Free Republic

Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson is no stranger to controversy, with a legacy of questionable statements on Israel and the US government. In 2013 the former chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested that Israel was responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. In 2007 Wilkerson appeared in a Dutch documentary, claiming that American foreign policy was dominated by “the Jewish lobby”. Despite his history of inflammatory rhetoric and frequent conspiracy theories, Wilkerson was tapped to serve as a military and foreign policy adviser for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2015. In the wake...

Noa Rotman, the granddaughter of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, accused Prime Minister Netanyahu of 'assassinating' Israel's democracy. Rotman, a candidate for Ehud Barak's 'Democratic Israel' party, tweeted: "I am 42 years old. I am mother to Omer Alona and Amalia, am married to Eldad. Scriptwriter and creator. Lawyer. Zionist conflict. Liberal. And yes, even granddaughter. I am proud of my family. She slammed Netanyahu and his government: "I sat on the fence and watched how the bastards are changing the system. How a criminal suspect holds the Israeli public hostage to save his skin and is ready to assassinate...

Former president Bill Clinton confessed to Israeli television that he tried to help Shimon Peres defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s 1996 general elections. In an interview on Channel 10 news that aired Tuesday, Clinton admitted that he tried to help Peres win the election in a way that didn’t “overtly” implicate him, and that he did so because Peres was more committed than Netanyahu to the so-called peace process, which had suffered a huge blow with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin six months earlier.

Had Yitzhak Rabin lived, would the Oslo Accords have nurtured genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians?It has been 20 years since the assassination of Israel's fifth prime minister in Tel Aviv by Yigal Amir, a right-wing Jewish fanatic who considered Rabin a traitor and bitterly opposed the Oslo process. The murder traumatized Israel and its friends, and the recriminations still reverberate. To this day there are those whoargue that Amir's terrible crime killed not only the country's democratically-elected leader and renowned military hero, but also the "land-for-peace" paradigm with the Palestinians that he had championed.From the perspective of two decades,...

A French municipal council has approved a proposal to name a newly built street after Palestinian Liberation Organization leader and arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat, the Nice Matin newspaper reported Tuesday. The proposal was adopted by a large majority of elected representatives of of the south-western town La Seyne-sur-Mer. According to Mayor Marc Vuillemot, the proposal was brought forward by the town's residents and only a handful of representatives voted against it. Those who opposed the measure were reportedly unhappy with honoring a "controversial figure" or, as others described Arafat, a "terrorist." "There is also a Yitzhak Rabin-street in the district. To...

The supposedly unprecedented step taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his plan to speak directly before Congress about the Iranian nuclear threat on March 3, rather than working exclusively with the White House on the issue, actually has an interesting precedent—established in 1975 by none other than Yitzhak Rabin and America’s Democratic Party. That spring, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger undertook a round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The negotiations quickly ran into trouble, when Egypt refused to offer anything more than a brief a period of “non-belligerency” in...

Speeaking at the 19th annual Rabin memorial rally Saturday night, former president Shimon Peres issued scathing criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the peace process with the Palestinians and of his government’s approach to the conflict. “There are those who have turned the word ‘peace’ into a derogatory term, and there are those who consider ‘peace supporters’ as delusional people,” declared Peres. “I say clearly today: Those who have given up on peace are the delusional ones. Those who gave up and stopped looking for peace. they’re the naive ones, the ones who are not patriots,” Peres added...

The Associated Press UNITED NATIONS — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the U.N. General Assembly Thursday that the planned national unity government will recognize Israel. The Hamas-led Palestinian government that won elections in January has refused to recognize Israel, end violence, and honor past agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Abbas heads. Abbas told the assembly's annual ministerial meeting that he has recently sought to establish a government of national unity "that is consistent with international and Arab legitimacy and that responds to the demands of the key parties promoting Mideast peace _ recognition, ending violence and...

Israel’s predicament today is the work of Rabin and Sharon; two generals turned prime ministers who launched ambitious ventures and died leaving them unfinished and their nation in twilight. Rabin’s peace process destroyed Israeli national security and revitalized terrorism as a force in political affairs. Had he lived, he might have turned away from it. The idea had been thrust on him by the fringe left and he had grasped it as a hedge against the political oblivion of a leftist party that had lost credibility in a new Israel no longer dominated by the Socialist vision of cooperatives and...

As Independence Day celebrations were winding down Tuesday night, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu made a guest appearance on Channel 2's left-wing satire show Eretz Nehederet. One of the final questions that the show's host Eyal Kitzis asked the premier was how he would like to be remembered after he leaves office. Netanyahu thought a moment and said, "I'd like to be remembered as the leader who preserved Israel's security." On the face of it, Netanyahu's stated aspiration might seem dull. In a year he'll be the longest-serving prime minister in the state's history, and all he wants is to...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is playing with fire. And Israel is getting burned. Over the past week, it has been widely reported that the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government are conducting secret negotiations regarding future Israeli land surrenders to the Palestinians in the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem. According to the reports, the Obama administration has presented Netanyahu with a plan whereby Israel will cede its rights to eastern Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians and then lease the areas from the Palestinians for a limited period. The reports on the length of the lease vary. Some claim...

TEL AVIV // A mysterious arrest carried out recently by Israel’s security services has renewed condemnation from human rights groups about the country’s treatment of prisoners and its possible infringement of press freedoms. A report last week on the website of Israel’s biggest newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, said that a so-called “Mr X” is being held in complete seclusion at the maximum-security Ayalon prison, and his identity is being kept so closely under wraps that it is not even known to his prison guards or fellow inmates. The report cited an unidentified official at Israel’s penitentiary service as saying: “I don’t...

Israel's Yitzhak Rabin Center is charging $100,000 a pop for supporters who want to bask in the aura of former and possibly future first couple Bill and Hillary Clinton, who will be attending the center's opening next week. A fundraising letter obtained by the New York Post asks for donations to the center - saying seating will be determined "according to the size of the contribution." "Priority, of course, will be given to the highest contributions," the letter adds. The Clintons will seated at a 10-person table with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who apparently won't be charged for the...

Over 1,500 police, Border Police and civil guard volunteers are providing security for the estimated 100,00 people attending the Saturday evening memorial ceremony for the eight anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Roads surrounding the central square in Tel Aviv named for the slain premier are being closed off to vehicles, with Police manning the entrances to the area. Police originally estimated that about 60,000 people would attend the ceremony ,and were surprised by the numbers who turned out. At just after 10pm, the thousands attending the ceremony observed a minute of silence in honour of the...

Oct. 31, 2003 Rabin monument vandalized By JPOST.COM STAFF The Rabin Memorial, defaced The Rabin Memorial in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square was defaced early Friday morning by vandals painting swastikas. "Everything should be done to find those responsible for the act of vandalism, and to uproot such phenomena," said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The vandalism comes one day before a scheduled rally to commemorate the eighth anniversary of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's murder. The monument has already been vandalized just before memorials for Rabin were due to take place, and police had placed a guard in the area to prevent...

Editorial: Happy birthday, Shimon Shimon Peres "Opposition," said William Blake, "is true friendship." We think of that line in the afterglow of Shimon Peres's 80th birthday party, which brought together, among other celebrity mismatches, Moshe Katsav, Bill Clinton, Terje Roed-Larson, and Ariel Sharon for what turned out to be a moving event. If little else, these men share an admiration for Peres in which we join. Outside the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv, where the day's formal festivities were held, protesters called for bringing the "Oslo criminals" to justice. No Israeli newspaper has been more steadfast in its opposition to...