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National security adviser John Bolton is expected to announced Monday that the U.S. will shutter the Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) office in Washington, D.C., The Wall Street Journal reported. “The Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel,” Bolton is expected to say, according to a draft of his speech reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Bolton will reportedly threaten the International Criminal Court with sanctions if it carries out investigations into the U.S. and Israel. ADVERTISEMENT The action against the PLO, which serves as the main entity...

President Bashar al-Assad has approved a gas attack in the Idlib province, which is the country’s last rebel stronghold, a report on Sunday said. Reports of Assad's approval comes about a week after President Trump warned the strongman and his allies not to “recklessly attack” the province. Trump called any gas attack a potential “grave humanitarian mistake.” The Wall Street Journal, citing U.S. officials, was first to report on Assad.

The weekly protest by Hamas-controlled Gaza Arabs along the border with Israel took a macabre twiest Friday as Donald Trump, Binyamin Netanyahu, and Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman were hanged in effigy. The current wave of disturbances on the Gaza border began in late March, following US President Donald Trump's decision to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. .....

GENEVA (7 September 2018) – UN human rights experts* have appealed to Iran to halt the imminent executions of Iranian Kurd prisoners Zanyar and Loghman Moradi, amid serious concerns that they did not receive a fair trial and were tortured during pre-trial detention. They also reiterated calls to halt the execution of Mr. Ramin Hossein Panahi. “We urge the Government of Iran to immediately halt their executions and to annul the death sentences against them in compliance with its international obligations,” the experts said in a joint statement, following reports that they will be executed on 8 September.“We are alarmed...

“This is not prison; this is a genocide,” stated an audience member following August 29 movie screenings concerning the Gaza Strip at the Washington, DC office of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL). Typifying the Israel-hating audience of about 25 that filled FCNL’s small Capitol Hill presentation room, this woman’s comments demonstrated how Quakers at FCNL and beyond have joined the global demonization of Israel. The woman, a self-professed member of the radical anti-Israel organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), “was totally sickened” by the evening’s viewings of Gaza in Context and Gaza: A Gaping Wound. These two...

Former Secretary of State John Kerry said former President Barack Obama should have followed through on his infamous "red line" warning to Syria, and the United States "paid a price" as a result of Obama's inaction. Obama vowed in 2012 that if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime used chemical weapons on civilians, it would be a "game changer" for U.S. military involvement in Syria. But Obama failed to enforce the promise a year later when hundreds of Syrians were killed in a sarin gas attack, and he instead brokered a multi-nation deal in which Assad pledged to remove his chemical...

“Abbas is apparently prepared to give up his job as president of Palestine to become the mayor of a local municipal council in a Jordanian province,” commented a Ramallah-based senior official. Many Palestinians and Jordanians have expressed surprise over the renewed talk about a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation, saying they believe the idea is being floated as part of US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-unveiled plan for peace in the Middle East. They also warned that the proposed confederation was part of an Israeli-American “conspiracy” aimed at preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and turning Jordan into the homeland of the...

The Jordanians immediately rejected the confederation idea. Israel is not behind what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said was a US-backed peace plan based on a Palestinian confederation with Jordan, senior Israeli diplomatic officials clarified Sunday. The clarification came after reports claimed the idea of a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation – which Abbas told a Peace Now delegation was raised in a conversation he had with US envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt – was an Israeli proposal. Be the first to know - Join our Facebook page. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position remains that an agreement must be directly negotiated between...

Women’s March co-organizer Linda Sarsour (far-right) speaking at a panel on antisemitism at The New School on November 28, 2017. Photo: Screenshot. In a year when Muslim political candidates are breaking new ground or falling just short of doing so, it’s not surprising to see politics dominate the country’s largest annual gathering of Muslim Americans.But the political sessions at the annual Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention in Houston, Texas were far from celebrations. Rather, they cast a dire picture for Muslims in America.Speakers warned of “Islamophobia” as a dire threat lurking just outside their doors. And while...

“Death to Khamenei” and “Not for Gaza. Not for Lebanon. My life for Iran” are the most important slogans to explain how fed-up Iranians have become. Israel has only two options against Iran On August 27, Iran and Syria signed a military cooperation agreement. An official visit by Iranian Defense Minister Amir Khatami came at a time when the US started pressuring Iran to leave Syria. This clearly indicates both Syria and Iran want to show off the military cooperation and connections between Tehran and Damascus in light of US sanctions and pressures on the latter. This visit again proves...

The abject failure of the Oslo Accords has had a salutary effect on Israeli society. Israelis are today quite resilient, ready to endure – if necessary – protracted conflict. The Oslo process – started between Israel and the Palestinians 25 years ago – clearly failed to bring a resolution to the conflict and did not result in peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. The nearly 1,600 Israeli casualties and many more thousands of wounded during this period by Palestinian terrorist and rocket attacks testify to this failure. Yitzhak Rabin’s land-for-security formula did not work. Be the first to know -...

WASHINGTON — America's allies in Europe are plotting ways to bypass President Donald Trump's sanctions on Iran as they work to keep the nuclear deal alive without the United States. With a second round of U.S. sanctions set to take effect in November, European officials are working at cross-purposes with Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign as they try to preserve as much business as possible with Iran. The goal is to persuade Iran's leaders to stay in the deal for a few more years — perhaps long enough for Trump to be replaced and for a new U.S. president to rejoin...

Anti-Semitic Islamist activist, Linda Sarsour, was in fine form at ISNA, warning Muslims that if they weren't fighting Israel, they were complicit. She warned them against even daring to "humanize" Israelis, as Steve Emerson reports at The Algemeiner. Her tone often was not aimed at inspiring Muslims to be more politically active, as much as it was to shame them for not doing so. If they aren’t sufficiently engaged in advocating for the Palestinian cause, she said, “you as an American Muslim are complicit in the occupation of Palestinians, in the murder of Palestinian protesters. So when we start debating...

Earlier, the former US Secretary of State said that President Trump’s decision in May to leave the 2015 Iran nuclear deal “weakens our security, breaks America’s word [and] isolates us from our European allies.” In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation”, former US Secretary of State John Kerry berated President Donald Trump for having described the Iran nuclear accord, or the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as the “worst deal ever.” “Unfortunately — and I say this sadly — more often than not, he really just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He makes things up. And he’s...

Syria has denied reports that a series of blasts at a military airport near Damascus on Sunday were from Israeli air strikes, state media say. The loud blasts, reported at the Mezzeh airport, were caused by an explosion at a munitions dump, Sana news agency said, citing Syrian military sources. The incident was the result of an electrical fault, the agency added.

Large explosions were reported at a Syrian military air base early Sunday in an attack widely attributed to Israeli warplanes. However, Syria denied an attack had taken place. The reported strike occurred just after midnight at Mazzeh air base near Damascus, a key regime facility thought to have been targeted by Israel in the past. The military airport of Mazzeh, in the west suburbs of Damascus, was hit by a “possible Israeli missile, which hit a munitions store setting off successive explosions,” the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdel Rahmane told AFP.

VIENNA - Iran has remained within the main restrictions on its nuclear activities imposed by a 2015 deal with major powers, a confidential report by the U.N. atomic watchdog indicated on Thursday. In its last report in May, the IAEA had said Iran could do more to cooperate with inspectors and thereby “enhance confidence”, but stopped short of saying the Islamic Republic had given it cause for concern. Thursday’s report to member states seen by Reuters contained similar language. It said the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog was able to carry out all so-called complementary access inspections needed to verify Iran’s...

Former US Secretary of State John Kerry is set to publish a memoir of his years in the White House, the Jewish Insider claimed. In it, Kerry claims Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu leaked details regarding a confidential peace agreement with the Hamas ...

Imagine being cut off from the world – for your whole life. That’s reality for children like Aya. The blockade of Gaza began when she was a baby, the occupation in the West Bank before her parents were born. Now she is eleven, and the blockade goes on. Aya’s childhood memories are of conflict and hardship, walls she cannot escape, and the fear that the only home she knows, however tiny, could be gone when she returns from school. This Ramadan, please help support children like Aya who have known nothing but conflict and hardship. Donate here: http://buff.ly/2qgsP0Y#forPalestinerefugees Yet neither...

This month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan intimated that his country might consider leaving NATO. Meanwhile, on a visit to Moscow last week, Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu referred to Russia as a “strategic partner”—a first. This talk is empty. Erdogan may well be angry at Washington, but ultimately, Ankara is going to have to do whatever it takes to restore its ties with the West. Doing so might not be enough to pull the country out of its economic crisis, but Erdogan has few other options if he wants to avoid a potentially worse political meltdown: He depends too...