Free Republic

Israeli tanks attacked three Islamic Jihad military posts in the Gaza Strip Tuesday afternoon. An IDF spokesperson stated: "A short while ago, IDF tanks targeted three PIJ military posts in the Gaza Strip." The Israeli Air Force has also bombed numerous Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza in response to the firing of dozens of rockets by the terrorist organization. "IDF fighter jets and aircraft recently struck a number of PIJ terror targets in the Gaza Strip. Among the sites struck were a training compound and underground weapons manufacturing and storage sites," the IDF announced Tuesday in a statement. "The IDF...

There is plenty of corruption in American politics to blow whistles at. ...We are encircled by hypocrisy and mendacity. The despicable deceit, the false posturing, the public lying for personal gain. Is Nancy Pelosi really motivated by a desire to protect our nation — or by a never-satiated need for holding on to personal power at whatever cost may be imposed on all of us? Is Congress’s primary role really to conduct non-stop all-consuming investigations of our duly elected government leaders, paralyzing their agencies and executive operations while abandoning all legislative responsibilities to the Obama Judges who predominate in the...

It's no secret in Hong Kong that I was with my boss (Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily) and a few others recently walking the halls of government in Washington D.C. Saw Speaker Pelosi and other leaders in the House and Senate. Visited the State Department. Met some folks from administration, the think tanks, and of course always see the very switched on human rights groups. This week I shot down to D.C. and saw a few folks in a follow-up. All staffs and officials. Working level folks have best info. Both trips to D.C. were in regard to...

<p>ANKARA - A U.S. national who is a member of the Islamic State group has been deported home, a Turkish official said Monday, as Ankara began repatriating captured foreign IS fighters.</p> <p>Turkish Interior Ministry spokesman Ismail Catakli told Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency that a German and a Danish national would also be deported later on Monday while seven German nationals would be returned on Nov. 14.</p>

I returned to the U.S. from Lebanon less than one month before the October protests began in Beirut and started spreading throughout its cities and towns, shaking the foundations of a regime that spent 30 years mired in corruption and backing Hezb’allah. During my field trip to my ancestral land, mandated by the American Mideast Coalition for Democracy (AMCD), I met with students, politicians, journalists, former military, religious leaders and civil society activists. I also met with ordinary people in different places. The three major issues of discontent among all people I met were: Frustration with the economic and financial situation,...

The third-ranking House Republican is calling for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's security men to be denied entry to the United States — or expelled — for beating U.S. citizens after his last visit to the White House. Fifteen of Erdoğan's guards were criminally charged for attacking Americans in Washington in May 2017. The guards were allowed to flee, but two Turkish-American collaborators were sentenced to one year in prison. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, chairwoman of the House Republican Caucus, wrote Monday to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that those involved in 2017 attacks should be barred from returning this...

Iran has discovered a new oil field in the country’s south with over 50 billion barrels of crude, its president said Sunday, a find that could boost the country’s proven reserves by a third as it struggles to sell energy abroad over U.S. sanctions. The announcement by Hassan Rouhani comes as Iran faces crushing American sanctions after the U.S. pulled out of its nuclear deal with world powers last year. Rouhani made the announcement in a speech in the desert city of Yazd. He said the field was located in Iran’s southern Khuzestan province, home to its crucial oil industry....

With the launching of the New York Times’ “1619 Project,� the paper of record seeks to reframe American history.  Formerly we had foolishly assumed the birth of the nation to be July 4, 1776, with the writing of the Declaration of Independence.  But no, the paper of record has another date in mind.  It turns out to be 1619, with the importing of the first African slaves to America.  That moment, the Times believes, more accurately depicts the founding of the nation and its underlying precepts.  We now learn that our Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights,...

BEIRUT -- Turkey captured the elder sister of the slain leader of the Islamic State group in northwestern Syria on Monday, according to a senior Turkish official, who called the arrest an intelligence "gold mine." Little is known about the sister of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The Turkish official said the 65-year-old known as Rasmiya Awad is suspected of being affiliated with the extremist group. He did not elaborate. Awad was captured in a raid Monday evening on a trailer container she was living in with her family near the town of Azaz in Aleppo province. The area is part of...

Erdogan Extols Koranic Harshness Toward Non-Muslims, Seeks Their Koranic Conquest NOV 3, 2019 2:00 PM BY ANDREW BOSTOM Notwithstanding any limited “support” Turkey may (or may not) have provided the successful U.S. raid this weekend, which liquidated ISIS’s al-Baghdadi, Turkish President Erdogan made some revealing, indeed pathognomonic remarks, during last Friday’s (10/25/19) prayers in Istanbul’s Great Camlica Mosque. A Turkish writer in exile who is a very fluent, gifted Turkish-to-English translator, translated (below) the triumphal report by Yeni Akit, an outlet enamored of the Turkish President and his traditionalist Islamic political party, the AKP. On October 25, Turkey’s president Recep...

Russia’s advanced S-400 air defense batteries at the Khmeimim Air Base in Syria have been quietly “deactivated,” according to Russian military sources and publications. This has not been officially confirmed or denied. One source said that today, not a single S-400 is operational anywhere in Syria. Three months ago, DEBKAfile’s military sources cited the Syrian military as reporting that the Russian S-400s posted outside the important Syrian military compound at Masyaf in the west had been “deactivated” indicating the shutdown of their radar systems. Our sources note that, although Russian S-300 and S-400 air defense systems have been deployed in...

After eight years of war, the Syrian opposition announced that all armed groups united under the command of the Syrian Interim Government’s Defense Ministry and joined forces under the banner of the National Army. For the first time, the Syrian Interim Government formed by the Syrian National Coalition has managed take the armed opposition under its command. With this step, the political opposition for the first time may be able to proclaim itself the representative of the entire Syrian opposition.

At the joint press conference (Video embedded below), Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "We are now the largest bilateral donors in the Palestinian territories." According to Germany's Bild news, the federal government announced that in 2018 about 166.2 million euros flowed to the Palestinians. In addition, Germany transferred about 173.2 million euros to UNRWA, a UN agency for Palestinian Muslims. Throughout her years as Chancellor, Angela Merkel gave the Palestinian Authority more than half a billion dollars, not including foreign aid to UNRWA. The Palestinian Authority openly pays salaries to every terrorist who murdered Jews as an act of jihad. In...

The Fatah movement headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas emphasizes its continued adherence to the "national struggle" as a means to counter all the "colonialist" plans which they believe seek to undermine the existence of the "Palestinian people" and their cause. Such "colonialist" plans range from the Balfour Declaration to US President Donald Trump's peace plan. On the occasion of the approaching 102nd anniversary of the statement by former British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour in support of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people, the Fatah movement called the Balfour Declaration a "historic crime" against humanity...

<p>TAL ABYAD, Syria — A car bomb killed at least 13 people in a Turkish-held border town in northeast Syria Saturday, as thousands of Kurds in the wider region protested against “Turkish occupation.”</p> <p>The bombing ripped through Tal Abyad, one of several once Kurdish-controlled towns seized by Turkey last month in a deadly cross-border offensive.</p>

Russia acquiesced to Israeli requests and canceled certain arms sales to regimes that are antagonistic toward Israel, an adviser to the prime minister said this week, according to the Ynet news site. In return, he said, Israel canceled arms sales that irked the Russians, including to Ukraine.

Following Turkey and America’s agreement on a “permanent ceasefire� in Syria, President Trump lifted the sanctions placed on Turkish officials. The sanctions were put in place when Turkish forces were plunging into Syrian territory held by the Kurds, who were U.S. partners in the fight against ISIS. The new ceasefire agreement would set up a buffer zone on the Syria-Turkey border that Kurdish forces couldn’t occupy.The ceasefire marks a stark turn of events from where things stood earlier this month, when the entire Washington political and media establishment was lambasting Trump for daring to pull troops out of northern Syria.Yet at...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday that his government’s ultimate goal was to restore state authority over Kurdish controlled areas in northeast Syria after an abrupt U.S. troop withdrawal but he expected it to happen gradually. In a state television interview Assad also said that a deal between Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin to drive out the Kurdish-led YPG militia from a 30 km (19 mile) “safe zone” along the border was a “positive” step that would help Damascus achieve its goal. “It might not achieve everything ... it paves the road...

"During an interview on the Turkey-based MB-affiliated Channel 9 TV, Libyan researcher Dr. Ali Al-Siba’i said that the Jihad that terrifies the world today was sanctioned by shari’a law in order to establish justice, and that humanity was relieved of oppression, exploitation, and plundering when Islam “spread its wings throughout the world.” He said that the Europeans and the Americans inherited their imperialist-colonialist mentality from the Romans, and that they can only be stopped by Muslims through the use of offensive Jihad. He also said: “Look who [Allah] has sent to rule over us – the Jews, whom the Quran...

In Iraq, demonstrators are being shot dead in the streets. In Lebanon, protesters have paralysed the country and seem set to bring down the government of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. In recent weeks the Egyptian security forces crushed attempts to protest against the police state of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi... A rough approximation is that 60% of the region's population is under the age of 30. A young population can be a great asset to a country. But only if the economy, the educational system and the institutions of the state are functioning well enough to accommodate their needs, and...