Free Republic

Four House Democrats have written to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling on the United States to cut assistance to Israel should it proceed to apply sovereignty over Judea and Samaria, JTA reported on Monday. The letter was initiated by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Betty McCollum of Minnesota. The letter to Pompeo is circulating among Democrats in a bid to add signatures. “Should the Israeli government move forward with the planned annexation with this administration’s acquiescence, we will work to ensure non-recognition as well as pursue conditions on...

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera, aka Gerry Rivers before being Hispanic was fashionable, is out peddling his memoir, titled The Geraldo Show. On the Fox News program The Five, he was asked if he regrets any news story he reported, and his answer was shocking, particularly in the light of the border storming currently underway in Gaza. Aaron Klein at Breitbart reports his comments: I regret in 2002 backing down from backing the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel. The Second Intifada. Because I saw with my own eyes how. And I know how this is going to resonate very...

As a massive hunger strike among Palestinian prisoners in Israel reached its fourth day, right-wing Israeli activists held a barbecue outside the Ofer Prison in an attempt to break their willpower. Thursday’s event was organized by the National Union political party youth group, which hoped that the smell of the food would entice the 1,187 hunger strikers to eat. The strike was launched by 57-year-old imprisoned Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five consecutive life sentences for murder. His strike was announced in a controversial op-ed for the New York Times, where he accused Israel of torture. “Having spent...

Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders has had a long and apparently often critical relationship with Israel. One mystery that surrounded the 74-year-old senator’s past links to the Jewish state was the identity of the kibbutz on which he spent several months in 1963 as a volunteer. On Thursday, veteran Israeli journalist Yossi Melman announced that the Democratic hopeful had named it in an interview with him more than 25 years ago. In 1990, on the eve of his election to the US House of Representatives as a socialist, Sanders named the kibbutz where he volunteered as Sha’ar HaAmakim, a...

The Obama administration is reportedly mulling an intervention next week in a civil lawsuit involving the Palestinian leadership and American victims of Palestinian terror. Guess which party the administration is siding with? The lawsuit was filed over a series of bombings and shootings in or around Jerusalem that killed dozens of U.S. citizens during the second Palestinian intifada a decade ago. The case was delayed for years while Palestinian lawyers tried to challenge the American court’s jurisdiction, but last February the families won a $218.5 million judgment after a seven-week trial in a Manhattan federal court. The jury found that...

Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs defends Israel's investigative processes The head of a Canadian Jewish advocacy group is slamming the United Nations over its "knee-jerk" reaction to a video that human rights groups claim shows two unarmed Palestinian teenagers being shot by Israeli soldiers. "Frankly, Israel really doesn't need to take instructions from the UN about the proper followup to incidents involving fatalities," Shimon Fogel, head of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, told CBC News. "There's a long established process by which every such incident is thoroughly investigated by an arm's length body within the national policing...

American officials directly involved in the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace process over the last nine months gave a leading Israeli columnist a withering assessment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the negotiations, indicated that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has completely given up on the prospect of a negotiated solution, and warned Israel that the Palestinians will achieve statehood come what may — either via international organizations or through violence. Speaking on condition of anonymity to Nahum Barnea, a prominent columnist from Israel’s best-selling daily Yedioth Aharonoth, the officials highlighted Netanyahu’s ongoing settlement construction as the issue “largely to blame”...

You can't make this stuff up. Israel has set up a field hospital for wounded Syrians on the Golan Heights, it provides regular, critical medical care to the 'Palestinians' regardless of their ability to pay, and it provides medical care that is otherwise unavailable to them to persons throughout the Arab world. And the response? The World Health Organization has condemned Israel for the medical care it provides to Syrians and 'Palestinians As thousands of people in large swathes of the planet, including war-torn Syria, are dying daily for lack of adequate medical care, the one geographic area whose “health...

One Nation For New Holocaust, God willing. check this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETt2FHdy8Kc&feature=player_embedded#at=55

Last Friday, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, did something revolutionary. He told the truth about the Palestinians. In an interview with The Jewish Channel, Gingrich said that the Palestinians are an “invented” people, “who are in fact Arabs.” His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the “Palestinian people” was artificially carved out of the Arab population of “Greater Syria.” “Greater Syria” included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted,...

In an interview on Saturday, Newt Gingrich put some reality into the surreal discussion of the Middle East conflict and (as he put it) the delusional nature of the current “peace process.” The Palestinians are indeed an “invented people” — invented by the Nasser dictatorship and KGB by the way — and the Hitlerian lie that Israel occupies one square inch of “Arab” let alone “Palestinian” land needs to be buried for any clarity on what the conflict is about, let alone progress towards peace. Of course there is no peace in the Middle East and there can be no...

UNESCO member states have voted overwhelmingly in favour of Palestinian membership of the UN's cultural agency, handing Palestinian leaders a symbolic victory ahead of a vote on their bid to join the UN General Assembly in New York. AP – The U.N. cultural agency has admitted Palestine as a full member in a highly divisive bid that opponents say could harm renewed peace efforts. U.S. lawmakers had threatened to withhold some $80 million in funding to UNESCO if it approved Palestinian membership. Huge cheers went up in UNESCO after delegates voted to approve the membership Monday. One shouted "Long Live...

Jerusalem Arabs attack Jews for taking wrong turn Three young Israelis and a visiting Australian friend of theirs nearly lost their lives this week after accidentally entering an Arab neighborhood no the outskirts of Jerusalem, where the local residents felt compelled to violently attack the wayward Jews. The three Israelis explained to Israel’s Ynet news portal that they are from the Tel Aviv area, and don’t know Jerusalem very well. So, after picking up their foreign friend from the Hebrew University campus on Mount Scopus, they made a wrong turn on their way downtown. Instead, they ended up in the...

Atlanta - The State Department confirmed today that as many as 1,350 Iraqi Palestinians – once the well-treated guests of Saddam Hussein and now at outs with much of Iraqi society – will be resettled in the US, mostly in southern California, starting this fall. It will be the largest-ever resettlement of Palestinian refugees into the US – and welcome news to the Palestinians who fled to Iraq after 1948 but who have had a tough time since Mr. Hussein was deposed in 2003. Targeted by Iraqi Shiites, the mostly-Sunni Palestinians have spent recent years in one of the region's...

“That whole philosophy of persistence,” he said, “is one that I’m going to be emphasizing again and again in the months and years to come as long as I’m in this office. I’m a big believer in persistence.” Persistence! Persistence! Without our persistence, we’d be as shaky as...as...as a lunatic on the roof. Again we have a piece process. Again negotiate. Again lean on the Israelis, different outcome to await. Persistence! And who must build the bombs, and strap them on his waist, then go blow up a disco, where girls all act unchaste? The Palis! The Palis! Persistence! And...

Nine top Fatah gunmen from Nablus on Tuesday surrendered their weapons to the Palestinian Authority security forces out of fear of being targeted by Israel. The move was also made in the wake of growing discontent in the city over the gunmen's continued activities in the city - the main reason behind repeated IDF operations there. The decision followed a report in Sunday's The Jerusalem Post, which appears to have embarrassed the PA. According to the report, many Fatah gunmen were continuing to operate freely in the city despite the PA's claim that Fatah's armed wing, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades,...

UNITED NATIONS — As an American-hosted Middle East summit approaches, Palestinian Arabs are hardening their positions: An aide to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, said yesterday that the Palestinians will demand sole Arab control over Judaism's holiest site in Jerusalem, the Western Wall. Mr. Abbas's adviser on religious affairs, Adnan al-Husseini, made the new demand in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, sparking an outcry from many Israeli politicians who complained that recent reports about the Olmert government's proposal to transfer Arab-dominated neighborhoods in Jerusalem to the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state have led to further Arab demands....

Gaza on brink of civil war as cleric is killed By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem Last Updated: 2:00am GMT 06/01/2007 An unarmed Muslim cleric was shot dead as he drove home from leading prayers yesterday, the latest victim of the Gaza Strip violence that is threatening to spiral into all-out civil war. The funeral of Col Ghayeb saw a huge display of Fatah firepower on the streets of Gaza City Witnesses said Adel Nassar, 50, was murdered because, during his sermon, he dared criticise the killers of a Fatah security chief and seven of his bodyguards. That attack, on Thursday,...

See photos from Bethlehem today at http://flickr.com/photos/jerusalemdiaries/ From: Judy Lash Balint, Jerusalem Every Christmas I make the 12-minute drive from my Jerusalem home to Bethlehem for a reality check on the beleaguered little town five miles away. This year, contrary to the customary gloomy reports from the international media, things were bustling in Bethlehem. Bright blue cloudless skies and comfortable temperatures help make things more pleasant than in previous years when a cold, grey drizzle dampened spirits. Driving up to the Rachel's Passage checkpoint in my car with Israeli plates, a quick check of my press credentials is all that's...

The open wound of Gush Katif By Nadav Shragai Last Friday when Makor Rishon's photographer, Miri Tzahi, saw the photo of First Lieutenant Amihai Merhavia, who was killed in the battle of Bint Jbail, it jogged something in her journalist's memory. She thought she had seen this face before. Tzahi, who is about publish the album, "Katif - Nine days in Av," featuring hundreds of photos of the "days of the expulsion," searched through her computer archive and found a series of photos from around four years ago, showing Merhavia during the violent evacuation of Havat Gilad (Gilad Farm) in...