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Israeli officials have been holding talks in Jordan with Syrian opposition officials “in advance of a possible Israeli-U.S. operation in Syria to protect the Golan Heights,” Western intelligence sources reported Tuesday, Jan. 1. There was no further information about this operation or how rebel commanders were involved in military plans “to protect the Golan Heights.” Altogether, the goings-on on the Israeli and Jordanian borders with Syria are in deep hush. But European intelligence sources, some of them French and Russian, reveal nightly clashes taking place between US, Jordanian, Israeli special forces and Syrian rebels, on the one hand, and Syrian...

Six Druze villages, in the portion of the Golan Heights occupied by what was formerly Syria, have reportedly decided to request that Israel annex their village. Many have family and friends in the many existing and very successful Druze communities in Israel, where they enjoy the benefits of citizenship, including civil rights, freedom of speech and religion and equal protection under the law. Is it any wonder that they would like to join them and become a part of Israel? If Israel accepts this proposal, then the US and other nations should approach the matter with moral clarity and rightly...

A new study by researchers from Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University reveals that geodynamic shifts over millions of years reoriented the ancient Rujm el-Hiri site, challenging its long-held identification as an astronomical observatory. Using advanced geophysical methods and remote sensing, the team uncovered the site’s original alignment and provided new insights into its potential purpose and the surrounding archaeological landscape. Credit: Abraham Graicer, Wikimedia Commons. CC 4.0 A scientific discovery challenges the common perception of Rujm el-Hiri in the Golan Heights. A new study by Tel Aviv University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has unveiled groundbreaking insights into...

SYRIAN despot Bashar al-Assad traded his country's military secrets with Israel in exchange for safe passage out of the country, it has been claimed. The murderous tyrant allegedly handed over coordinates for weapons depots which Israel is now using to drop bombs on Syrian targets in a cowardly last act.

President-elect Trump reacted Sunday morning to the news that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad had fled Syria after rebels stormed the capital city of Damascus. "Assad is gone," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. "He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could...

Israel's prime minister has announced its military has temporarily seized control of a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, saying the 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria had "collapsed" with the rebel takeover of the country. Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to enter the buffer zone and "commanding positions nearby" from the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan. "We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border," he said. A UK-based war monitor said Syrian troops had left their positions in Quneitra province, part of which lies inside the buffer zone,...

Rebels on a lightning advance through Syria said on Saturday they have begun to encircle Damascus as government forces denied they had withdrawn from areas near the capital. "Our forces have begun the final phase of encircling the capital, Damascus," said rebel commander Hassan Abdel Ghani, with the Islamist-led alliance that launched the offensive. The defence ministry flatly denied the army had fled positions near the city. "There is no truth to news claiming our armed forces, present in all areas of the Damascus countryside, have withdrawn," it said. Earlier, a war monitor and Abdel Ghani said rebels were within...

A loud blast was heard, and a plume of smoke could be seen rising late on Tuesday above the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, a stronghold of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, a Reuters witness said. The city has been on edge for days ahead of an anticipated Israeli attack in retaliation for a strike on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights that killed a dozen Druze children and teenagers. Israel and the United States have blamed Hezbollah for the attack. Hezbollah has denied responsibility.

Well, here we are its vacation week your host on the road thankful and grateful to the Lord giving me another day to keep the road trip moving forward some of the geography I've visited reflected in the music above. Gasoline Prices In The USA At the start of the week gasoline in Somerset, Pennsylvania 375.9 a gallon. At the week's end gasoline on west side of Knoxville, Tennessee 275.9 a gallon. In Taxylvania our gasoline tax can be bumped up by a decline in wholesale gasoline prices... On a brighter note I visited this place during the week... RFK...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) joined an anti-Israel commentator this week in blaming the Abraham Accords peace deal and the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem for Hamas’s massive terror attack on Israel on October 7. “AOC” also agreed that Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — which are not claimed by Palestinians, but were taken from Syria in a defensive war — was also “directly” responsible for October 7.

Israel had decided to expand its military responses to Hezbollah aggression on the Northern front after Iran was seen to expedite weapons delivery to the Lebanese terror group ahead of a possible full-blown war with Israel. Attacks attributed to the IDF, targeted the Syria-Iraq border area at Al-Bukamal, a supply rout for weapons transported from Iran, resulting in some 19 non-Syrians killed. Hezbollah said four of its members were killed but did not say where and when, although pro-Iranian militias in the area confirmed four of the fatalities were from Hezbollah. The border crossing at Al-Bukamal had been attacked by...

IDF fighter jets struck military infrastructure and mortar launchers belonging to the Syrian Army overnight Tuesday. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said the strikes in response to the launches toward Israel on Tuesday evening. On Tuesday, shortly after 8:15 p.m., sirens were sounded in the Golan Heights area. Two launches were identified from Syria toward Israeli territory, which fell in open areas, causing no physical injuries or damages. The IDF responded with artillery fire at the sources of the launch.

Decades ago I spent three years writing The Samson Option (1991), an exposé of the unstated policy of American presidents going back to Dwight Eisenhower to look the other way as Israel began the process of building an atomic bomb. The right or wrong for Israel, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, was not the point of the book. My point was that what America was doing was known throughout the Third World, as it was then called, and our duplicity made our worries about the spread of nuclear weapons another example of American hypocrisy. Since then others have undertaken...

Navigate to Israel & The Middle East section Biden Backdoors Israel in the U.N., Rescinding Trump’s Recognition of Sovereignty over the Golan In a move from the Obama playbook, the U.S. is advancing a stealth agenda in the Middle East at the expense of its allies Sometimes, U.S. foreign policy is what you see on the news. Increasingly, however, changes in policy are hidden from view because they are unpalatable to many Americans. The growing divide between the policies that America claims to be pursuing and the policies that it’s implementing on the ground poses a growing threat to America’s...

Israel’s opposition leader and contender for next prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and urged him to reconsider, in his most direct criticism yet of the war. Netanyahu said in an interview with USA Today that he thought Putin’s decision to go to war in Ukraine was “guided by his vision of reconstituting a great Russian realm,” adding, “I hope he’s having second thoughts about it.” “We all have sympathy to Ukraine, it’s not even a question, and I’m no different,” he said. Israel has sought not to antagonize Russia in the conflict,...

Israeli archaeologists have discovered a secret stash of Byzantine-era coins inside a stone wall—where someone may have once tried to hide them.Made of pure gold, the 44 coins are decorated with portraits of Emperors Phocas and Heraclius, who ruled in the first half of the seventh century. Experts believe the treasure, which is dated to 635 C.E., was hidden during the Muslim conquest of the area around the end of Heraclius' reign.The artifacts were unearthed as part of a larger excavation in the ancient city of Banias, now a part of Hermon Stream Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights, an...

Russia has just finished a Potemkin referendum conducted in the illegally occupied Ukrainian oblasts (provinces) of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson (see Vladimir Putin to Address Russia; Annexation of Ukraine Provinces and Mobilization Seem to Be on the Table). The “voting” began on September 23, and the question is whether those provinces wish to be annexed to Russia.There are complicating factors. All four oblasts are on the front line of a war between Putin’s invading army and the armed forces of Ukraine. Many, if not most, of the residents, are refugees. The voting began within 48 hours after the announcement....

'We will deal very big strikes in the war, but we will warn the residents and allow them to leave the areas' Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi on Sunday warned that overwhelming force would be used in Lebanon during the next potential war with Hezbollah. Speaking at the first National Conference on the Home Front, Kochavi detailed the IDF's strategy for responding to an attack from the radical Shiite terrorist group. "We will deal very big strikes in the war, but we will warn the residents and allow them to leave the areas. I say to...

Syrian and Russian warplanes on Tuesday carried out military drills amid increasing Israeli strikes, according to a military statement released by Syrian defense ministry. The drills and patrols took place near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in southern Syria and also in the northern and eastern parts of Syria. Two Russian SU-35 jets and six Syrian MIG warplanes took part in the drills...

Air defenses respond to missile attack on Damascus Syria accused Israel of launching missiles on an area south of Damascus on Monday evening, targeting the suburb of Saida Zaynab. Air defenses were activated around 11:18 pm on Monday in response to “hostile missiles” detected approaching Damascus, the state news agency SANA reported. State TV described the attack as “Israeli aggression.” The missiles came from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights and “most” were intercepted by air defenses, SANA said, citing military sources. Eyewitnesses reported seeing several explosions in the night sky over the Syrian capital. At least one missile...