Free Republic

hen President George W. Bush sent U.S. troops into Afghanistan to attack Taliban and Al Qaeda forces following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland, nations around the world lined up in support of America – as they should have. When Israel is attacked by Palestinian terrorists from Hamas and other groups, many nations and the United Nations line up solidly against the Jewish state for daring to defend itself. No matter how much care Israel takes to prevent civilian casualties when it retaliates against terrorist attacks, it receives automatic condemnations and complaints that it has used...

President Emmanuel Macron on Monday said preserving European Union unity was more important than forging a close relationship with post-Brexit Britain, and hit out at what he called U.S. President Donald Trump’s “aggressive” isolationism. As pressure mounts on Prime Minister Theresa May to agree terms for Britain’s divorce from the EU and the shape of their future trade relationship, Macron showed no sign of breaking ranks with other EU capitals. “France wants to maintain a strong, special relationship with London but not if the cost is the European Union’s unraveling,” he told a gathering of French ambassadors. Brexit, Macron said,...

More than a year before Facebook and Twitter announced that they had discovered a new foreign influence campaign tied to Iranian state media, a group of volunteer moderators on Reddit noticed a peculiar pattern of submissions. Some Reddit users were repeatedly posting divisive political rhetoric from a group of obscure news websites. That effort led a Reddit moderator from California named Alex Brown and a small team of volunteers to investigate. Using publicly available data about who started the news websites, they were able to find evidence of a wide-ranging propaganda network across the social news site with ties to...

Iran has full control of the Gulf, and the U.S. Navy does not belong there, the head of the navy of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, General Alireza Tangsiri, said on Monday, according to the Tasnim news agency. The remarks come at a time when Tehran has suggested that it could take military action in the Gulf to block oil exports of other regional countries in retaliation for U.S. sanctions intended to halt its oil sales. Washington maintains a fleet in the Gulf which protects oil shipping routes. Tangsiri said Iran had full control of both the Gulf itself and the Strait...

The Palestinians have been playing the long con with the "right of return" issue, which was always more of a fantasy than reality. They conned the UN for years about the number of "refugees," when in fact, the vast majority of Palestinians in refugee camps have no "right" to return to anything. Many were urged to leave by Arab leaders in 1948, others were abroad and never lived in Israel. the number of individuals considered Palestinian refugees today is a matter of intense debate. UNRWA, classifies Palestinian refugees as those who left Israel in 1948; those who left the West...

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi blasted the United States on Friday, after the State Department announced it would cut $200 million in bilateral assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA). "The U.S. administration is demonstrating the use of cheap blackmail as a political tool. The Palestinian people and leadership will not be intimidated and will not succumb to coercion. The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale,” she said in a statement. “There is no glory in constantly bullying and punishing a people under occupation. The U.S. administration has already demonstrated meanness of spirit in...

Saudi-led coalition airstrikes killed 30 people, including 22 children, in a rebel-held area in northwestern Yemen on Thursday, according to the Houthi-controlled Health Ministry. Four families were evacuating their homes in a vehicle when the airstrikes hit, according to Houthi-owned media. Earlier coalition airstrikes on Wednesday killed four people and injured two, according to two surviving family members who preferred to remain anonymous for security reasons. "Four people were killed in the strike before, that's why they fled. They wanted to save their lives, their children's lives. Is nowhere safe for us?" one survivor said. Both sources did not want...

Iran awaiting European guarantees on the sale of Iranian oil and banking relations, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA). […] “We are still waiting for Europe to take action on the sale of Iranian oil and the preservation of banking channels,” the Iranian foreign minister said. Zarif also defended the European Union’s decision on Thursday to provide €18 million ($21 million) in aid to Iran to offset the impact of U.S. sanctions, part of efforts to salvage the 2015 deal to limit Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. […] The top U.S. envoy...

A Palestinian Authority refugee receives a budget four times larger than a Syrian, Iraqi or African refugee, according to a study conducted by the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, ahead of Sunday's visit to Israel by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Yediot Ahronot reported on Sunday. At the end of last week, the UN Refugee Agency (UNRWA), which deals only with Palestinians, released its annual financial report, which in 2016 generated an average of $246 for each of the 5.3 million Palestinians it defines as a refugee, while the United Nations High Commissioner...

In yet another showing of blatant antisemitism, the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, declared last Friday that the Gaza Palestinians, who have been violently attempting to infiltrate the Israeli border to "kill the Jews" and "burn the Jews," are the victims and in need of armed security. This mind-boggling defense of terrorists is of no surprise to those of us who follow UN politics. Earlier this summer when the US walked out on the UN Human Rights Council, Nikki Haily issued a statement on the decision, calling the Council a protector of "the world’s worst human rights abusers" with a "chronic...

In high contrast to nearly every other non-U.S. country, Israel passed a law on Monday that would expand the number of citizens eligible for firearms ownership licenses. As justification for the new policy, Israel’s Security Minister Gilad Erdan cited increased protection from “lone wolf” terrorist attacks. “Many civilians saved lives during terror attacks and in an era of ‘lone terrorism.’ The more skilled civilians carrying weapons, the greater the chance of thwarting attacks without casualties and reducing the number of casualties,” Erdan said, according to the Jerusalem Post. Previously, Israel operated under a system similar to the “good cause” scheme...

A growing number of Russians are reportedly requesting asylum in Israel, where officials say they are gaming the system to obtain work permits. Russia provided the biggest number of immigrants last year under Israel’s repatriation program. “We have noticed a new phenomenon of Russians, who arrive mainly for economic reasons, seeking asylum that worries us and sets off warning lights,” the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority’s Yossi Edelstein was quoted as saying Tuesday. “The wage gaps are enormous and motivate people to come work in Israel,” the authority’s head of enforcement said. The number of Russian citizens who have been...

“Jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam”.John Brennan John Brennan is all over the news, playing the victim for having his security clearance pulled. It's obvious from his record that he should have never had any access to classified information considering his toxic and radical views. After Helsinki, Brennan accused President Trump of treason. He's since doubled down on the accusation. But if you want to see treason, look at his own past comments. As I discuss in today's article on Twitter's censoring of David Horowitz when he tried to discuss Brennan's record and Islamic anti-Semitism.

Several weeks ago, an article in the Hebrew-language Yediot Achronot revealed that, according to Palestinian sources, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have received more than $100 million per year over the last few years from Iran. That represents a substantial fraction of the cash that President Barack Obama put on pallets and flew to Tehran shortly before he left office. Today it was announced that two Iranians had been indicted for spying in the United States for the Iranian government. What were they looking at? Missile bases? Nuclear reactors? Grand Central Station? No. They were indicted for taking pictures of “Israeli...

Egypt army captain killed in Sinai blast Troops have been conducting major anti-Daesh operation since February Cairo — An Egyptian army captain has been killed by an improvised explosive device blast in North Sinai during a campaign to eliminate extremists, medics said on Monday. The officer died Sunday evening after an explosion hit his vehicle west of the coastal city of Al Arish, a local medical source said. The Egyptian army has since February been conducting a major operation focused on the Sinai Peninsula to wipe out extremists from Daesh. The military says that over 250 suspected extremists and at...

Abu Dhabi: The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is set to launch a major offensive against the last remaining Daesh stronghold on the eastern side of the Euphrates Valley in Syria, as the coalition seeks to finally drive the terrorists out of the area. Colonel Sean Ryan, spokesperson for the US Central Command’s operations against Daesh in Syria and Iraq, briefed reporters at the US embassy in Abu Dhabi on Sunday about the planned offensive to retake the town of Hajin from Daesh. This will be part of the third phase of ‘Operation Roundup’. Launched in May, the operation is...

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said on Sunday that a new Iran Action Group in the U.S. State Department aimed to overthrow the Islamic Republic, but would fail. He was speaking on the 65th anniversary of a U.S.-backed coup that overthrew a democratically elected Iranian prime minister, an occasion when anti-American sentiment runs particularly high in the Islamic Republic. Comparing fresh U.S. sanctions on Tehran imposed by President Donald Trump with the 1953 coup that ousted nationalist Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, Zarif said Tehran will not let history repeat itself. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday...

It is worth noting that some in the American press, most explicitly CNN, have fundamentally misunderstood these protests, mischaracterizing them as internal struggles between political hardliners and “reformists”. This is an almost comical error, and causes one to wonder whether anyone making it has actually seen the demonstrations. The people in the streets are shouting phrases like “marg bar dictator” (meaning ‘down with the dictator’, a reference to Iranian Grand Ayatollah and Supreme Leader Khamenei) and “marg bar Rouhani” (“down with Rouhani”, the current Iranian president). Their opposition to the brutal regime under which they suffer could not be clearer....

<p>The Trump administration is ending funding for Syria stabilization projects as it moves to extricate itself from the conflict.</p> <p>The State Department said it had notified Congress on Friday that it would not spend some $230 million that had been planned for Syria programs and would instead shift that money to other areas.</p>

The protection of Palestinian civilians could be improved by the deployment of U.N.-mandated armed forces or unarmed observers, a beefed-up U.N. civilian presence or expanded U.N. assistance, Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a report on Friday. The United Nations General Assembly requested the report in a resolution adopted in June that condemned Israel for excessive force against Palestinian civilians and denounced the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israeli civilian areas, but did not mention Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza. The resolution asked for proposals to ensure “the safety, protection and well-being of the Palestinian civilian population under...