Free Republic

Visitors to the Old City of Jerusalem are often struck by how new all the synagogues in the Jewish Quarter look. That is because they are new, built after 1967, when Israel won back the Old City from Jordan, that had seized the area in 1948 and held onto it for 19 years. Those synagogues that have so far been built were meant to replace the 58 synagogues, some of them many centuries old (the Hurva synagogue dated from the 16th century), that Jordan systematically blew up when it held the Old City. Now Israel is rebuilding the Tiferes Yisrael...

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper implied in a new book former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressured then-President Donald Trump to launch a military strike against Iran. Quotes in his book, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times, were redacted after the Department of Defense prohibited their publication.

Against the background of the wave of terrorist attacks, Ohad Hamu went to East Jerusalem and discovered to his amazement (or not) that young Arabs there wanted to kill us An article by Ohad Hamu, the commentator on Arab affairs of News 12, was broadcast last night (Monday) with a precise timing: Hamu went to East Jerusalem to hear what young Arabs think of Jews, with the sequence of attacks continuing in the background. "Every Jew and Jew should die. Every Jew," said a boy named Ahmed Lehemu. "me too?" The reporter asked twice and the young man answered...

...Putin has ordered troops moved from Syria to Ukraine.

The purpose of the visit is to discuss the situation in Jerusalem On Tuesday night, a delegation of Hamas leaders arrived in Moscow to hold “important” talks with Russian officials, according to the pro-Fatah website Ma'an News. Among the delegation were Hamas’ Deputy Chairman Mousa Mohammad Abu Marzook, and two other leaders, Fathi Hammad and Hussam Badran. The purpose of the visit is to discuss the situation in Jerusalem, as clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian worshippers erupted on the Temple Mount during the holy month of Ramadan, Jerusalem Post reported.

This Norwegian UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process told the truth. This is a rare quality among UN officials when it comes to getting to the heart of why there is no progress to peace with the Palestinians: they always point the finger of blame at Israel, and never at the perpetrators of hate and violence. Mr. Wennesland is a brave exception. His report identified what really happened on the Temple Mount during Ramadan and Passover and pointed to the real perpetrators.“On 15 April, during the early morning hours, a large number of Palestinians gathered at the...

An end to years of tension between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia is near, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi said in an interview published on Saturday. Iraq, a neighbour to both countries, has hosted five rounds of talks over the past year aimed at restoring ties between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia, and Shiite-majority Iran. Following the latest round in Baghdad, Iraqi officials have sounded increasingly optimistic, talking of an imminent sixth session and even going so far as to raise the prospect of a resumption in diplomatic relations severed in 2016. Iran and the Saudi kingdom support rival sides...

To say that the United States’ foreign policy situation has shifted dramatically in the past couple of years would be an understatement. While the world is largely united in its opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, America’s individual relationships with some countries have grown increasingly rocky even as former rivals in other parts of the world seem to be on the mend. For one example, look no further than the recent rapprochement between Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Just this week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Saudi Arabia for the first time in five years, taking meetings with both Crown...

Angry protesters hit the streets of Iran on Friday after a two-year pause driven by the coronavirus pandemic. They demanded the immediate destruction of Israel, the U.S. and the UK along with anyone who even dares to speak favorably of the Jewish state. Paramilitary Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Hossein Salami personally promised “painful” responses against anyone who stood in the Islamic republic’s way. “Stop your vicious deeds. You know well that we are people of action and reaction,” Salami told marchers in Tehran as he railed against Israel and its supporters. Demonstrators chanted the “death to Israel,” and “death to...

Iran is looking to strengthen ties with China in hopes of countering the U.S., as discussions over a new Iran nuclear deal remain unfruitful. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi welcomed Chinese Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe and the two men agreed on the strategic benefit of their alliance, Iranian state media reported according to The Associated Press. Wei said the purpose of the the trip was "improving the strategic defense cooperation" between Iran and China...

The White House warned Tuesday that Iran is only weeks from a nuclear “breakout” and the Trump administration is to blame. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the time in which Iran could build a nuclear weapon is “down to a matter of weeks.”

An EgyptAir flight that crashed en route to Cairo, killing all 66 people on board, was brought down by a pilot who had a cigarette in the cockpit and started a fire, a new report found. EgyptAir flight MS804 was traveling on May 19, 2016, from Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport to Cairo International Airport when it fell out of the sky between the Greek island of Crete and northern Egypt. France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) has since concluded that pilot Mohamed Said Shoukair’s mid-air smoke break led to a fire onboard the Airbus...

The Israeli military responded with artillery fire on Sunday night after a rocket was launched into Israel from southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. As calculations of the rocket’s trajectory indicated that it would come down in an open area, no sirens were triggered and the Iron Dome air-defense system did not intercept it, according to the IDF. The IDF Artillery Corps fired “tens” of shells at the launch site and open areas in southern Lebanon, and an “infrastructure target” was also attacked, the military said. There were no reports of casualties or damage, and no...

Obama likes Suleimani, and admires his work. As the president reportedly told a group of Arab officials in May, the Arabs “need to learn from Iran’s example.”

On Wednesday, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) announced that it had arrested three individuals on charges of spying for the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. The identity of the persons in question or the evidence that led to allegations against them were not revealed. Vulnerable political parties or authoritarian regimes that lack an agenda for prosperity and development have always invoked foreign boogeymen, in that they are useful to blame for one’s failures. For example, In 1980, the mullahs provoked their western neighbor into war and used the “the divine blessing”— as former Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini put...

President Biden agreed to visit Israel in the coming months during a call with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday. In a readout of the call, the White House said Biden and Bennett also spoke about shared regional and global security issues, including the threat Iran and its proxies present.

IDF Spokesman: One of the rockets fired at Israel on Friday evening fell near a UNRWA school in Gaza A Gaza resident was injured by shrapnel. In addition, the IDF publishes a map with the exact location of the fall in the Gaza Strip A few facts: 👉Terrorists in Gaza fired a rocket aimed at Israel that landed INSIDE Gaza last night. 👉It landed next to a globally-funded @UNRWA school. 👉Rocket shrapnel injured a Palestinian. Terrorists in Gaza don’t care about the lives of Israelis—or Palestinians.

"What you've been projecting is blatantly false," responded Bennett. "I object to the symmetry you're trying to create here ... who's getting murdered? We're not seeing Israelis murdering Palestinians." Over Amanpour's protests, the Prime Minister continued: "I also object - these are not occupied territories... "Israel is peaceful," he said. "About a month ago, unfortunately, a new wave of terror was thrown upon the Israeli public. We lost 14 people in four terror attacks. In Tel Aviv center, Arab Muslim terrorists, some of them affiliated with ISIS, came with rifles and started shooting people on the street. This is unacceptable....

During this season of holiness -- the Resurrection for us Christians, Passover for Jews (and the festivals are related) -- my prayer is that God may spare us from the idiotic histories that pervade the media. The chief lie is that Islam has any claim at all to the Temple Mount. MOHAMMED NEVER SET FOOT IN JERUSALEM DURING HIS LIFETIMEThe official version of Islam’s history admits that Islam never approached Jerusalem during Mohammed’s lifetime. Soon after Mohammed’s death, Islam went into the Ridda wars (Wars of Apostasy). Islam had not even stabilized at that point. Jerusalem was under the control...

House Democrats expressed concerns on Wednesday about a looming Iran nuclear deal as efforts by the Biden administration to revive the Obama-era agreement are underway. In a statement and a press conference, 18 lawmakers raised everything from concerns about the negotiations to outright opposition to reviving the 2015 deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that exchanged sanctions relief for limits to Iran’s nuclear program. “We understand that while the recent negotiations have not concluded, we feel that we can’t stay quiet about the unacceptable and deeply troubling turn that these results have reportedly taken,” Rep. Elaine Luria...