Free Republic

The establishment media praised President Joe Biden for returning to Ukraine on Monday after visiting the nation six times in eight years while vice president. Despite the Biden family business scandal that involves Ukraine, the media cheered Biden’s return to the nation waging war against Russia, a conflict based on decades of territorial claims. The Associated Press’s Evan Vucci, John Leicester, Aamer Madhani, and Zeke Miller praised Biden’s eighth trip to Ukraine as “a defiant display of Western solidarity with a country still fighting what he called ‘a brutal and unjust war’ days before the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion.”

(IsraelNN.com) A left-wing kibbutz member, who had never seen a Yesha settlement until the day she came to destroy it, asks forgiveness of the people she expelled. "Three years without a home is much too long," she says. The soldier publicized her story, and request for forgiveness, in an interview with Yedidya Meir on the Kol Chai radio station. She had been an active member of a left-wing youth movement in her kibbutz, never having met a "settler" (Jewish resident of Judea, Samaria and Gaza), or been inside a Jewish town there, in her life. After enlisting in the army,...

(IsraelNN.com) The Gush Katif Residents Committee has released its latest report on the state of the families expelled during the Disengagement of 2005. The starkest finding: 85% of the expellees are still, 28 months later, living in temporary quarters. Additional numbers: 8,800 people in 1,667 families were thrown out of their homes in Gush Katif and lived for months in hotels, tents, and dormitories. 85% of them still live in communal frameworks in temporary pre-fab sites. A large number of those who do not currently live with their former neighbors plan to do so in the future when their community...

(IsraelNN.com) With every crash of a Kassam rocket in the Negev, increasingly more voices are calling for a return to Gaza - for different reasons. Respected journalists from Yediot Acharonot and Haaretz have written that re-occupying Gaza is the only solution - lending an air of "political correctness" to the simultaneous ideological call by settlement leaders and Gush Katif expellees to return to Gush Katif. The reasons advanced for reoccupation by the various elements are, to be sure, not identical. Military affairs correspondent Ron Ben-Yishai, writing for Yediot Acharonot last week (May 17), explained that it is based solely on...

NANCY PELOSI’S carefully crafted introduction to the American people last week seemed to reinforce some stereotypes of the so-called mommy party. On the day she made history as the first woman to be elected speaker, she appeared on the House floor, surrounded by children and bedecked in pearls. ...But even as this nurturing image dominated the news, the swearing-in ceremony on Thursday was notable for another milestone in gender politics: the return of the Alpha Male Democrat.... The return of Democratic manliness was no accident; it was a carefully planned strategy. But now that the Macho Dems are walking the...

(IsraelNN.com) The Islamic Jihad terror organization is circulating a propaganda video showing its men training on the ruins of the Gush Katif settlements. The organization seems to have created a terrorist training camp where one of the Jewish communities once stood. The videos show men practicing kidnappings from cars and other scenarios. Israel Channel 2 TV reports that the Iranian-funded Islamic Jihad is attempting to brand itself as a tougher fighting organization than the Hamas, and prides itself on continuing to launch Kassam rockets at Israel regardless of "ceasefires". It is also attempting to mediate an agreement between Hamas and...

The open wound of Gush Katif By Nadav Shragai Last Friday when Makor Rishon's photographer, Miri Tzahi, saw the photo of First Lieutenant Amihai Merhavia, who was killed in the battle of Bint Jbail, it jogged something in her journalist's memory. She thought she had seen this face before. Tzahi, who is about publish the album, "Katif - Nine days in Av," featuring hundreds of photos of the "days of the expulsion," searched through her computer archive and found a series of photos from around four years ago, showing Merhavia during the violent evacuation of Havat Gilad (Gilad Farm) in...

Three incidents of looting have been reported in the village of Pe'at Sadeh in southern Gush Katif. Two soldiers were caught looting an air conditioner from a home in the town of Pe’at Sadeh in Gush Katif on Tuesday. The soldiers were caught by a female soldier who reported the incident to her superiors. The two soldiers have admitted to looting the home. The IDF Judge Advocate General has ordered an investigation into the incident. Two other incidents of looting have been reported in Pe’at Sadeh. On Sunday, two soldiers were caught attempting to steal appliances left behind by residents...

A woman in Morag threatens to employ violence against herself and her children -and Noga Cohen of Kfar Darom, three of whose children lost their legs in a terrorist attack, attempted to mollify her. The woman, named Ofrah, a 17-year veteran of Morag in southern Gush Katif, screamed at an army officer who arrived to deliver the expulsion notices: "By what right do you come and throw me out of my house? Did I hurt anyone? Did I do something? You're coming in the name of the law, in the name of the government - I'd like to see Ariel...

SPECIAL ICEJ RELEASE ON DISENGAGEMENT FOR RELEASE - 21 JULY 2005 FOR ZION'S SAKE WE WILL NOT KEEP SILENT "For behold, in those days and at that time, When I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, And bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; And I will enter into judgment with them there On account of My people, My heritage Israel, Whom they have scattered among the nations; They have also divided up My land. They have cast lots for My people, Have given a boy as payment for a harlot,...

Civil war is national suicide AITON BIRNBAUM, THE JERUSALEM POST Jun. 29, 2005 As disengagement draws closer, some fear that growing tensions may erupt into armed conflict. Worst-case scenarios of disengagement, security chiefs warn, include assassination of the prime minister or other leaders and violent civil unrest . The more we positively discount such possibilities, the more likely it is that we are in denial. Civil war could threaten our very existence – the prospect of which, while naturally engendering avoidance of the topic, also demands overcoming anxiety in order to perform a realistic risk assessment. Clinicians evaluating suicidal clients...

JERUSALEM – It has spread like a fierce contagion. People wear it. Billboards shout it. Kids distribute in on the streets. See it dangling from cars, buses, baby carriages, backpacks. It's the color orange and it is everywhere. As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to evacuate the Jewish communities of Gaza and parts of the West Bank on Aug. 15 draws closer, grassroots anti-withdrawal campaigns have geared up exponentially. With the color theme of orange, signifying the citrus groves that thrive in Jewish Gaza, the plan is to have as many Israelis as possible drape the country in orange to...

It would be few contemporary parents who are not familiar with the animated children's film, "Finding Nemo." In the oceanic fantasy story, the young Nemo, a clown fish, is inadvertently captured in a fish collector's diving net and his father, Marlin, accompanied by an absent-minded Angel-fish friend named Dory, sets out on a quest to find his abducted son. At one point in their travels and trials, they are waylaid by a massive brute of a toothy Great White shark named Bruce and forcibly invited to a “get together.” Steered by the fins of the massive beast, they soon find...

A group of Jews from America arrived in Israel today to show their support for the struggle of the Jews of Gaza and the northern Shomron against the plan to expel them from their homes. 15 members of the group, which is being led by New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind and includes two State Supreme Court Judges, were detained upon reaching passport control, according to Ruth Lieberman, one of the people waiting to greet the group in Ben Gurion International Airport. “The police questioned them and told them that ‘the Gaza Strip is a closed military zone,’” Lieberman said....