Free Republic

National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi says that Israel and the Syrian regime are in direct daily contact and are discussing the possibility of normalization, Israel Hayom reports. Hanegbi today confirms comments he made during a classified session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Sunday, saying “There is direct daily dialogue at all levels between Israel and the regime in Syria. I am leading it with political officials there,” the Hebrew outlet reports. Hanegbi told the committee that Syria and Lebanon are candidates for the Abraham Accords normalization agreements, the paper reports. When asked whether Israel had agreed...

Jordan: The mysterious Stone Age village | 42:26DW Documentary | 6.11M subscribers | 2,706,845 views | October 20, 2022

Toll from Tehran’s terrorism and proxy attacks are a serious factors in Trump’s decision on whether to support or even join the Israeli war effort. Three years after 19 Americans died in a bombing at a Saudi Arabian apartment complex, then-President Bill Clinton sent a cable that told Iran’s president a secret that the 42nd president wasn’t even willing to tell the American public: U.S. intelligence had ample evidence that Tehran was behind the deadly Khobar Towers terror attack. “Message to President Khatami from President Clinton: The United States Government has received credible evidence that members of the Iranian Revolutionary...

It had been three days since Egypt and Syria launched a two-headed assault against Israel, and now,..Kissinger and the rest of Richard Nixon’s administration faced a decision with titanic consequences. Should they send a flagging Israel the tanks, jets, and other weapons it needed to win the war? Or let the belligerents duke it out as is? The president and his administration chose the former. For the Israelis, this was a deliverance that could have come from God himself. Simply put, America’s resupply saved Israel.... The whole of the U.S. government was caught unawares by the outbreak of the Yom...

As prosecutors neared the end of their witness list in Sean "Diddy" Combs' trial, multiple celebrities were mentioned in court. Sports legends Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O'Neal were mentioned during the fifth week of trial testimony in the rapper's sex trafficking and racketeering case. Diddy's trial began May 12 with opening statements. Throughout the past week of testimony, the jury mostly heard from the disgraced music mogul's ex-girlfriend. Testifying under the pseudonym "Jane," she told the jury about her relationship with the rapper beginning in 2021. Jane detailed drug-fueled nights when Diddy allegedly forced her into having sex...

..... 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...