugee presence as cover for a number of attacks in Kenya and against Kenyans, most famously at the Westgate Mall in 2013. That Kenya remains a contributor of both soldiers and police to AMISOM, the African Union Mission in Somalia which seeks to defend the country against al-Shaabab, only puts it further in the...

BRUSSELS/PARIS - In Tehran on Jan. 8 during a meeting with European envoys, Iranian officials abruptly stood up, walked out and slammed the door in an extraordinary break with protocol. The next day, the European Union imposed its first sanctions on Iran since world powers agreed the 2015 Vienna nuclear arms control deal with Tehran. The sanctions were largely symbolic but the stormy meeting encapsulated the unexpected shift in European diplomacy since the end of last year. Smaller, more dovish EU countries have joined France and Britain in a harder stance on Tehran, including considering new economic sanctions, diplomats say....

The Al-Shabaab terrorist group said on Wednesday it carried out the deadly attack on a Nairobi hotel and office complex in retaliation for US President Donald Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital last December, AFP reported. The group said in a statement picked up by the SITE monitoring group that its fighters stormed the DusitD2 complex on instructions by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. "It is a response to the witless remarks of the US president, Donald Trump, and his declaration of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the capital of Israel," said Al-Shabaab. The assault with guns and explosives claimed the lives...

Taking charge of Group of 77, which encompasses 134 developing countries, Abbas slams Israel’s ‘occupation of the state of Palestine,’ condemns ‘terrorism in all its forms’ Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas assumed the chairmanship of the largest bloc of countries at the United Nations on behalf of “the State of Palestine” on Tuesday in New York City. The Palestinians are slated to serve as the leader of the bloc, known as the Group of 77, for the next year. In a speech at the UN headquarters, Abbas called the task of leading the Group of 77 “a great responsibility.” "I...

MSNBC continues to maintain its red wall of silence on Joy Reid. But the ugliness just keeps rising. The old blog posts by the progressive personality reek of every bigotry that the left claims to condemn. And, as Bre Payton at the Federalist notes, there's even a call to ethnically cleanse Jews from Israel. Iran's pres strikes again Says "move Israel to Europe" "You believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price? You oppressed them, so give a part of Europe to the Zionist regime so they can establish any government they want....

Following meetings with top Saudi Arabian leaders in the country's capital on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that one of the Trump administration's top regional goals is to "make sure that the Iranian people get control of their capital," a shot across the bow to a ruling regime that has spent billions to beef up its foreign military and terrorist operations. Pompeo, speaking to reporters in Riyadh, said that the Trump administration's primary goal is to empower the Iranian people to rein in the ruling regime, which has spent a fortune on foreign wars and terror operations as...

Among the world’s endangered minorities, Iranian Jews are an anomaly. Like their counterparts, their conditions categorically refute all the efforts their nation makes at seeming civilized and egalitarian—and so they embody, often without wanting to, all that is ugly and unjust about their native land. But Iran’s Jewish community does something more. It also embodies the nation’s hope, the narrative of its resistance and struggle for a better future—one that has been on the brink of arriving ever since the revolution in 1979. To understand why Jews continue to remain in Iran is to understand the tortured tale of Iran....

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Democrat, was called out Monday after Palestinian activist Abbas Hamideh, a staunch defender of the terrorist group Hezbollah, posted photos of the two of them posing at her swearing-in ceremony in Detroit. Mr. Hamideh tweeted a photo of himself Saturday with Ms. Tlaib along with the caption, “I was honored to be at Congresswoman @RashidaTlaib swearing in ceremony in #Detroit and private dinner afterward with the entire family, friends and activists across the country.” Critics were quick to point out that Mr. Hamideh, a co-founder of the pro-Palestinian group Al-Awda, which means “right of return,” has...

Now it is becoming clear why Facebook and Twitter have for so long been harassing, shadowbanning, and blocking foes of jihad terror and Sharia oppression. Journalist Jordan Schachtel revealed in Conservative Review Tuesday that “the Hamas-tied Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is best known as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing case in U.S. history, appears to have access to high-ranking Facebook and Twitter executives and has communicated with these individuals about who should be allowed to stay on their platforms.” This doesn’t come as any surprise given the eagerness of both Facebook and Twitter to...

FULL TITLE: Trump touts 'long overdue' Syria pullout, says US 'will devastate Turkey economically' if they attack Kurds President Donald Trump on Sunday tweeted that the "long overdue pullout from Syria" is starting, and threatened that the U.S. will "devastate Turkey economically" if they attack Kurdish forces in the war-torn country. Trump said the removal of troops, which he announced via Twitter in December, is happening "while hitting the little remaining ISIS territorial caliphate hard, and from many directions." The president also vowed that the U.S. "Will attack [ISIS] again from existing nearby base if it reforms." Trump promised the...

Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of State The American University in Cairo. Cairo, Egypt January 10, 2019 “We need to acknowledge that truth, because if we don’t, we make bad choices – now and in the future. And our choices, the choices we make today have consequences for nations, and for millions and millions of people, for our safety, for our economic prosperity, for our personal freedoms, and those of our children.” https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2019/01/288410.htm