Free Republic

Israel is rushing to secure its northeastern border after the latest onslaught from Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad drove 120,000 people to flee their homes. A war monitoring group said today that most of the refugees are heading towards the border with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. A senior Israeli minister said refugees gathering at the Golan frontier must be prevented from crossing into Israel.

The socialist congressional candidate whose primary-election upset of a Democratic House leader made national news this week claimed Israel committed a “massacre” of Palestinians in Gaza, despite the admission of Hamas that most of the dead were Hamas operatives. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, wrote in a May 14 tweet that the killing of some 60 Palestinians in “March of Return” protests that day was a “massacre” and that “no state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters,” reported the Jewish News Syndicate. “There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else,” she said. “Democrats can’t...

At least 17 civilians have been killed in an air strike on a basement shelter in south-western Syria, activists say, as warplanes pound rebel-held areas. A monitoring group reported that five children were among those who died when aircraft identified as Russian bombed Musayfira, east of the city of Deraa. Russia is backing an army offensive in the region, which borders Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. More than 90 civilians are said to have been killed since it began 11 days ago. The provinces of Deraa and Quneitra had been relatively calm for almost a year because of a...

A progressive Democrat in New York who called Israel’s killing of violent Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border a “massacre” scored a major upset over incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a contentious party primary. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, defeated Crowley, 56, by a margin of 58-42 percent in Tuesday’s election, toppling a lawmaker who was viewed as the successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ocasio-Cortez belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America and is a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who ran as a Democrat in the 2016 presidential primaries. New...

Four Arab countries are backing Donald Trump’s plan for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, according to an Israeli newspaper, and are willing to sideline the PA’s President Mahmoud Abbas to see it done. According to a report in Israel Hayom, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan told Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law and the man charged with solving the Israel-Palestine issue, and envoy Jason Greenblatt they were behind Washington’s so-called “deal of the century”. Israel Hayom, a daily newspaper owned by billionaires Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, reported that it spoke to officials from...

The U.S. has reportedly suspended aid to the Palestinian Authority amid ongoing Middle East peace talks. I24 News, which is based in Israel, reported Monday that the U.S. froze funding as part of the Taylor Force Act, which requires Palestinian officials to end payments to terrorist groups and take steps to stop those groups’ behavior. The news outlet, citing a White House official and a Senate aide, also reported that certain Palestinian programs have been put on hold because the West Bank and Gaza office of USAID have not received a budget for the coming year. USAID provides funding for...

Over the weekend, Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated the Obama administration’s commitment to taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next fiscal year and announced that the federal government would be increasing its annual total refugee cap from 70,000 to 100,000 by 2017, to accommodate more refugees from war-torn Syria. “This step that I am announcing today, I believe, is in keeping with the best tradition of America as a land of second chances and a beacon of hope,” said Kerry on Sunday during a trip to Germany. Also on Sunday, Hillary Clinton called on the administration to...

“What the regime feared most is happening,” Alinejad tells me. “Tehran had stayed calm as nationwide protests at the beginning of the year engulfed 80 cities. Now an impromptu protest in Tehran by merchants against economic mismanagement has turned into a massive anti-regime event, with chants of death to dictator and death to Palestine.”

Report says plan requires Hamas return soldiers' bodies, missing Israelis in exchange for port's establishment

Actions by the United States, Turkey and Russia could be driving Kurds into the awkward embrace of the Syrian regime.First, Russia gave the green light in January for Turkey's Operation Olive Branch against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin, Syria. (Turkey considers the YPG a terrorist-affiliated group.) Then earlier this month, the United States and Turkey agreed on a plan for the future of Syria's Manbij, a city the YPG controlled until recently. That future doesn't include the YPG, which had helped a US-led coalition's efforts to drive the Islamic State (IS) out of Syria. Given that Syrian President Bashar...

The drama in St. Petersburg, the marriage proposal at the break and the Persian celebration. Yair Kattan heard from the Iranians why they are actually our friends. Video in Hebrew at link.

Syria's Alawite community have been a key source of support for the regime. But even they could turn on him. BEIRUT—Since Syrian regime forces were accused of conducting a chemical-weapons attack on Saturday on Douma, the largest rebel town near Damascus to surrender, the world has waited anxiously for the U.S. response. In the aftermath of the suspected attack, President Donald Trump spoke of imminent retaliation and had tough words for Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, and his patron Russia; he has since hedged to say an attack could come “very soon or not so soon at all!” Still,...

Hamas paid family to claim Gaza baby was killed by Israeli tear gas, says cousin Mahmoud Omar, arrested by Israel for terror-related offenses, tells interrogators his relatives lied: 8-month-old Layla actually died from fatal blood condition that runs in family. A 20-year-old Palestinian indicted Thursday on terror-related charges told Israeli investigators during his interrogation that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar paid his relatives to falsely tell the media that his baby cousin died of tear gas inhalation. The story of baby Layla Ghandour’s death, purportedly from inhaling tear gas fired by Israel at the Gaza border, made headlines around the world...

In the background of the strike stands Iran's attempt to construct a network of friendly forces stretching from Iraq through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. In 2016, pro-western sources in Iraq warned that Iran was building just such a conduit. In December 2017, The New Arab reported that convoys of unmarked vehicle had passed into Syria from Iraq through checkpoints manned by the Hashd al-Shaabi, the mostly Shi'ite militias that are known as Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). These militias play a complex role, forming one of a patchwork of similar groups that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has enlisted to...

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports Hezbollah will not withdraw from western and southwestern borders of Homs with Lebanon as the Russians demanded. Nasrallah: 'the whole world can not remove us from Syria' Hezbollah fighters are still stationed in western and southwestern Homs in Syria, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Thursday, and are refusing to comply with a Russian demand to pull away from the Israeli border. "All that has happened is a media withdrawal," the non-government affiliated organization reported, claiming the Russian forces are deployed in a way that ensures they will not need...

A chief of Turkish intelligence in Germany, Frankfurt Consul General Ilhan Saygili, who had close ties with Turkish-German Chief Inspector removed from duty for working for MİT Döndü Yazgan, was appointed as an ambassador in Switzerland. According to a report the German intelligence prepared on the Turkish-German Chief Inspector Döndü Yazgan, who was recently removed from duty for working for the Turkish intelligence service MİT, Yazgan met with Frankfurt and Mainz consuls general. German intelligence had documented that Yazgan shared intelligence information with Turkey via these consuls. Ilhan Saygılı served as the Frankfurt Consul General between 2008 and 2012 and...

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, when the Welsh magus Glendower boasts, “I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” the sceptic Hotspur retorts, “Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?” For seven decades the West’s foreign policy establishment has been trying to call Middle East peace from depths of endless summits and conferences and agreements with ritualistic chants of “land for peace” and “two-state solution.” But all they’ve managed to produce is war, terrorism,...

Israel will strike against Iranian efforts to entrench itself militarily throughout Syria, and not only along the Syrian-Israeli border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over the weekend. Netanyahu told the weekly cabinet meeting that he spoke with both men and discussed the region, with an emphasis on Syria. The prime minister said he reiterated and made clear the principles guiding Israeli policy toward Syria. “First of all, Iran needs to withdraw from all of Syria,” he said. “Second, we will take action – and are already taking action –...

Elham Ahmed confirmed that we are fully prepared for dialogue and starting direct negotiations with the Syrian regime if the latter is already ready to initiate such a step. Hawar news agency (ANHA) interviewed with the Co-chair of Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), Elham Ahmed about recent events that are taking place, said we are fully prepared to negotiate. Where Elham Ahmed said that the war and military option will not solve the Syrian crisis. "We from the beginning said and still say that we are ready for dialogue and start direct negotiations with the regime." Elham Ahmed said they were...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, announced that he’s expelling Uber from Turkey, a result of pressure from Istanbul's taxi industry. Istanbul taxi drivers, numbering more than 17,000, claimed Uber was providing an illegal service and that it needs to be banned. Ever since Uber began its service in Turkey in 2014, it's caused dissension among the country's taxi drivers, not unlike what's happening elsewhere. In a speech on Friday, Erdogan said, “This thing called Uber emerged. That business is finished. That does not exist anymore. We have our taxi system.... Where does this come from? It is used...