Free Republic

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar warned on Friday that “one tiny mistake” could turn Cyprus into “a new Gaza”. Tatar, not recognized as a head of state by the international community, also suggested that Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan may soon recognize the north. Turkey is the only country that recognizes the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. in an interview with the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, said, “A mistake or a misunderstanding such as the shooting of a Turkish soldier on the Green Line… would provoke a bomb between the two populations.” “If you shoot one Turkish soldier, you...

But even the Israelis have yet to absorb the full scope and magnitude of Biden’s accommodation of Iran. The problem is not that Sullivan and Blinken are failing to restrain Malley, but that they are marching in lockstep with him. A consensus reigns inside the administration, not just on the JCPOA but on every big question of Middle East strategy: Everyone from the president on down agrees about the need to complete what Obama started—which means that the worst is yet to come. If the control that Obama’s project exercises over every mind in the Biden administration is not already...

In a post on her now-defunct blog, MSNBC anchor Joy Ann Reid attacked CNN’s Wolf Blitzer for treating Jewish guests with too much understanding. Blitzer is a “former flak for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),” reads the post from July 16, 2006. “He doesn’t even try to hide his affinity for his Israeli guests, or his partisanship for their cause, while turning instantly to prosecutorial mode when questioning any guest who has the dumb luck to be an Arab or Muslim in King Blitzer’s court,” Reid continues. “It’s actually quite stunning how brazen Blitzer’s bias has become.” In...

They also condemn the government for failing to condemn Hamas's actions in Gaza. Christians throughout South Africa have risen against the government's decision to take Israel to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on charges that it is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. "The African National Congress government and their allies' decision to take Israel to the International Court of Justice has brought us to a place where, like the time of Queen Esther in the Bible, we cannot keep silent," said Tshego Motaung, head of the Healing of the Nations prayer for Israel movement in an article published...

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that the strike targeted two distinct sites linked to Hezbollah and Iranian-backed militias A senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps was reportedly in an airstrike near Damascus, Tehran said on Monday. The attack, attributed to Israel, eliminated Sayyed Reza Mousavi, a key figure responsible for Iranian forces in Syria.

We hear it so often that it sounds routine. “I am not an anti-Semite. I am an anti-Zionist,” the occasional anti-Semite confesses with astonishing candor. Such openness reveals the speaker’s ignorance about their own racism, a prejudice lodged in their unconscious though quite close to the surface. Or they do know it, and the discursive alibi is meant to hide it. It is not coincidental. Jihadist fundamentalists use the term “Zionist” as a disqualification towards Israelis and Jews in general. It is always the Zionist aggressor, the Zionist invader, the Zionist occupier. Zionists or not, since, in the strict sense...

Jordan has made significant progress establishing state institutions, preserving tolerance and religious pluralism, promoting economic growth, and increasing social welfare. Life expectancy at birth increased from 52.6 years in 1960 to 74.3 in 2016. Gross domestic product per capita increased from $511 in 1965 to $4,129 in 2017. Regional instability on Jordan’s borders has burdened Jordanian society and contributed to domestic unease. The conflicts in Syria and Iraq led to influxes of more than one million refugees, which contributed to the doubling of Jordan’s population since 2000 to 10 million people. This dramatic population growth strained labor markets, increased the...

House Rep. Jim Jordan pushed back against the House Judiciary Committee’s star witness Rev. Robert Schenck during a Supreme Court “Undue Influence” hearing on Thursday, challenging Schenck’s credibility in past legal proceedings. The hearing came as a result of Schenck alleging that Justice Samuel Alito leaked a Supreme Court opinion in 2014 and accusations that the justice may have leaked the Dobbs opinion in May. “One thing I’ve learned, people who mislead folks on small things, mislead them on big things,” Jordan said during the hearing. House Rep. Jim Jordan grilled conservative-turned-progressive activist Rev. Robert Schenck Thursday in a House...

Rep. Jim Jordan, founding chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, has confirmed that he plans to enter the House Speaker’s race to succeed outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan. Jordan made the announcement on The Curt Schilling Podcast on Monday. “If and when there is a Speaker’s race, I plan on being part of that discussion,” Jordan said, before adding that the GOP needs to focus on “the kind of things we told the American people we were going to do” if they want to have a Speaker’s race at all. (RELATED: Jim Jordan Considering Running for Speaker of the House). “We...

I met Mudar Zahran, currently the Secretary General of the Jordan Opposition Coalition (JOC), some six years ago and have kept closely in touch with him over the years.  I watched the JOC being formed and take shape, just as I watched their plan Operation Jordan is Palestine (OJIP) take shape. The goal of the later is: “To establish Jordan as the Palestinian homeland, in accordance with international law, where refugees will be settled within safe and secure borders, allowing Israel to become a fully recognized, sovereign state over all of its soil, including all land west of the Jordan...

Brutal Tactics of Militant Group Have Startled Arab Nations BEIRUT—Outrage spread across the Arab world after the release of a video by Islamic State said to show the burning to death of a captive Jordanian pilot, raising alarm in the region over the militant group’s brutal tactics and startling Arab governments involved in the military campaign against it. The 22-minute video begins with footage of Jordanian involvement in a U.S.-led military coalition against Islamic State. It then shows what appears to be First Lt. Muath al-Kasasbeh describing Jordan’s military operations before he is burned alive inside a cage. Jordan’s government...

After World War I the third rate minds who brought us the conflict to begin with came up with another stupid idea: They decided to divide up former German, Austrian and Turkish empires into separate countries, like Czechoslovakia, and create makeshifts, like the Danzig Corridor. Germany lost territory to Poland to create a land corridor to Danzig that gave Poland access to the sea.Never mind that it cleaved a country in two. It was these territorial wedges-- wedges that diced up ethnicity-- that Hitler used to gain legitimacy in the eyes of Germans. By cutting up countries in defiance of...

Jordan may ask Israel and the United States to help it fight the al-Qaeda-linked jihadi group that threatens Syria and Iraq if it threatens Amman as well, senior Obama administration officials

Abu Qatada, the radical Islamic preacher once described as Osama bin Laden’s “right hand man in Europe”, will be back on the streets within days after being granted bail. A senior immigration judge said yesterday that Qatada could be released despite even his own defence team suggesting that he posed a “grave risk” to Britain’s national security. Qatada was granted bail by Mr Justice Mitting after the European Court of Human Rights ruled last month that he could not be deported to his native Jordan. The bail conditions will be similar to those set in 2008, with the cleric confined...

Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB) is in the final stages of striking a production sharing agreement with the Jordanian government to explore oil from the country's vast oil shale, a senior official at the state-run Natural Resources Authority said Thursday. "We are about to complete drafting a production sharing agreement with Shell and expected to sign the agreement initially in September this year," NRA's assistant director-general for mining and petroleum, Hisham al-Rabi, told Dow Jones Newswires. The PSA needs the approval of the Jordanian government and parliament, he said. Shell is expected to invest more than $20 billion in the...

Jordan threatened to cut back its official ties with Israel Wednesday night after OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh warned earlier in the day that King Abdullah II risked being toppled by an "Islamist axis" and could be the last king of Jordan. "Hamas is gathering strength and a dangerous axis starting in Iran, continuing through Iraq and Jordan is in the process of formation," Naveh told a closed meeting of journalists and diplomats, including the Jordanian Counsel General, at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. "I don't want to be a prophet but I am not sure there will...

AMMAN, Jordan - Al-Qaida claimed responsibility in an Internet posting Thursday for three suicide attacks on Western hotels that killed at least 57 people, as police clamped down on security and began running DNA tests to try to identify the bombers. The nearly simultaneous attacks late Wednesday also wounded more than 115 people, police said. Several arrests were made overnight, although it was unclear if those arrested were suspects or witnesses. The claim of responsibility, signed in the name of the spokesman for the group Al-Qaida in Iraq, said that "after studying and watching the targets, places were chosen to...

Amman - Jordanian police are questioning a man who claimed he stabbed his sister to death in a so-called "honour crime", the second such killing in a week, the Jordan Times reported on Friday. The body of the victim, a divorced woman of 25, was found on Wednesday with multiple stab wounds in a deserted area west of the capital Amman. Her hands were bound and she had a gag round her mouth, the newspaper said, quoting official sources. Her brother turned himself in to the police on Thursday "claiming that he killed his sister because she was involved in...

Amman - The Jordanian authorities are questioning the relatives of a woman murdered by one of her siblings in a so-called "honour crime", the Jordan Times reported on Tuesday. The victim, a divorced mother of four, was stabbed to death on Friday and one of her brothers turned himself in to the police claiming he killed her "to cleanse his family's honour," the newspaper said. The suspect said he murdered the woman "after seeing a videotape that was left on his doorstep, allegedly showing his sister with a strange man," an official told the newspaper. The woman's father, mother and...

AMMAN -- Jordanian authorities reportedly confiscated copies of the controversial bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, for slandering Christianity. Amman's daily Al Ghad said that copies of the book were seized from a publishing house in the Jordanian capital and its owner, Ahmed Abou Tawk, was summoned for interrogation. The paper quoted the president of the state's Publication Department, Ahmed Kodat, as saying that other titles were confiscated in addition to The Da Vinci Code for undermining religions. "This book is largely harmful for Christianity and was banned from many countries, including Lebanon," Kodat said, noting that Christian clerics in Jordan...