Free Republic

The Wednesday essay, titled "The March for Israel Was a Hate Rally," and penned by The Nation's sports editor Dave Zirin, begins by calling the roughly 290,000 strong rally's crowd likely "inflated," despite the author having seen a "massive turnout."Organizers claimed 290,000 people attended the rally, with an additional 250,000 watching via live stream​​, making it the largest pro-Israel gathering in American history.Describing it as a "political event like nothing I've seen in two decades of covering rallies in this town," Zirin claims the "incessant calls to keep bombing Gaza" made the event a "celebration not just of war but...

A New York appeals court judge halted the scheduled Oct. 2 trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James' fraud lawsuit against former President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization, a spokesman for the court confirmed Thursday. State Justice David Friedman, with the 1st Department of the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division, granted an interim stay of the trial—slated to start Oct. 2—and referred the matter to a five-judge panel, which expects to rule in the last week of September, a spokesperson said. He also ordered the full appeals court to consider a reported lawsuit that President Trump had...

This week, the world will celebrate the three-year anniversary of President Donald J. Trump’s Abraham Accords. On September 15, 2020, President Trump ushered in a new era of peace and collaboration in the Middle East between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on the White House South Lawn.While intelligence community leaders said President Trump’s bold decision to keep his campaign promise and move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, would cause war in the Middle East, just the opposite happened.Not shockingly, many of these individuals said the same when the framework...

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman said Thursday that it is "despicable" that U.S. President Joe Biden is refusing to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the latter's election in November...Friedman was one of the most consequential ambassadors to Israel in U.S. history, playing a key role in forging the Abraham Accords, a series of peace agreements between Israel and several Arab states in the region.Friedman blamed the leadership of the American Jewish community for the impasse as well, because it had joined the Israeli left in condemning Netanyahu's proposed judicial reforms, and had not criticized Biden.In...

White House spokesperson John Kirby walked back that remark, reassuring Israel that there had been no change in U.S. policy after Sullivan made the error in briefing reporters on Air Force One en route to Israel on Biden’s Middle East trip.The Times of Israel reported:Asked about the potential of reopening the Jerusalem consulate that served Palestinians, Sullivan said that it is the US’s position “that we would like a consulate in East Jerusalem, obviously that requires engagement with the Israeli government, that requires engagement with the Palestinian leadership as well, and we will continue that engagement on this trip.”...Kirby said...

Capitol Hill staffers have been anonymously airing their frustrations about pay so low they sometimes qualify for public aid and members of Congress whose masks come off behind the scenes on the account 'Dear White Staffers.' The account, which brands itself as 'Congressional BIPOC s**tposters on Capitol Hill,' shares salacious stories of members who mistreat their staff, amid a campaign to unionize that has attracted the approval of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Asked about the account in her weekly news conference, Pelosi initially declined. Later asked again about staffers' push to unionize, the speaker said: 'Well,...

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) accused Israel of “war crimes” shortly after visiting Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, prompting then-U.S. Ambassador David Friedman to walk out of a meeting with her in 2018. The story is told in Friedman’s new memoir. Jayapal and several other Democrats had been touring Israel with a group sponsored by J Street, a George Soros-backed left-wing organization that opposes many pro-Israeli policies. Jayapal went to Yad Vashem, a memorial where visiting heads of state and dignitaries pay their respects to the victims of the Holocaust. The memorial is renowned both for the quality of its historical...

JERUSALEM—When Donald J. Trump became president of the United States in January of 2017, it was not obvious to almost anyone that he would become the first American leader in history to broker four Arab-Israeli peace agreements. Nor was it obvious that he would be helped in this ground-breaking effort by a team of four modern Orthodox Jews that included Jared Kushner, David Friedman, Jason Greenblatt and Avi Berkowitz. It certainly wasn’t obvious that David Friedman – whom Trump appointed as his ambassador to Israel – would then turn to the world’s largest Christian television network to tell the story...

The Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Places, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, held a prayer this morning at the Western Wall plaza for the healing of US President Trump. The prayer was held in the presence of the Chief Rabbis of Israel, Rabbi Lau and Rabbi Yosef Shlita, and the US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman was present.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman told Breitbart News Daily on Friday morning that former Vice President Joe Biden had contributed to the peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) only by being so “hostile.” The deal, known as the Abraham Accord, was announced by President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday morning and provides for “full normalization” for the first time between Israel and a Gulf Arab state. It is expected to lead to similar deals with other Arab states. Even liberal critics of President Trump praised his “huge achievement,” calling the deal a...

US President Donald Trump will make a big announcement on the Middle East based on current talks, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway told reporters on the White House lawn on Wednesday. Asked about the possibility of Israel extending its civil law to parts of the West Bank, Conway said: “We are having conversations, there are conversations being had. Obviously, the president will have an announcement. He's talked about this in the past, and I’ll leave it to him to give you a big announcement, and we’re very happy these talks continue.” Conway, who is not generally involved in foreign...

House Democrats are reportedly considering retaliatory moves against two top American and Israeli diplomats in response to Israel’s decision to block Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib from entering the country. Senior Democratic members of Congress are considering legislative action against Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, and David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, according to McClatchy. According to the report, the Democrats are discussing a possible vote on a statement of no confidence in Dermer, as well as the opening up of an inspector general investigation into Friedman. Meanwhile, Tlaib’s 90-year-old grandmother, Muftia Tlaib, who...

Rep. Ted Lieu (D., Calif.) accused United States Ambassador to Israel David Friedman of having a foreign allegiance in a tweet Thursday and repeated the claim on CNN. "His allegiance, again, is to America, not to a foreign power," Lieu said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. In his tweet, Lieu suggested Friedman, who is an Orthodox Jew, was expressing loyalty to Israel in his support of their decision to deny entry to Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.). "You are an American. Your allegiance should be to America, not to a foreign power. You...

The Palestinian leader spoke in advance of the anticipated roll out of what US President Donald Trump is calling the “Plan of the Century” to resolve the Israeli-Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Trump Administration will allow Israel to annex portions of the West Bank and split the Gaza Strip from the West Bank so that it can be a state of its own, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday. Speaking at the Arab League summit in Tunisia, "What is coming from the US is more dangerous and serious,” he said. “The US will tell Israel, annex part of the Palestinian...

JERUSALEM (AP) — The United States has officially shuttered its consulate in Jerusalem, downgrading the status of its main diplomatic mission to the Palestinians by folding it into the U.S. Embassy to Israel. For decades, the consulate functioned as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians. Now, that outreach will be handled by a Palestinian affairs unit, under the command of the embassy. The symbolic shift hands authority over U.S. diplomatic channels with the West Bank and Gaza to ambassador David Friedman, a longtime supporter and fundraiser for the West Bank settler movement and fierce critic of the Palestinian leadership....

But on January 30, in the aftermath of his discussion on the Wall Street Journal column with Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Pipes wrote that Trump is “the most pro-Israel president ever A week after raising doubts on President Donald Trump’s “deal of the century” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a leading Mideast policy expert reversed course and affirmed Trump as “the most pro-Israel president ever.”   Daniel Pipes, founder and president of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum think tank, had written in a January 23 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that although the specific details of Trump’s peace...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday attacked U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman as a "son of a dog" and a "settler." Abbas' attack on Friedman came during a Palestinian leadership meeting where Abbas once again criticized President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Times of Israel reports. Abbas added that Trump "views the settlements as legitimate," a reference to Israeli settlements on areas of land considered by Palestinians to be their own. Abbas used the point on settlements, which the PA views as illegal, as a segway to attack Friedman. "More than one...

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...

Vice President Mike Pence’s address to the Knesset Monday afternoon, the first by a senior American official in a decade, was praised by a number of Israeli officials from across the political spectrum, who noted the Vice President’s pledge to bar Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and a time-table for the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, however, expressed a more personal reaction to the speech, saying that he had been so touched by it as to have been moved to tears.

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman recently asked the State Department to cease using the term 'occupation' to describe Israel's presence in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem, according a report by Kan, the Israel Broadcasting Corporation. According to the report, the State Department objected to the request, but eventually agreed to discuss the matter. Ambassador Friedman described Judea and Samaria as being under an "alleged occupation" in an interview with the Jerusalem Post in September. Later that month, he stated that he believes Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are part of Israel. “I think the settlements are part of...