Free Republic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEeiDjdUuU&feature=player_embedded In an effort to bring peace to the Middle East, President Barack Obama has proposed that Israel should return to its 1967 borders in exchange for being annihilated by its enemies. PJTV's Andrew Klavan has a better idea.

One of the staples of television news over the Christmas holiday is coverage of celebrations in the Holy Land, providing a familiar and comforting nod to the ancient roots of Western civilization. Even in our increasingly secular society, images of Christians worshipping in Nazareth and Bethlehem provide welcome confirmation that we have a long and substantial history - even if we're fuzzy on the details. It all looks so traditional and Christmassy. Unfortunately this comforting image depends to a large extent on a dwindling number of embattled Christian communities. We are, in fact, witnessing the twilight of Christianity across much...

"The IDF did more to safeguard civilians in a Combat zone than any Army in History." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NX6vyT8RzMo&feature=player_embedded

Danish forces free ship captured by pirates NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Danish special forces stormed a ship captured by armed Somali pirates Friday and freed the 25 crew on board, an EU naval spokesman said, marking the first time a warship has intervened during a hijacking. After the vessel Ariella sent out a distress signal early Friday, the Danish warship Absalon sent a helicopter to confirm the presence of pirates, and communicated with the crew to ensure they were in a safe location, said Cmdr. John Harbour, spokesman for the European Union Naval Force. Then Danish special forces aboard the...

"...Statehood is no longer a goal, he writes. Many stateless groups “do not aspire to have a state,” for they are more capable of achieving their objectives without one. Instead of actively seeking statehood to address their weakness, as Zionist Jews did in an earlier phase of history, groups like the Palestinians now embrace their statelessness as a source of power. New communication technologies allow people to achieve virtual unity without a state, even as new military technologies give stateless groups a lethal capacity that in former decades could be attained only by states. Grygiel explains that it's now “highly...

The attack on illustrator Kurt Westergaard wasn't the first attempt to carry out a deadly fatwa. When Muslims tried to murder Salman Rushdie 20 years ago, the protests among intellectuals were loud. Today, though, Western writers and thinkers would rather take cover than defend basic rights. In 1988, Salman Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" was published in its English-language original edition. Its publication led the Iranian state and its revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, to issue a "fatwa" against Rushdie and offer a hefty bounty for his Murder. This triggered several attacks on the novel's translators and publishers, including the murder...

New details reveal the man who tried to assassinate a Saudi prince got past palace security with explosives hidden in his Rectum. - The man who tried to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s anti-terror chief last Thursday managed to get past security in a Jeddah palace by hiding explosives in his Rectum. - Details of the assassination attempt, the first against a member of the Saudi royal family in decades, were revealed to the pan-Arab Al-Arabiyya. - The method of hiding explosives inside the body is unprecedented among Al-Qa’ida terrorists, and may draw a re-examination and alteration of security arrangements around sensitive...

An Israeli Arab man has been indicted for allegedly working on behalf of Hezbollah in a plot to assassinate Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, a gag order lifted on Monday revealed. Tira resident Rawi Fuad Sultani, 23, was arrested by Shin Bet and Israel Police forces earlier this month and indicted at the Haifa District Court. According to the charge sheet, Sultani first made contact with Hezbollah agents at a multi-national Arab summer camp in Morocco organized by the Israeli Arab political party Balad. Lebanese Hezbollah agent Salman Harev, who also took part in the camp, spent...

Until 1929, Jews had lived in the city for Three Millennia. - August 27, 2009 - Wall Street Journal - "....Yet another wrenching exile and return, now rarely remembered, occurred 80 years ago this week. On Aug. 23-24, 1929, the Jewish community of Hebron was exiled following a horrific pogrom. The tragedy is known as Tarpat, an acronym for its date in the Hebrew calendar. - Until 1929, Jews had lived in Hebron for three millennia. There, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah to bury Sarah. It was the first parcel of land owned by the...

There has been a lot of talk lately about the formation of a new Palestinian State. It has been suggested by some that Israeli Arabs could continue to live in Israel, but change their citizenship to the new Palestinian State. ""Given the choice, and continuing to live where you presently live today, would you prefer to be a citizen of Israel or of a new Palestinian State?"" 62% of Israeli Arabs would choose to remain Israeli citizens rather than join a future Palestinian State. Only 14% of the respondents would choose to join a future Palestinian State and 24% did...

The horrific slaughter in Mumbai of almost 200 innocents and/injury of 300 by terrorists shouting "Allah Akbar!" has already been morphed by the international media into the murky realm of euphemism&apologetics. Al Jazeera and Guardian label the Al Qaeda-associated Islamist terrorists responsible as "gunmen"; CNN calls them "militants." Some identified the cause asthe Kashmir dispute. Others/renowned guru Deepak Chopra concluded it's the result of "collateral-damage" caused by Washington's war-on-terrorism... But where then does the especially blood-thirsty attack on Mumbai's Nariman-Chabad House fit into this puzzle palace? New York Times theorized Chabad House may have been an "accidental hostage scene." This...

Irena Sendler, a Roman Catholic who created a network of rescuers in Poland who smuggled about 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto in World War II, some of them in coffins, died Monday in Warsaw. She was 98. - The death was confirmed by Stanlee Stahl, executive vice president of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, an organization that supports rescuers of Holocaust victims. - Mrs. Sendler was head of the children’s bureau of Zegota, an underground organization set up to save Jews after the Nazis invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Soon after the invasion, approximately 450,000...

Most Arab news outlets killed the latest Israeli peace offer, when they added the word “only”. Arab media conveyed the news, posted by Israeli daily Haaretz, in an incomplete manner and in a resentful way, citing Israel’s offer to return “only” 93% of occupied lands to the Palestinian Authority. The word “only” triggered a flood of opinion pieces attacking and dismissing the offer. Palestinian negotiators were intimidated, as a result, and disclaimed the offer as “false piece of news”, describing it as a test balloon by the enemy. [.....] The offer does not end here, as Israel is to compensate...

GAZA CITY (AFP) - The bodies of 3 Palestinians have been recovered from a smuggling tunnel between Egypt and the Gaza Strip which collapsed at the weekend, while 6 people are missing, medics said Monday. The tunnel near the Rafah border crossing caved in on Saturday, burying the 9 Palestinians, the medics said. Several Palestinians have died in recent months in the tunnels, which are used to smuggle arms, fuel, and other supplies into the Gaza Strip, which has been under a crippling Israeli blockade for nearly a year. Israel, which sealed Gaza off from all but vital humanitarian aid...

"...On 9 January 1976, three days after Epiphany, the priest of Damour Father Mansour Labaky, was carrying out a Maronite custom of blessing the houses with holy water. As he stood in front of a house on the side of the town next to the Muslim village of Harat Na’ami, a bullet whistled past his ear and hit the house. Then he heard the rattle of machine-guns. He went inside the house, and soon learned that the town was surrounded. Later he found out by whom and how many — the forces of Sa’iqa, consisting of 16,000 Palestinians and Syrians,...

Churchill understood that the Jews are the bedrock of Western tradition. "Why should we Anglo-Saxons apologize for being superior?" Winston Churchill once growled in exasperation. "We are superior." Certainly Churchill's views of what he and other late Victorians called the "lesser races," such as blacks and East Indians, are very different from ours today. One might easily assume that a self-described reactionary like Churchill, holding such views, shared the anti-Semitism prevalent among Europe's ruling elites before the Holocaust. But he did not, as Martin Gilbert vividly shows in "Churchill and the Jews." By chronicling Churchill's warm dealings with English and...

(Yeah, such an 'apartheid' 'racist' state) - The Israel Navy's new commander is of Chinese descent, a first for the military top brass in the Jewish state. - Admiral Eli Marom -- nicknamed "Chiney" -- took over as navy chief this month after his predecessor, David Ben-Bassat, quit amid criticism of his conduct during the Lebanon war. - Marom's mother was a member of the Chinese Jewish community, born to a local man and a Russian emigre woman. She married Marom's father after he fled his native Germany for China during World War Two. In 1955, the couple moved to...

(Great Photos of Bulldozing & Complete building removal within) - ISIS has obtained commercial satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe taken on Oct 24, 2007 that shows the suspected reactor construction building completely removed and the Ground Scraped (Fig 2). - ISIS released a report on Oct 23, 2007 that featured DigitalGlobe imagery from Aug 10, 2007 showing the suspected reactor construction site of the Sept 6, 2007 Israeli raid inside Syria. - A comparison of these two images effectively confirms that this site was indeed the target of the Israeli raid (Fig 1-6). The pump house and secondary structure still remain...

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict continues to be played out on the world stage of politics in a theater of highly charged emotions influencing public opinion. In the latest act the world has suddenly realized that western civilization is now fighting the same murders and suicide bombers that Israel has been fighting during this 60 year drama. Names like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Huzballah, Islamic Brotherhood, once only associated with the Arab/Israeli conflict, are now identified by intelligence services worldwide as terrorist organizations operating in the West. Their goal is to destroy our world in an Islamic Jihad, forcing those who survive to...

The arrest of Middle Eastern medics in connection with the car bombings raises questions about the profile of terrorist suspects and who should be stopped and questioned. - There is a powerful public perception that men of Asian, Middle Eastern or north African appearance, many of whom will be Muslims, are far more likely than white people to be stopped and questioned or searched by police under anti-terror legislation. - Many people in ethnic minority communities believe this amounts to an unofficial use of racial "profiling", targeting Muslims. - advertisementPolice denials that they stereotype certain ethnic groups and the insistence...