Free Republic

A gun battle broke out in the Palestinian Authority-administered city of Shechem (Nablus) in Samaria Wednesday morning, after Israeli forces surrounded a building where a wanted terrorist was hiding. IDF soldiers, Border Police officers, and members of the elite Yamam special forces unit took part in the operation in the Kasbah of Shechem. Terrorists opened fire on the Israeli forces, who responded in kind. Nine terrorists were killed in the gun battle, including two who were involved in the murder of Staff Sergeant Ido Baruch. The 21-year-old soldier was shot and killed by terrorists last year near the town of...

The UN Security Council on Monday published a statement expressing its "dismay" over Jewish settlement activity in Judea and Samaria during a briefing on the situation in the Middle East. The statement, which received the support of all 15 members of the Security Council, including the US, reads: “The Security Council reiterates that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution.” The statement is non-binding, unlike a resolution which was proposed last week, which would have demanded that Israel "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory." That resolution was shelved...

In Egypt, homosexuality is highly stigmatised, and there have long been allegations that police are hunting LGBT people online. Now BBC News has seen evidence of how the authorities are using dating and social apps to do this. All victims' names have been changed Having grown up in Egypt, I am aware of the pervasive homophobia that permeates every part of its society. But friends there tell me that the atmosphere has recently become far more brutal, and the tactics for tracking down LGBT people more sophisticated. There is no explicit law against homosexuality in Egypt, but our investigation has...

The vice-president of the Economic Committee of the House of Representatives, Mohamed Abdel-Hamid, affirmed that joining the institution benefits the country. “We will benefit from the Bank’s financial and technical assistance in areas such as sustainable development, health, infrastructure, transportation, water, and telecommunications,” he said. The addition of Egypt will also relieve the state budget of the pressure to find dollars to meet imports because members of that bank can use their national currencies in bilateral trade, he said. Parliamentarian Ahmed El-Awadi, head of the House National Security and Defense Committee, also praised the decision: “It represents a step in...

Dr. Gadi Taub: "Haaretz" is an anti-Semitic newspaper Dr. Gadi Taub in an interview with Orna Yashar a day after the Haaretz newspaper decided to stop publishing his column Tov News Staff, 01/26/2023 "It was like an admission of weakness," says Dr. Gadi Taub, "I wouldn't have expected a newspaper to want to do something like that, instead of answering - you are excommunicating. The newspaper "Haaretz" worked on a massive deception of the public. He set up a wall of lies within which his big pages will hide the reality, they cannot afford someone to make a hole in...

Palestinian cities in the West Bank and Gaza erupted with rejoicing with cries of “Allahu Akbar,” gunfire and fireworks in celebration of a deadly terror attack in Jerusalem that killed seven people and wounded several others.The Palestinian terrorist, identified as Alqam Khayri, a 21-year-old resident of eastern Jerusalem, opened fire on a group of Israeli worshipers as they were leaving a synagogue in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Neve Yaakov.It was the deadliest Palestinian terror attack on Israelis since 2008.Videos posted to social media showed hundreds of Palestinians in at least 7 different cities marching and chanting in the streets, honking...

Multiple blasts were reported in Iran Saturday night, as drones of an unknown origin carried out attacks on critical Iranian defense production facilities. At the time of this writing, there are no confirmed details on the number of attacks and the targets other than the major ammunition plant at Isfahan. Isfahan is Iran’s third largest city and located about 270 miles south of Tehran.UPDATE: Explosion at Military Plant in Isfahan #Iran, local media saying it’s by drone targeting munitions manufacturing centers. Video: pic.twitter.com/t7sLXENoZK— Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) January 29, 2023The below map shows the unofficial tally of strikes.Tehran’s Mehrabad airport is...

Life often takes us in unexpected directions, but Maria Sue Bell’s life has been more rollicking and full of surprises than most. Back in 1984 and 1985, Bell served in the Army National Guard and was on Army Active Duty until Jan. 31, 1986. In a warning sign of what was to come, the criminal complaint against Bell says that she “received an Other Than Honorable (OTH) Discharge deemed Good for Service in lieu of a Court Martial,” although the reason for this has not been disclosed and has now been overshadowed by far more serious misconduct: Bell was sentenced...

Organized demolition crews, mostly made up of Moroccan migrants, are putting German lives at risk with their high-explosive ATM heists ... Organized criminal gangs active in the Netherlands and France, mostly made up of Moroccan migrants, are blowing up ATMs in Germany at a record pace in highly professional robbery operations. In 2022, government statistics indicate that they blew up 500 such machines, with statistically more than one machine being blown up every day. Cash remains popular with Germans, and to feed this demand, banks operate nearly 100,000 ATMs located throughout the country, with the machines routinely containing between €50,000...

"Israel should stop all incitement and provocation and avoid any unilateral actions that might lead to aggravation of the situation," the Chinese diplomat said at a joint press briefing on Sunday with Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry. Qin also called for "maintaining the status quo" at Jerusalem's most important holy site - after an ultranationalist Israeli cabinet minister visited the site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary - or the Al-Aqsa Mosque - Islam's third holiest shrine. The visit by Itamir Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, was seen by Palestinians as a provocation...

Amidst visits to Jerusalem and Riyadh, Jason Greenblatt tells me that if anyone can make it happen, he thinks it’s Netanyahu ABU DHABI – In the coming days, I’ll begin reporting on my meetings with senior government officials here in the United Arab Emirates. It’s been fascinating getting updates on how the UAE leadership views the new right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the progress that is being made in developing and deepening diplomatic and cultural ties after the signing of the Abraham Accords, the exciting growth of trade between the UAE and Israel. Today, however, I want...

Preparing for any potential war against Iran, the Biden administration has formally elevated Israel in military planning.... ...For the Pentagon, Israel is the most prized military and intelligence partner in the Middle East, with its vast combat experience and advanced technologies. With the end of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with the brokering of the Abraham Accords by the Trump administration, Washington sees an opportunity to incorporate Israel into a new regional alliance. ... ..."CENTCOM will now work to implement the U.S. Government commitment to a holistic approach to regional security and cooperation with our partners," the Tampa-based command...

What comes in your mind when your hear the word ‘Holocaust’? Most of us will think immediately of the Jewish holocaust committed by Nazi Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. Many of us are aware of such holocaust of the Native American peoples, millions of African lives lost during Slave trading, the genocide of the Armenian peoples in the Ottoman Empire. However, we are sure that very few knows that World’s biggest holocaust did happen in India. You must be shocked or surprised, but this is indeed true. Our Liberal and Secular cabal go gaga over Mughal rule and...

Al Arabiya English Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing to become the Prime Minister of Israel for the third time. He has until December 21 to form a government before taking office. In a wide-ranging interview with a group of print and television journalists at Al Arabiya, Mr. Netanyahu discussed Israel’s relations with Arab states, the US alliance structure in the Middle East, unrest in Iran, Israel’s new hard-right government, the future of the US-brokered maritime border agreement with Lebanon, and the Russia-Ukraine war. Mr. Netanyahu reiterated the paramount importance of normalization with Saudi Arabia, which would be a “quantum leap” toward...

The US has been mostly silent, other than issuing a few meek statementsIt is difficult to understand what US President Joe Biden’s administration is doing in northern Syria, where its allies the Syrian Kurds have been bombed to high heaven by Turkish forces. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insisted that he also intends to mount a land operation against America’s partners there. Although Turkey for some time had been bombing and assassinating members of the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), this current offensive is different. It is designed to deal the Kurds a fatal blow. What is incomprehensible is that...

Medics treating protesters in Iran said they were seeing a difference in the type of injuries inflicted on men and women by the security forces — with the female activists often being shot in their faces, breasts and genitals.. multiple doctors and nurses who have been surreptitiously caring for wounded demonstrators during months of unrest said it appeared that officers tasked with stopping the protests have been targeting specific body parts in women. One doctor from Isfahan province speaking to the outlet on condition of anonymity said he believed the authorities “wanted to destroy the beauty of these women.” Iran...

Senior US officials say question of whether to speak with Smotrich, Ben-Gvir raised at White House meeting. A high-level meeting was held at the White House last week to discuss policy towards the new government in Israel, including the question of whether or not to hold talks with certain ministers from the "extreme right" Barak Ravid reported for "Walla". According to the report, this is the first meeting on the subject, which was held as part of a National Security Council forum, of which senior representatives from the State Department, the Defense Department and the American intelligence organizations are members....

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday said Jerusalem must be a city for Israelis and Palestinians, and anything else will harm Israel’s identity and security. “The United States continues to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, as the President also said in his visit, Jerusalem is central to the national visions of both Palestinians and Israelis and must be a city for all of its people. Anything that takes us away from two states is detrimental to Israel’s long-term security and its long-term identity,” Blinken said during an address at the the left-wing J Street’s national conference in Washington....

The mother of all Palestinian modern-day curses By Yoav SternThe parchment on which the curse was written and the package in which it was found." During a Dead Sea-area dig in 2002, Prof. Yizhar Hirschfeld discovered two small packages wrapped in cloth. The contents of one of them, just recently made public, was a scathing curse aimed at Israeli leaders. "Oh God almighty, I beg you God to destroy Ariel Sharon, son of Devorah, son of Eve." Thus opens a unique text, written in eloquent Arabic, on parchment found more than two years ago at the bottom of the Dead...

Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has signed a deal to give an Israeli government post to an openly homophobic ultra-nationalist party leader. It is the latest development set to give far-right parties unprecedented power within Israel's ruling coalition. Avi Maoz will be a deputy minister and run a "Jewish identity" authority. He heads Noam, a religious-nationalist, anti-Arab and anti-LGBTQ party that argues for a strict interpretation of Jewish religious laws in Israel. The agreement has added to a growing sense of alarm over the composition of Mr Netanyahu's likely government. Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid has described it as "full-on crazy",...