Free Republic

“CAIRO, October 4. /TASS/. Palestine’s Hamas movement doubts that 72 hours will be enough for releasing all the living Israeli hostages and handing over all the bodies of the deceased to Israel, a member of the movement’s political bureau Moussa Abu Marzouk told Al Jazeera.”

Oct 3 (Reuters) - Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of U.S. President Donald Trump's Gaza proposal, and signalled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

After Hamas' horrific Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Jews and the seizure of 250 Jewish hostages, the headlines cried out in shock, anger and astonishment. The New York Times wrote, "As world leaders condemned the attacks -- and questions arose about how Israeli intelligence had been so surprised -- ordinary citizens tried to make sense of what was happening." On Oct. 7, 2023, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote: "Thanks to defensive systems like Iron Dome, Hamas's punches, while frequent and menacing, rarely landed. For Israelis, Gaza seemed relatively contained. That was, until this weekend. Whatever happens next...

Great plan. It will -- and did -- get all of the golf claps from the international arena. Don't expect it to go anywhere, though, because Hamas will never agree to go anywhere else. It's still worth a shot, though, even just for the value of clarifying which side is the actual problem:The Trump administration has reportedly put forward a peace plan which would eventually lead to a complete end to the war in Gaza, a Western source told the Lebanese media site Elnashra on Wednesday, only a day after US President Donald Trump met with the leaders of Muslim...

Hamas ominously released what it called a “parting image” Saturday of the remaining 48 Israelis being held captive in Gaza, as the Jewish state’s ground troops prepare to close in on Gaza City. The image is a compilation of the faces of the captives, with the name Ron Arad inscribed below each one. Arad was an Israeli air force pilot who went missing during a 1986 bombing mission in southern Lebanon, who is believed to have been captured and since died. He is still officially classified as missing. The terror group blames Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for rejecting a...

The imprisoned leader of a Peruvian rebel group that was once involved in a lengthy hostage drama says his group has given up armed conflict and now wants to become a political movement. In an interview published in Wednesday's Peru21 newspaper, Victor Polay acknowledged that the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement has been defeated. "The moment has arrived for the MRTA to actively join the political fight, within the framework of democracy," said Polay, using the group's initials in Spanish. He said he would like authorities to grant amnesty to imprisoned MRTA guerrillas. "I hope there will be a political way...

“ Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday Gaza "is burning" as Israeli forces were "striking with an iron fist," apparently at the launch of a long-anticipated offensive to seize Gaza City. "Gaza is burning. The IDF is striking with an iron fist at the terror infrastructure, and IDF soldiers are fighting bravely to create the conditions for the release of the hostages and the defeat of Hamas," Katz said in a post on X, originally in Hebrew, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.“

The U.S. State Department is again advising American citizens not to travel to Venezuela, warning of "severe risks" including wrongful detention, kidnapping and torture. The State Department said that it does not have an operating embassy or consulate in the South American country, and cannot provide routine or emergency consular services to U.S. citizens there. All U.S. citizens currently in Venezuela should leave immediately, the State Department said. "U.S. citizens are at extreme risk of detention when entering Venezuela at any location. They may be unjustly charged with terrorism or other serious crimes and detained for long periods," the State...

Robert O’Brien, former national security adviser in the Trump administration, says that the Russians were willing to make a deal to release both Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed before Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. The Russians reneged on the deal after Biden was declared the winner of the election, according to O’Brien. The goal for the Russians was to improve relations between Washington and Moscow after a meeting in October 2020. But, when the election was called for Biden in November, the deal was off. The article in The Hill that reports on O’Brien’s comments does not mention an...

Like his sugardaddy, Vladimir Putin, Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, likes to take American hostages for use as bargaining chips. He's got a lot of them in his many dungeons. So surprise, surprise, he's traded a lot of them: According to ABC News:The more than 200 Venezuelan migrants who were deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador's mega-prison in March have left El Salvador to be sent to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap that included Americans being held in Venezuela, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced on X. The deal included the release of 10 Americans held in...

The world's leading authority on food insecurity has confirmed a famine in Gaza. In a report published Friday, the United Nations-backed group of experts finds that over half a million people parts of north Gaza are at risk of dying from starvation, and hundreds of thousands more people face catastrophic shortages as the famine spreads to other areas. "As this Famine is entirely man-made, it can be halted and reversed. The time for debate and hesitation has passed, starvation is present and is rapidly spreading," the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, report says. The images of skeletal children...

'Israeli hostages may be the only people purposely starved in Gaza'. Dan Perry says that there is "clearly hunger in Gaza". You cannot deny that there is hunger in Gaza, according to Dan Perry, former head of the Associated Press Africa, Middle East, and Europe desks. “There clearly is hunger in Gaza,” Perry said last week on the ILTV News Podcast. “Half of Gaza has been flattened, the economy has been destroyed. It's not by any means self-sufficient. It's blockaded from all sides — from the sea and from the air. It's under very severe military assault. I don't think...

Israel’s security cabinet met Thursday night to debate whether to approve a full military conquest of the Gaza Strip, as IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir warned that such an operation would endanger the lives of hostages still held by Hamas. Zamir, addressing ministers during the high-stakes meeting, repeated his support for a strategy of encirclement and said advancing into densely populated areas would make it impossible to ensure the hostages’ safety. He also warned that a full conquest would come at significant cost to the military’s strength and readiness. Outside the meeting, hostage families and former captives...

Natasha Hausdorff – barrister and legal director at the UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust – is the latest guest on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Natasha and Brendan discuss Bob Vylan’s vile chants at Glastonbury, the horrors Israel faces in Gaza and how the Holocaust is now weaponised against the Jews. Transcript linked below video and links.

White House envoy Steve Witkoff told hostage families on Saturday that President Trump wants to "shift" the Gaza policy from trying to get a partial and phased Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal to reaching a comprehensive deal that ends the war and returns all remaining hostages at once, according to a statement by the families and recordings from the meeting. Behind the scenes: Two members of the hostage families who were in the room said Witkoff listened for a long time to every family member who wanted to speak. "We never have these meetings with senior Israeli government officials," one...

Former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon, and former deputy IDF chief Matan Vilnai on Sunday announced they had sent a letter to US President Donald Trump requesting that he compel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the current war. This information was provided to The Jerusalem Post ahead of other media. These top officials, along with top former police and foreign ministry officials, lead the Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS) group – which now makes up over 600 former senior security officials – in making that call on Trump to intervene. 'Stop the Gaza War'...

he Hamas terror group is, concerned about the possibility of indirect cooperation between the United States and Israel, as well as potential military action to free the hostages, Asharq Al-Awsat reported. The Saudi newspaper cited Hamas field sources who said that the terror group is taking enhanced security measures to uncover any attempt by Israeli special forces or others to reach locations suspected of holding hostages. According to the sources, members of Hamas' military wing have been instructed to monitor any suspicious movements, including those of collaborators with Israel, in order to uncover any new attempts to track locations where...

President Trump announced in a tweet on Wednesday that he will name Robert O’Brien to succeed John Bolton as his national security adviser. “I am pleased to announce that I will name Robert C. O’Brien, currently serving as the very successful Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the State Department, as our new National Security Advisor​,” the president said. “I have worked long & hard with Robert. He will do a great job!​”​ ​The announcement comes a day after Trump released the five finalists on his list and called O’Brien “fantastic.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed criticism regarding the negotiations for the release of hostages in the Gaza Strip. In response to claims that the government is refusing a deal, Netanyahu criticized the news channels that have published such claims, saying, "They always echo Hamas propaganda, but they are always wrong. We accepted the deal, the Witkoff deal, and then the version proposed by the mediators. We accepted it, Hamas rejected it." According to Netanyahu, Hamas "wants to stay in Gaza. They want us to leave, so they can rearm and attack us again and again. I will not accept this;...

Middle East specialist Andrew Fox joins The Winston Marshall Show for a haunting, firsthand account of the horrors unfolding in Gaza—and the global narratives that refuse to face the truth. Fox describes scenes of unspeakable brutality—massacres, ch*ld soldiers, and war crimes ignored by much of the international press. He explains how Hamas manipulates both civilians and the global media to fuel its propaganda war, while using human shields to mask its operations. They discuss the international community’s moral double standards, the weaponisation of victimhood, and the psychological toll on those who witness the atrocities firsthand. All this—media distortion, humanitarian tragedy,...