Free Republic

Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has signed a deal to give an Israeli government post to an openly homophobic ultra-nationalist party leader. It is the latest development set to give far-right parties unprecedented power within Israel's ruling coalition. Avi Maoz will be a deputy minister and run a "Jewish identity" authority. He heads Noam, a religious-nationalist, anti-Arab and anti-LGBTQ party that argues for a strict interpretation of Jewish religious laws in Israel. The agreement has added to a growing sense of alarm over the composition of Mr Netanyahu's likely government. Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid has described it as "full-on crazy",...

Four students (out of the 35 currently in Israel) live at the Jerusalem Makuya Center, along with its new director Asher Seito Kimura, his wife Tzofiya and their children. Each Makuya member has a Hebrew name, taken, or given to him or her upon arrival in Israel. They chat easily about their faith, which is based heavily on the Old Testament and doesn't contain even a hint of proselytism. But none of the Makuya will discuss politics. They will talk with feeling, however, about their position on Israel. Every Makuya, they say proudly, identifies with -- and wholeheartedly supports --...

Yesterday, it was Defense Secretary Robert Gates visiting Israel to twist arms and convince the Jewish State to leave herself vulnerable to nuclear attack from Iran. Today's visitor is former Senator Michell, the man who investigated steroid use in baseball and a minor player in the northern Ireland dispute who got all of the credit. The President Sent Mitchell to for a little Israeli arm-twisting about Jerusalem and the settlements. Following their meeting, Mitchell told reporters that a "comprehensive peace in the Middle East would include peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as peace between Israel and Lebanon,...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The State Department says the United States will seek election to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Obama administration's latest reversal of President George W. Bush's foreign policies. The department says the Obama administration wants to participate in the council's activities as part of a new era of U.S. engagement with the world.

US President Barack Obama faced a host of personnel problems this week, as two top appointees bowed out because of unpaid income taxes and another pick distressed some in the Jewish community. Slideshow: Pictures of the week Samantha Power, a Harvard University genocide expert and former Obama campaign adviser, has been appointed to the the National Security Council's multilateral institutions office. She has been criticized in the past for making statements critical of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. In one clip making the rounds courtesy of YouTube, Power accuses Israel of "major human rights abuses," though she distinguishes...

There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, U.N. investigator Richard Falk said on Thursday. The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence that Israel's actions in Gaza violated international humanitarian law required an independent investigation into whether they amounted to...

President Obama placed the Middle East at the forefront of his first hours in office yesterday as he sought to make good on his promise of “ushering in a new era of peace”. In a flurry of telephone calls from the Oval Office, he reached out to leaders in the region and vowed to engage immediately in pursuit of a permanent Arab-Israeli settlement. The spokesman for President Abbas revealed that Mr Obama had told the Palestinian leader that their conversation was his first with a foreign statesman since taking office. Mr Obama also spoke to President Mubarak of Egypt, Ehud...

The editors of Time Magazine make a big show of how they demand a separation of Advertising interests and Editorial as not to have any hint of impropriety. One wonders why they don't make the same separation with major investors. Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal who owns a big chunk of News Corp, also owns a big chunk of Time Magazine's parent company Time Warner. This partly explains the Middle East coverage provided by the Magazine and its sister company, CNN. The cover story of latest issue of Time Magazine, "Why Israel Can't Win" seems almost like a cheer leading section...

Since the beginning of the war with Hamas, human rights organizations have accused Israel of "genocide," "willful killings," "targeting civilians" and "grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions." Taken at face value, these statements appear to describe flagrant violations of international law and horrific abuses of human rights. Yet, upon closer inspection, these condemnations must be seen as part of a wider campaign to promote the Palestinian cause. The exploitation of international legal rhetoric has become a major weapon in the political war to delegitmize Israeli antiterror operations. Under this strategy, crystallized at the NGO Forum of the UN's 2001 Durban...

UNITED NATIONS - The Palestinian foreign minister says Israel and Hamas responded to the Security Council's call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza with "total disrespect" and he urged the U.N.'s most powerful body to enforce its demand. "We cannot really wait until Israel will complete its mission while it really continues killing Palestinians, not on a daily basis but on an hourly basis," Riad Malki told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. Malki is foreign minister for the Palestinian Authority, which was driven out of Gaza by rival Hamas in 2007. If the Security Council doesn't react in...

An article in today’s New York Times whines interminably about Israel’s ban on foreign journalists entering Gaza. But why should the Jewish state fight two enemies at once — Hamas and The Times? Israel is engaged in a war with cold-blooded killers. In such circumstances, who decided that journalists have a right to run around a war zone and interfere with combat operations? If a reporter for The Times is accidentally killed in an Israeli air strike or ground offensive, imagine the field day the paper would have with that. Daniel Seaman, Director of Israel’s Government Press Office — who’s...

Napoleon Bonaparte once defined a leader as "a dealer in hope." But Americans and Israelis yearning for leadership amid crisis from the incoming American president, who during the 2008 campaign was the great purveyor of hope, have thus far been sorely disappointed. As missiles continue raining down on southern Israel, and the IDF's Gaza campaign enters its second week, only a conspicuous silence has emanated from President-elect Barack Obama's private Hawaii vacation compound. While President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and their spokespeople have unequivocally backed Israel's actions and blamed Hamas for abrogating the cease-fire, Obama has...

Israel's long overdue military response to the daily barrage of Gaza rockets aimed at its citizens has led to the usual round of protest/counter-protest confrontations in the West. Whether it's here in the San Francisco Bay Area or across the United States and Europe, Arab protesters and those on the left who have bought into their false victimhood narrative are enraged. They have directed their hatred and vitriol towards the few pro-Israel counter-protesters who have shown up to counter their monolithic message, and in some cases rioting and violence has ensued. For the most part, the mainstream media continues to...

U.S. Intelligence Official about Israel: "This is just the beginning". U.S. Intelligence official "breaks silence" on Israel situation"Homeland Security 31 December 2008: Northeast Intelligence Network director Doug Hagmann interviewed a highly-placed U.S. intelligence official late yesterday who not only confirmed rumors about escalated and more intensive Israeli military operations against the Muslim terrorists in Gaza, [but] warned of the increasing probability of abandonment of Israel by the U.S. and other Western countries based on what he termed "malicious intelligence.""Remember that term," advised this well-placed intelligence official, "you'll be hearing it again." "This is just the beginning," stated this intelligence official,...

The U.N. Security Council met on Wednesday to discuss the violence in Gaza, with Arab countries pushing for a resolution to demand an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants. Envoys from the 15-nation council began with closed-door consultations but then moved into a formal public meeting. Libya, the only Arab country on the council, was due to present a draft resolution but both Arab and Western diplomats said they doubted any vote would be held on Wednesday and would probably come in the next few days. Earlier in a letter to the council presidency, Egyptian Ambassador Maged Abdelaziz asked...

As hundreds of thousands of people all over the globe are protesting the US-armed and funded Israeli acts of war and Zionist genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza, the slaughter continues with more bombings, siege and a blockade, plus a threatened ground war." So reads a description of the Gaza fighting on the home page of indymedia.org, the Web site of the Independent Media Center, which describes itself as "a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth." It is accompanied by a picture of burned and bleeding children,...

DEARBORN, Dec. 30--In one of the largest demonstrations in Dearborn in recent years, organizers estimated that some 5,000 people formed a human chain along Warren avenue in Dearborn, the heart of the Arab-American community in metropolitan Detroit, to express solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians now under siege in Gaza by the Israeli military. Chanting slogans such as "Free, Free Palestine", the crowd flew Palestinian flags on the street along Warren avenue as well as from automobiles driving up and down the streets surrounding the demonstration. Although most of the demonstrators were of Palestinian and Arab heritage, there were...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip —Saturday began as another ordinary day in Gaza. I was preparing to leave my apartment, on the sixth floor of a 13-story building in the western part of Gaza City, to drive five minutes to my office near the center.

Much of the Mainstream Media coverage of Israel's offensive in Gaza have been littered with the usual stupidity. With typical statements, like "tit for tat," or "cycle of violence." the media has done its best to find a moral equivalence between the Hamas terrorism and Israel's attempts to prevent that terror. Those same newscasts that show all of the destruction in Gaza very rarely showed the Horrors of the Negev Communities such as Sderot. The media even uses noble sounding adjectives for Hamas like DEFIANT. But Israel is described as seeking revenge. Perhaps the worst show of media bias so...

While there may be dark clouds hovering over the boardrooms of companies and financial houses these days, there must have been collective whoops of joy in the world’s newsrooms – and in particular those belonging to network and cable TV news – at the onset of Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza this past week. Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and its neighbours is no longer a news story but an industry complete with a revolving conveyor belt overloaded with ambitious career-minded journalists, dubious Middle East “experts”, clueless peace activists, and patronizing diplomats and envoys who can be counted on...