Free Republic

..... IDF Spokesperson (Res.) Doron Spielman is joined by Major Amiad Cohen, Senior Director of the Herut Center and a reservist who just returned from Israel’s northern border. Together, they expose how Israel’s new military and humanitarian tactics are splitting the Gazan population from Hamas, destabilizing the terror regime’s power base and reshaping the battlefield. Backed by tribal militias fed up with Hamas rule, and no longer relying on international NGOs that Hamas exploits, Israel is asserting direct control of aid distribution—delivering over 1 million meals in one week alone. This discussion covers why Hamas profited billions from stolen humanitarian...

Archaeologists believe they have rediscovered the lost Byzantine city of Tharais in southern Jordan, according to a Türkiye Today report. The settlement is thought to have been an important religious and trading center along the Roman and Byzantine road network connecting Zoar to central Jordan. The city appears on the famous sixth-century a.d. Madaba Mosaic Map, the oldest surviving map of the Middle East, but its exact location has remained a mystery. Over the past several years, an archaeological project has reexamined historical documents and inscriptions, while conducting field surveys outside of the modern town of El-'Iraq near the southeastern...

Founded during the Hellenistic period by Seleucid veterans of Alexander the Great, the ancient city of Gerasa -- now Jerash in modern Jordan -- was likely named after the Gerontes. Caught between Nabataean and Jewish influence, it truly flourished after the Roman conquest, becoming one of the most impressive cities of the Decapolis. Gerasa: Rome's Forgotten City in the Jordanian Hills | 51:36 Histoire & Civilisations | 338K subscribers | 13,297 views | May 24, 2025

Syria’s new government will relocate ISIS families from camps, with Kurdish and US support. The new Syrian transitional government is seeking to find a way to deal with thousands of ISIS families who have been housed at camps in eastern Syria since ISIS was defeated in Syria in 2019. When ISIS was defeated in several villages near the Euphrates River in 2019, some of the terrorist group chose to surrender, and thousands of families of ISIS fighters ended up in the hands of the US-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The thousands of families were sent to several camps and detention facilities...

The official report of the House Select Committee, which runs to more than 800 pages, is too deeply biased to give much help. This was foreordained given the hyper-partisan way the Select Committee was formed. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s two Republican appointments to the committee—Representatives Jim Jordan and Jim Banks—and instead appointed two virulently anti-Trump Republicans, Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.More important than the report’s factual errors are the serious questions never investigated by the Select Committee. Why did Democrat congressional leaders turn down repeated offers of National Guard troops to protect the...

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that the Syrian transitional authority may be weeks away from potential collapse and full-scale civil war, defending US President Donald Trump's decision to lift Syria sanctions and to engage with the Damascus government. "It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they're facing, are maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up," Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

WFP warns of starvation in Gaza as aid trucks stall at the border but reports highlight high food access to Gazans despite conflicting claims . The World Food Program (WFP) warned Sunday that families in Gaza are starving while food trucks pile up at the border, calling the situation “a race against time.” The organization urged the international community to take immediate action to restore aid flows into the Strip. While these allegations dominate political speeches and media headlines, the reality in Gaza appears more complex. Though some markets in Gaza have been photographed empty, residents have also shared images...

Early one morning in September 2024, two teams of F.B.I. agents descended simultaneously on a pair of homes in Orange County, New York. The agents arrived to serve arrest warrants on Mout’z Soudani, 76, a local real estate investor, and Stewart Rosenwasser, 72, a prominent former judge and recently retired county prosecutor. The two were accused in a conspiracy case. Mr. Soudani surrendered. Mr. Rosenwasser did not. Instead, he barricaded himself inside his home in Campbell Hall, N.Y., a suburb 65 miles north of Manhattan, exchanging gunfire with F.B.I. agents, according to local news reports, which cited an unnamed source...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Trump urged Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa to sign the Abraham Accords in a previously unplanned meeting on Wednesday, one day after lifting all sanctions on the Middle Eastern country. The two leaders met on the sidelines of a Gulf Cooperation Council gathering in Riyadh, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan phoning into the conversation. Syria currently doesn’t recognize Israel’s statehood, and the Abraham Accords were just one of Trump’s requests to Syria in an effort to normalize relations. Trump also told the Syrian leader to make all foreign terrorists leave Syria, deport Palestinian terrorists, help...

Key names, entities: François Genoud, Shukeiri, Fatah, PLO, PFLP, Yasser Arafat, George Habash [Habbache], Karl van de Put, Johan Schuller, Herald Angelke, [Udo] Otto Albrecht, Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, Gundolf Keller [Köhler], Willi Voss [Pohl], L'oeuvre Francaise, Jean Tireault, Jean Robert Debbaudt, Manfred Roeder [Röder], Volker Heidel. AHMAD SHUKEIRI [SHUKAIRY / SHUQAIRY] AND TACUARA (1962) (his promoting of neo-Nazis at UN, while quoting NYT, which in fact details its Nazism) Recall of Arab Delegate from U.N. is Sought; ‘saluted’ Tacuara December 3, 1962 [PDF] A move for the recall by Saudi Arabia of its permanent representative to the United Nations, Ahmad Shukairy,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has decided that the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees is not immune from being sued, reversing the U.S. government’s position that the organization was protected from civil liability.The Justice Department revealed its new stance in a letter it filed in federal court in New York on Thursday as part of a lawsuit that aims to hold the agency, known as UNRWA, accountable for the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly attack on Israel by Hamas. The change in position underscores the hardened perspective toward the agency under the Trump administration following allegations by Israel that some...

While the media and military have been silent, what the Navy did against a Houthi attack is pretty magnificent. Has the U.S. grown ashamed of its military victories? There are reasons to believe this is true. In April 1988, the U.S. Navy effectively destroyed the Iranian navy following a mine attack on the destroyer USS Roberts. The Navy sank an Iranian frigate, four armed speedboats, blew up two armed oil platforms, and damaged another frigate in one of the shortest and most successful campaigns of the postwar period. Yet even today, there is no actual name attached to the engagement....

Ten years ago, when President Barack Obama and other leaders reached a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program, Saudi Arabia was dismayed.Saudi officials called it a "weak deal" that had only emboldened the kingdom's regional rival, Iran. They cheered when President Trump withdrew from the agreement a few years later.Now, as a second Trump administration negotiates with Iran on a deal that might have very similar contours to the previous one, the view from Saudi Arabia looks quite different.The kingdom's Foreign Ministry issued a statement recently saying that it hoped the talks, mediated by neighboring Oman, would enhance...

If there is no emotional connection to their own children, how could there ever be a desire for peace, coexistence, and mutual respect for the Israeli people? Speaking to the children of Jenin in their native Arabic language, N12 Israeli television reporter Ohad Hemo confirmed what we’ve all known for a long time: the realization of why there can never be peace between Israel and the so-called Palestinians who live in Samaria. With special permission from the IDF, Hemo made his way through the rubble, which was once home to 14,000 people who lived in the Jenin Palestinian refugee camp,...

Iran is beating a retreat from Yemen, where it has backed the Houthi rebels, who in turn have launched missiles and drones against Israel, and have also attacked international shipping in the Red Sea, as well as western naval vessels. The reason: U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a relentless assault on the Houthis while also restoring a “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions that makes it impossible for Iran to sustain its overseas terror proxies. The UK Telegraph reported on Thursday: Iran has ordered military personnel to leave Yemen, abandoning its Houthi allies as the US escalates an air strike...

Reports this week indicated that US President Donald Trump may visit Saudi Arabia in the coming months. This is important because it would be his first trip abroad as president. It will also be a repeat of a trip he took during his first term. During his first term, in May 2017, he travelled to Saudi Arabia for the US-Arab-Islamic Summit. He met with Saudi King Salman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi during that trip, among other leaders who attended During the May 2017 trip, Trump said, “I stand before you as a representative of the American People, to...

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting which is comprised of the National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) are budgeted to receive $535 million from the federal government for FY2025. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has recommended this funding be cut. Paula Kerger, CEO, of PBS and Katherine Maher, CEO of NPR appeared at the House of Representatives DOGE subcommittee to testify against budget cuts. Subcommittee Chair Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) said "folks in my district listen to podcasts and internet based news. At the same time, NPR and PBS have increasingly become radical, left-wing echo...

he Chinese Foreign Ministry declared its support on Wednesday for Egypt’s attempt to galvanize the Arab world into supporting a plan for the reconstruction of Gaza, intended to prevent President Donald Trump from taking the territory over. Much of Gaza is currently uninhabitable as a result of two decades of being under the control of the genocidal terrorist organization Hamas. Following Hamas’s brutal invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, the country declared war on the group and attacked Gaza, seeking to destroy its terrorist infrastructure in the strip. As a result, much of Gaza requires significant reconstruction, a task...

Middle Eastern countries are entirely right to oppose President Trump's plan to evacuate the Gaza Strip and resettle the Palestinians in nearby countries. I don't say this out of any sympathy for the Gazans. They have more than proven that they have no business running a state, no less a state next to Israel--a country that the vast majority of Palestinians want to see wiped off the face of the Earth. Trump on Egyptians and Jordanians needing to take in Gazans as refugees (despite their long opposition to it): "I would like to see Jordan and Egypt take some of...

US President Donald Trump dug in his heels Monday over a controversial suggestion that large numbers of Gazans take refuge in Egypt and Jordan, shrugging off wall-to-wall opposition to the proposal from Arab leaders. Egyptian media on Tuesday cited government sources as saying that Trump and Sissi had yet to speak. If they did, Sissi’s office would issue a readout, the Egyptian officials told local media. The US president on Saturday floated the idea to “clean out” Gaza after more than 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas had reduced the Palestinian territory to what he called a “demolition...