Free Republic

The U.S. relationship with Qatar was a function of Washington’s post-9/11 delirium. Yesterday’s strike was about finally undoing it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says that Tuesday’s attack on Hamas leadership in Qatar “was a wholly independent Israeli operation.” That’s only partly true, though—because there’s no way Israeli Air Force jets fired missiles at Qatar, home of the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East, without a green light from the White House. President Donald Trump says he feels “very badly” about the location of the attack. But if he didn’t want to give the impression that Israel...

Tom Brady is coming out of retirement ... sort of. The Las Vegas Raiders minority owner and seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback announced Monday that he is teamed up with Fanatics, Fox Sports and OBB Media for The Fanatics Flag Football Classic. Brady will play in a first-of-its-kind round-robin tournament featuring three teams of current and former NFL players. The tournament will take place March 21, 2026, at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Tom Brady appears at a news conference with Turki Al-Sheikh, a Saudi Arabian sports promoter and chairman of the General Entertainment Authority, to announce he will...

A dam has broken and our media are desperate to avert our eyes from it.  I am stunned at the succession of positive developments that has followed the announcement almost a month ago that the United Arab Emirates is normalizing relations with Israel. Momentum is accelerating toward the long dreamed-of goal of peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. I have to pinch myself after writing such a thing to remind myself that decade after decade of strenuous effort has failed, frustrating presidents of both parties and stymieing plan after plan put forth by diplomats and NGOs. Yet, improbable...

September 12, 2025 – WWE®, part of TKO Group Holdings (NYSE: TKO), in partnership with The General Entertainment Authority (GEA), on behalf of HE Turki Alalshikh, today announced that Riyadh Season will host WrestleMania LIII in 2027 in Riyadh, marking the first time that the cultural phenomenon will be staged outside of North America. In a statement, His Excellence Turki Alalshikh said: “WrestleMania is already the biggest date on the wrestling calendar and this announcement marks a significant moment in our partnership with WWE. We deeply respect the legacy of WrestleMania and the global prestige it holds among wrestling fans...

Summary. While Israel has historically been regarded as a close ally of the United States—sharing democratic values, intelligence cooperation, and defense partnerships—certain individuals of Arab "Palestinian" origin or ideological affiliation have been involved in acts of violence against Americans. This article provides a factual overview of documented incidents that have shaped this complex relationship. 1. Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (1968)Background: Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian IslamoChristian born in Jerusalem in 1944, moved with his family to the United States in 1956.[1]Defense : The ex Grand Mufti of Jerusalem dispatched two Arab lawyers to defend Sirhan....

Federal judge allows case to move forward based on evidence linking Saudi officials to hijackers. Family members of 9/11 victims celebrated on Wednesday a court victory they said brings them one step closer to holding Saudi Arabia accountable for its alleged role in the 2001 terrorist attacks. Brett Eagleson, whose father, John, was killed in the attacks, said during a press conference in New York City the judge’s "historic, landmark decision," issued two weeks ago, to move forward with a long-running lawsuit against the Saudi Arabian government was based on "indefensible evidence." "There were at least 13 Saudi government officials...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: * Fossilized footprints in Saudi Arabia show human traffic on the cusp of a subsequent ice age. * Like carbon dating, scientists use isotopes and context clues to calculate the approximate age of fossils. * These human prints were surrounded by animals but not hunted animals, indicating humans were just thirsty. ======================================================================== A uniquely preserved prehistoric mudhole could hold the oldest-ever human footprints on the Arabian Peninsula, scientists say. The seven footprints, found amidst a clutter of hundreds of prehistoric animal prints, are estimated to be 115,000 years old. Many fossil...

Israeli defense minister Israel Katz issued an ultimatum to Hamas: surrender, release all hostages, and disarm, or see Gaza City — the group’s last stronghold — destroyed. Katz’s statement came in apparently response to a statement by Hamas that it would be willing to release all of the hostages in return for Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — which would leave the group armed and in charge, ready to prepare for war again. The Times of Israel reported: “Defense Minister Israel Katz warns that Hamas will soon face a stark choice: either accept Israel’s conditions to end the war — including...

As the anniversary of September 11 approaches, a lawsuit filed by the families of the victims of the Islamic terrorist attacks against the Saudis has been granted permission to move forward. Saudi Arabia along with Qatar and Iran were the three Islamic terrorist states seen as most complicit in September 11. One of the big missing pieces of the puzzle is the complicity of the FBI in covering up the role of Saudi Arabia. During the trial, a video emerged that the FBI had spent a lot of time hiding of Omar Al-Bayoumi, a Saudi agent, filming key landmarks in...

In the Muslim Middle East, plotting revenge is a way of life, so it is not surprising that the Islamic Republic of Iran is seeking to avenge the humiliating defeat inflicted by the United States and Israel this past June. Although Israel is the main focus of Iran’s revenge, the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are also targets for the ayatollahs. With Hezb’allah demobilized as the executive arm of Iran, and Assad’s Syrian territory is no longer available to transport arms to Hezb’allah, the entire Shiite crescent has been disrupted and is now close to elimination. Only...

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami came to New York City on Nov. 8 to attend a U.N. summit as U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies explored new information tying his regime's intelligence services to Sept. 11 and to previous anti-American terrorist attacks, Insight has learned.The information is coming from a variety of sources and shows a clear pattern of operational contacts between the Iranian government and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization. These contacts include joint planning of terrorist operations, military training of bin Laden operatives inside Iran and by Iranian personnel in Syria and Lebanon, financial assistance to clandestine terrorist and surveillance ...

US President Donald Trump on Monday claimed that the Gaza war will reach a “conclusive ending” in the next two or three weeks, saying that there was a serious “diplomatic push” underway to end the nearly two-year conflict. “I think within the next two to three weeks, you’re going to have pretty good, conclusive — a conclusive ending,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. What Trump based his prediction on was unclear, given that Israel has indicated it is not interested in the phased ceasefire proposal that Hamas agreed to last week. Rather, the Israeli government has instead been...

The Saudi Al-Hadath news channel reports: "Iran sent messages to Hezbollah last night, stating that it will start channeling additional funds to the organization through various countries around the world, as well as transferring weapons and means of warfare to Lebanon – with the aim of effectively taking control of all parts of the country and establishing a new coalition in Lebanon where Hezbollah is the sovereign."

Netanyahu claims Hamas is refusing to "lay down its arms" so Israel has "no choice but to finish the job". "Given Hamas's refusal to lay down its arms, Israel has no choice but to finish the job and complete the defeat of Hamas," he says. The Israeli prime minister claims there are "two remaining strongholds" in Gaza, that he intends to "dismantle". Netanyahu used the map below to illustrate where he says they are - the central camps, and Gaza City. "We have about 70 to 75% of Gaza under Israeli control, military control," Netanyahu says. He adds: "Last Thursday,...

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Sunday that he would ask Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to propose “immediate operational steps” to collapse the Palestinian Authority. “I will appeal to the prime minister to bring to the upcoming Cabinet meeting immediate operational steps to bring down the Palestinian Authority,” the minister wrote on X. “This should be the response to terrorist Abu Mazen’s fantasies about a ‘Palestinian state’—the crushing of the terrorist authority he heads,” Ben-Gvir added, using P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas’s kunya, or Arabic nickname. Ben-Gvir was responding to a report by London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed claiming that Abbas...

While the world pushes false claims of Gaza starvation, the truth is far more disturbing—and far more ignored. In this critical episode of MidEast & Beyond, Amir Tsarfati and Pastor Barry Stagner unpack breaking developments across Israel’s war fronts: the end of Operation Gideon’s Chariots, the possible complete siege of Gaza City, Hezbollah’s weakening grip on Lebanon, the looming Israeli operation in Yemen, and the manufactured famine narrative exploited by global media. From fake humanitarian photo ops to spiritual deception on a worldwide scale, this is a wake-up call to the Church and the world.

Taiwan has a “far more robust” claim to statehood than Palestine does, former British prime minister Boris Johnson said during a conference in Taipei, Taiwan, according to a Tuesday report by British outlet The Telegraph…. “Never in the wildest dreams of former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, can he have believed – when he and his colleagues instigated the horror of October 7, 2023 – that only 22 months later the United Kingdom itself would be so craven and pathetic as to fall for Hamas propaganda and to turn against Israel,” Johnson wrote in his column in the UK outlet Daily...

Columbia University agitator and terror fanboy Mahmoud Khalil just let the truth slip: The “pro-Palestine” movement believes Hamas was justified and right to commit the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, to forestall a “very imminent” Saudi-Israeli peace deal. SNIP The savage Oct. 7 attacks, Khalil told The New York Times’ Ezra Klein, were just a “desperate attempt” to “break the cycle.” What “cycle”? The one where Israel was making peace with Arab states. But, whined Khalil, Israel and Saudi Arabia were about to normalize relations “as if Palestinians are not part of the equation,” and “unfortunately . . . we couldn’t...

The move to develop the Amu Darya field aligns with the Taliban’s goal of self-sufficiency, but can the cash-strapped regime go it alone?In late July, Afghanistan’s Taliban-run government decided to pursue unilateral development of the Amu Darya oil field, at least for the time being. It seems unlikely the cash-strapped regime will be able to maximize the potential of the oil field without foreign investment, but it will still be able to collect millions of dollars in revenue by going it alone. The move aligns with the Taliban’s oft stated goal of self-sufficiency. However, international investors may be troubled by...

The world’s Arab countries for the first time have joined unanimously in the call for Hamas to lay down its weapons, release all hostages and end its rule of the Gaza Strip, conditions that they said could help the establishment of a Palestinian state. The surprise declaration, endorsed on Tuesday by the 22 member nations of the Arab League, also condemned Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, which set off the devastating war in Gaza. The statement came at a United Nations conference in New York on a two-state solution to end the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. “In...