Free Republic

The Jewish state’s dream of warm peace with its Arab neighbors has eluded it for more than 72 years. In September 2020, President Donald Trump helped engineer the Abraham Accords between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. The very treaty signing on the White House lawn projected human warmth, and signaled a warm peace. Subsequently, Sudan and Morocco joined the normalization of relations with Israel. It is true that peace, as opposed to war, came much earlier than September 2020. Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994. These peace treaties, however,...

The hypocrisy of the Left in the US is boundless. The likes of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) epitomize it. This New York Congresswoman has shamelessly called Israel an “apartheid state.” She didn’t call the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza, which is “Judenrein,” (any Jew found in Gaza would be murdered) or Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, who do not allow Jews to live in its territories, apartheid states. They actually deserve that title. Conversely, Israel is an open democracy with a free press, the rule-of-law, and where human and civil rights are observed. Israel brought Black African Jews from Ethiopia, to...

Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, is now 85-years old; he is frail and largely dysfunctional, as is his Ramallah based Palestinian Authority (PA), which he has presided over since 2005. Abbas has also been chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) since 2004. A third leadership position held by Abbas is that of the chairman of the Fatah (party and terror group at times). A majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza want Abbas to resign. According to the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey Research, 64% of Palestinians are concerned that Abbas’ departure from politics would...

Israel's Annexation Plan of the Jordan Valley European thinking, Abdullah’s reaction, and Israel’s rights. Thu May 28, 2020 Joseph Puder The new Israeli government is considering extending Israeli law and sovereignty to the Jordan Valley, which is within area C of the Oslo Accords. The Accords, which gave Israel both military and administrative control in the area, also contains a large bloc of Jewish-Israeli communities. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on a short visit to Israel (April 22, 2020) told reporters: “As for annexation of the (Jordan Valley) West Bank, the Israelis will ultimately make those decisions.” He added,...

Why the president's Jerusalem decision was the right thing to do. The Trump administration vetoed a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution last week that called on the U.S. to rescind its decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and ultimately move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the seat of Israel’s parliament (Knesset), the Supreme Court, and where the Prime Minister and President of the Jewish State reside.  The UNSC resolution drafted by Egypt and backed by 13 other members of the Security Council affirms that “any decision and actions which purport to have altered the character,...

Mahmoud Abbas: Failing the Palestinians and PeacePosted By Joseph Puder On December 29, 2014 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Mahmoud Abbas, (aka Abu Mazen) has been a failure as the Palestinian “Rais.” He failed to lead the Palestinian Authority (PA) toward peace with Israel, and he mismanaged the alleged goal to achieve statehood for the Palestinians. Instead of facing the tough issues and making compromises required in negotiating peace and statehood with the Israelis, Abbas chose an alliance with the Gaza controlled terrorist group Hamas. Following Abbas’ pact with Hamas last April, Israel broke off peace negotiations with the...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - The Self-Inflicted Palestinian VictimhoodPosted By Joseph Puder On April 29, 2014 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Palestinians are viewed on some college campuses in North America as victims of Israel, largely thanks to organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and their Islamist allies.The professional propagandists in groups such as SJP are relying on provocative imagery in their attempt to portray Israel as the oppressor. This is patently false when considering the facts. The picture of an Israeli tank facing a Palestinian rock thrower, painted by SJP and...

One of the many questionable foreign policy decisions made by the Obama administration was to join the United Nations Human Rights Council [1]. The Obama administration reversed the Bush administration’s policy of ignoring the council, which tolerates unsavory regimes and affords them influence over the body’s decision making. It is this very same council, made up of mostly repressive regimes, that currently sits in judgment of Israel. The council saturates the media with reports of alleged Israeli sins, including a condemnation of Israel for the Turkish flotilla incident, and the Goldstone report which blamed Israel for Gaza turmoil in 2008....

On Wednesday, January 6, 2010, following the Coptic Christmas Eve celebrations in the Southern Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, masked gunmen opened fire on the exiting worshipers, killing seven Copts and injuring scores of others. The gunmen, most likely a radical jihadist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, intended to assassinate the Coptic Bishop Kirollos. Attacks in Egypt on the Christian-Coptic minority by incited Muslim mobs have become a frequent occurrence in recent years. An unnamed eye witness to the shootings told the Coptic News Bulletin at the Nag Hammadi hospital that the situation was critical for the injured because of...

In our politically correct, relativistic and multicultural Western universe, there has been a systematic effort to ignore the true intentions of Abbas and the Palestinians. While the Arab/Palestinian-Israeli conflict may be an inconvenient headache for the U.S. and the Europeans, and they are therefore willing to ignore Palestinian blemishes and intentions, a Palestinian state, with “unabashed” terrorist aims as stated in their charter, poses existential threats for Israel. Instead of focusing on Israeli confidence-building measures, it is time the West begins to look seriously at the implications of a Palestinians state. The U.S., as an honest broker, must demand guarantees...

Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad is the first Arab leader not to succumb to the Arab revolution that has brought down the (dictators) leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Assad has withstood his Sunni-Arab opposition for two years now, albeit with reduced control over the country. That in itself signifies a meaningful victory for the Assad regime and the axis of Iran-Syria-Hezbollah, as well as Russia. The big losers are the U.S., the Arab Gulf states (particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia), Turkey, and Israel. It is apparent that the Syrian opposition has been unable to defeat and expel the Assad...

Dr. Tawfik Hamid, 47, was born in Egypt into a secular Muslim family. As a student at Cairo University medical school in the late 1970's, Hamid joined the Jihadist-Muslim group-Jamaat Islamiyah. He was deeply influenced by an older fellow student named Ayman al-Zawahiri, destined to become al-Qaida's No.2 and Osama Bin Laden's lieutenant. Hamid described al-Zawahiri as "One of the fiercest speakers I had ever heard...His rhetoric inspired us to want to engage in a war against the infidels, Allah's enemies." Through the influence of his atheist father who had honed his son's critical thinking, Hamid eventually rejected his Jihadi...

Is France Safe For Jews? By Joseph Puder March 27, 2012 The despicable murders in Toulouse, France, on Monday, March 19, 2012 that took the lives of Rabbi Yonatan Sandler (30), his two small children, Aryeh (3) and Gavriel (6), and Miriam Monsonego, the eight-year-old daughter of the Ozer Ha’Torah school’s principal by Mohammed Merah (24), an Arab-Muslim French citizen, has raised anew the question of whether France is a safe place for Jews. When this writer asked Lyda Peltz, a French citizen born to Jewish parents who came from North Africa, if France is safe for Jews, her response...

The Republican Jewish Coalition Leadership Conference attendees meeting in Washington on Wednesday, May 16, 2007, received U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT) with tumultuous applause and a standing ovation. The 160 Republican Jewish leaders who assembled at the Washington DC Chamber of Commerce building, a block away from the White House, were visibly moved by Senator Lieberman’s principled stand on the Iraq war and national security, and delighted in his victory last November over Ned Lamont, a wealthy businessman who was supported by the Democratic party, and his Democratic colleague from Connecticut, Senator Christopher Dodd. Senator Lieberman expressed his gratitude to...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - ‘Extremist’ Jews and Christians Are Like Islamists?Posted By Joseph Puder On April 12, 2012 @ 12:03 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments During a recent presentation made by this writer at a meeting attended by religious leaders and held in a Universalist Unitarian Church in New Jersey, the minister/host, in response to hearing the results of a survey addressing the rise of extremist Islamism in the Middle East and elsewhere exclaimed, “There are extremist Jews and Christians too, and since we don’t have a Muslim present, you should refrain from speaking negatively about...

On the bright, beautiful, and crisp fall day that was early morning, September 11, 2001, few Americans were familiar with stealth jihad, or considered Islamic terrorism a threat to America. Yet, there was a voice crying in the wilderness, warning of a danger that already existed here. That voice belonged to Steven Emerson, whose documentary film titled Jihad in America was aired by PBS on November 21, 1994. Islamic militant groups in America, including CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) began their protestations and intimidation even before the broadcast date. Since the airing, the use of intimidation has been ramped...

The Cross and the Crescent   By Joseph PuderFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, December 05, 2008 Although the Muslim jihadist terrorists in Mumbai attacked citizens of a majority Hindu nation, the brunt of Islamic oppression has fallen upon the many “infidel” Jews and Christians living in Islamic majority countries. Of particular severity is the persecution of Christians in the Arab/Muslim Middle East. The events in Mumbai brought home to Joseph Hakim, Vice President of the International Christian Union (ICU), the suffering of Christians in Lebanon and Egypt in particular. This reporter asked Mr. Hakim the following questions before the Mumbai terrorist...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Avoiding the Inevitable in GazaPosted By Joseph Puder On November 28, 2012 @ 12:15 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments The Israeli security cabinet also known as “The Nine” recently met to decide on the next course of action to be taken in the Gaza war.  At the same time, a string of foreign officials arrived in Israel, including the Foreign Ministers of France and Germany, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Tony Blair, special representative of the Quartet to the Middle East, as well as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  All of...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - The Mainline Protestant Churches and Israel Posted By Joseph Puder On March 22, 2012 @ 12:01 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | During the upcoming General Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) scheduled for April 25-May 4, 2012 in Tampa, FL, and the 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), June 30-July 7, 2012 in Pittsburgh, PA, anti-Israel actions in the form of petitions and overtures calling for some form of boycott, divestment or sanctions against the Jewish State and those who do business with the state are expected to be brought...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - What a ‘Truce’ Means to HamasPosted By Joseph Puder On December 5, 2012 @ 12:22 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments Disparate reflections on the recently concluded ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which followed eight days of fighting, were revealed in a November 23, 2012 New York Times report: “Palestinians erupted in triumphant celebrations here on Thursday, vowing new unity among rival factions and a renewed commitment to the tactic of resistance, while Israel’s leaders sought to soberly sell the achievements of their latest military operation to a domestic audience long...