Free Republic

The Islamic Republic of Iran is playing with fire. To distract from its maneuvers in Syria, where along with its proxies - including the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group, as well as Iraqi, Afghan and Yemeni Shiite militias it controls - Iran in gunning for the Israeli border in the Quneitra province of southwestern Syria. Tehran is directing Hamas, the Islamic terror group who they fund and arm, to provoke Israel by attacking the Israeli communities around Gaza. In recent weeks, Hamas launched incendiary kites across the Gaza border that scorched a whopping 8,000 acres of farms and nature reserves...

The Ankara chief's words were in response to Israel's new "nation-state" law, with Erdogan branding Israel the "most Zionist, racist and fascist country". He argued the new law legitimises "unlawful actions and oppression". The "nation-state" law has been criticised for effectively ruling out a two-state solution to the long-running Israel-Palestine conflict. Palestinians have threatened to go to the International Criminal Court and the UN to protest against the new legislation. Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu has hit back, saying Turkey has become a "dark dictatorship" under Erdogan. In a war of words, he accused the Turkish president of "massacring...

"Time will tell if we just averted war. But what we did learn is that Israel’s position in a war with Iran is stronger than it could have been if the two leaders hadn’t met in Helsinki."

An Egyptian court sentenced on Saturday a Lebanese woman to eight years in prison over insulting Egyptians in a video she posted online, and set July 29 as the date for her appeal, state media reported. Mona el-Mazbouh was initially handed down 11 years but the sentence was later reduced to eight, the state-run Al-Ahram news agency reported. It was unclear why the sentence was reduced. She was also fined 10,700 Egyptian pounds (around $598). She was charged with “deliberately broadcasting false rumors which aim to undermine society and attack religions.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they were acting on a request from the US, the UK and other European nations. The White Helmets had become trapped in an area of south-western Syria near the border with the Golan Heights after an offensive by the Syrian military. ... The evacuees were driven to the border with the Golan Heights and taken on from there by Israeli troops to Jordan. The plan had been to evacuate 800 White Helmets and their families, but only 422 made it.

… “The word and even the signature of the Americans cannot be relied upon, so negotiations with America are of no avail,” Khamenei said in a meeting with Foreign Ministry officials, adding that negotiations with Washington would be an “obvious mistake”, according to his official website. …

The Israeli Air Force launched a "wide-scale attack" against Hamas military targets in Gaza on Friday, after an Israeli soldier died after being hit by gunfire from the coastal enclave, according to the Israeli military. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the shooting attack took place Friday during a Palestinian protest along the fence separating Gaza and Israel. It's the first Israeli soldier killed along the Gaza fence since the last war between Israel and Hamas in 2014, the army said. The IDF responded first with tank and artillery fire, killing four people according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health....

President Donald Trump has been criticized by the media and by Beltway politicians of both parties for his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on Monday. But the summit has already produced a very significant win: namely, agreement to avoid a war in the Middle East by restraining Iran in Syria. As Breitbart News columnist Caroline Glick noted last month, it was crucial that Trump confront Putin over Syria, because Russia was about to allow Iranian and Hezbollah soldiers, dressed in Syrian uniforms, to move into southwestern Syria along the border with Israel and Jordan.

Hannity

The archive of Iranian nuclear documents seized by the Israeli Mossad from a Tehran warehouse in January shows that Iran’s program to build nuclear weapons “was almost certainly larger, more sophisticated and better organized” than was suspected, unnamed nuclear experts were quoted as saying in the New York Times on Sunday, after being shown selected documents from the haul by US reporters. One of the Iranian documents specifies plans to build a first “batch of five weapons” and discusses sites for possible underground nuclear tests, the Times reported, after one of its reporters was given limited access to the haul...

Israel is ramping up attacks against Iranian supply lines in Syria to block the flow of weapons to Hezbollah and other Tehran-backed militias, as it seeks to drive its foe away from its borders. In June Israel targeted a far-flung compound near the Syria-Iraq border, according to a security official, after carrying out multiple strikes closer to home against suspected Iranian military assets in Syria, where Iran is a key backer of President Bashar al-Assad. Israel, in accordance with its usual practice, didn’t confirm or deny it carried out the June airstrike. The U.S. denied responsibility, and a U.S. official...

Hamas’s former chief in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, said during a meeting in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday that the movement had received information of a US plan to offer Palestinian leaders a state with its capital in Abu Dis, a Palestinian village near East Jerusalem... connected to the Al-Aqsa compound in East Jerusalem with a bridge. The plan also proposed dividing the West Bank into three sections and creating an autonomous region in the Gaza Strip. Abu Dis, a small rural community overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem to the southwest and the Jordan Valley to the east, had been...

A top aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Friday that Iran would immediately withdraw its “military advisers” from Syria and Iraq only if their governments wanted it to. “Iran and Russia’s presence in Syria will continue to protect the country against terrorist groups and America’s aggression,” said the adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, in a conference in Moscow, according to Reuters. “We will immediately leave if Iraqi and Syrian governments want it, not because of Israel and America’s pressure,” he stressed. Iran and Russia back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s civil war. Iran has been...

Russia is planning to expand its Syrian bases at Tartus and Hemeimeem to Libya. The possible Russian move into Libya represents the most recent failure stemming from the policies of President Obama that backed Islamist rebels who overthrew and killed Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. Mr. Obama has said that the failure to prepare for the aftermath of the ouster of Gadhafi was the worst mistake of his presidency. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also came under fire for failing to provide security for Americans who were attacked and killed in Benghazi after Gadhafi’s fall. The push for a...

In biggest attack since 2014 war, Israeli army says it struck 40 targets, including Hamas' Beit Lahia battalion HQ, More than 140 rocket alarm sirens sound in southern Israel, 90 rockets fired at Israel, 16 intercepted by Iron Dome. Israel's cabinet will meet on Sunday to discuss the escalation in the south. A Palestinian official who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said Egypt and other international players were holding contacts iwht Israel and Gaza to restore calm.....

A major purpose of Iran wanting to enlarge its footprint in Syria may be to hide aspects of its nuclear program from the International Atomic Energy Agency, former top IDF Military Intelligence official Yossi Kuperwasser said on Wednesday. Speaking at a Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs conference on the Iran nuclear situation, JCPA fellow Kuperwasser, a former IDF brigadier-general, noted that IAEA inspectors are limited to inspecting Iran’s territory, as the Iran nuclear deal did not grant IAEA inspectors complete access to Iranian scientists. Based on that limited access, Kuperwasser said Iran could move and conceal its nuclear scientists and...

A Democratic candidate for a seat in the California state assembly blames Israel for committing genocide against the Palestinians and has offered her support for anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. Maria Estrada, a candidate for California’s District 63 representing the southeast suburbs of Los Angeles, garnered the second most votes, some 28 percent, in a top-two primary on June 5 for the November election. She will run against incumbent and fellow Democrat Anthony Rendon, who also serves as Speaker of the California State Assembly. In an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and...

Does Iran really want to nuke Israel? Is Israel stronger than Iran? A top security expert explains Israel ranked eighth most powerful country in the world North Korea expanded missile facility during talks with Trump, analysts say Pompeo downplays North Korea's rebuke of 'gangster-like' denuclearization demands North Korea reportedly extended an offer to Israel in 1999 to nix its agreements to sell missile technology to Iran and other enemy states that posed a threat to the Jewish state at the time - if Israel paid Pyongyang $1 billion in cash. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal published...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel imposed sanctions on the Gaza Strip and its dominant Hamas Islamists on Monday in retaliation for attacks by Palestinians using burning kites and helium balloons carrying blazing rags. People taking part in more than three months of protests at the Gaza border have started scores of fires by sending the balloons and kites into Israel, vexing its advanced military which is used to dealing with more conventional weapons. With southern residents and his far-right coalition partners calling for an end to the blazes, even if that required killing the kite- and balloon-fliers, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin...

JERUSALEM Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the immediate closure of the main cargo crossing with the Gaza Strip on Monday in response to Palestinians launching incendiary kites and balloons into Israel. Netanyahu vowed to use a "heavy hand" against Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, and said more steps would be taken, without elaborating. Israel's military said the Kerem Shalom crossing is shut until further notice except for humanitarian aid, medical supplies and food. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called the move "a new crime against humanity" and called on the international community to intervene.