Free Republic

As the sun sets on a Friday evening, preparations for Shabbat are in full swing in South Brooklyn... Inside one of the few grocery stores still open, a man who left Damascus in the 1990s greets one of his regular customers in Syrian Arabic as a Hebrew song plays in the background. The pair part ways with a “Shabbat Shalom.” These Brooklyn streets—home to the largest Syrian Jewish community outside of Israel, with an estimated 75,000 members—echo the spirit of the once-bustling centers of Jewish life in Damascus and Aleppo. Today, Syria’s historic Jewish quarters are a dimmer scene. Only...

There is only one nation on Earth that must continually argue for its right to exist, even when the very survival of its people is threatened by avowedly genocidal enemies. Many readers and podcast listeners have been dismayed by my enduring support for Israel and now urge me to debate someone—really, anyone—drawn from a growing cast of scholars, grifters, and moral lunatics who have made that beleaguered country their professional or psychiatric obsession. I’ve explained my position on Israel across several podcasts and in my public talks, but it might help to summarize it here. First, my general attitude: I’m...

Alpha polemicist Sam Harris is an enthusiastic and persuasive debater, but in his June 5 substack post, reproduced in the Free Press, titled, "Why it's futile to debate Israel's enemies," he informed his readers that he would no longer debate antizionists. Harris has concluded that it is pointless to debate with people who take a dimmer view of those who shoot rabid dogs than they do of the rabid dogs themselves. As he explained, "if my intransigence on these matters mystifies you, it might help to understand that, for whatever reason, I think militant Islam is ten times worse than...

The US Navy is sending three warships to the eastern Mediterranean Sea in a show of strength during a period of tensions with Syria and political uncertainty in Lebanon...... Another military officer, speaking on condition of anonymity because full details about the ship movements are not yet public, said the USS Cole is headed for patrol in the eastern Mediterranean and that the USS Nassau, an amphibious warship, would be joining it shortly. The officer said a third ship would go later, but he did not identify it by name.

KAN Israel News, citing an Iranian-linked news network, reports that $3 billion was transferred from Abu Dhabi to Tehran aboard a private Boeing 737. According to the report, Iran agreed to halt direct attacks on Israel after receiving a U.S. message, delivered through Qatar, in from further strikes in Lebanon. The funds were reportedly flown to Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport aboard UAE Royal Jet aircraft A6-RJF, which was tracked traveling from Abu Dhabi to Iran. At this stage, the flight itself was genuine (it happened during Irans airspace closure) and the presence of a UAE delegation in Tehran has been reported...

April 20 — At least three senior United Nations officials are suspected of taking multi-million dollar bribes from the Saddam Hussein regime, U.S. and European intelligence sources tell ABCNEWS. One year after his fall, U.S. officials say they have evidence, some in cash, that Saddam diverted to his personal bank accounts approximately $5 billion from the United Nations Oil-for-Food program. In what has been described as the largest humanitarian aid effort ever undertaken, the U.N. Oil-for-Food program began in 1996 to help Iraqis who were suffering under sanctions imposed following the first Gulf War. The program allowed Iraq to sell...

Senator: At Least One Foreign Country Assisted the 9/11 Terrorists Senator Graham knows where the bodies are buried>>> On 11 December 2002, the Senate and House Intelligence Committees released portions of their joint report on intelligence failures regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks. The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, on PBS, reported on the release that day. After asking her guests a bunch of predictable questions, and receiving predictable answers, guest host Gwen Ifill asked Senator Bob Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a good question and got an amazing answer. GWEN IFILL: Senator Graham, are there elements...

The ongoing tensions between Turkey and Israel reached another high point on Sunday, after Israeli ministers reacted strongly to the suggestion of Turkey’s interior minister that Jerusalem could one day be reconquered by the successor state to the Ottoman Empire.Speaking at a party convention, Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi said that “just as we witnessed the liberation of Damascus, Aleppo, and Karabakh, God willing, one day we will also witness the liberation of Jerusalem.”This is a reference to the defeat of the Assad regime at the hands of the Islamist alliance led by the now-defunct terror group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),...

ALBAWABA- Unconfirmed reports circulating on social media and in several regional media outlets claim that Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed in recent Israeli airstrikes targeting sites in or around Tehran. On Sunday afternoon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out an airstrike allegedly on a Hezbollah command centre in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut, following earlier rocket fire launched into northern Israel by Hezbollah. In response, Iran declared that Israel had “crossed all red lines” in Lebanon and launched multiple waves of ballistic missile strikes targeting Israeli territory late on Sunday, June 7...

The Israeli Air Force has begun striking targets throughout Iran, according to Channel 14.

A trilateral summit convened by the United States in Washington has resulted in a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, following intensive two-day negotiations on Tuesday and Wednesday. A joint statement issued following the second day of talks on Wednesday stated that the accord dictates that the implementation of the truce is directly "contingent on a complete cessation of Hezbollah fire and the evacuation of all Hezbollah operatives from the South Litani Sector". To enforce the peace, Israel and Lebanon agreed to "swiftly advance the creation of pilot zones in which the Lebanese Armed Forces will take exclusive control of...

Perhaps Hezbollah finally got a whiff of utter defeat. Either that, or they just got a reprieve courtesy of Iran. If it's the latter, though, they didn't get much. Donald Trump announced this afternoon that Hezbollah has had enough in Lebanon. The group had refused to comply with the ceasefire between Israel and the civilian government in Beirut, continuing to volley missiles at civilian targets. The IDF has captured strategic points in the sub-Litani region and had warned residents in Hezbollah-controlled areas of the capital to evacuate. That's when Hezbollah sued for peace, and Trump intervened:I had a very productive...

When Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed in December 2024, Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa declared that he would embrace a “zero problems” foreign policy, in the hopes that would help break the country’s isolation and solve some of its economic problems. The prospect of a stable Syria enticed at least $28 billion in investment deals from Middle Eastern countries in 2025, and even more has been secured so far in 2026. The continuation of that trend amid the current war with Iran has amplified Syria’s central geopolitical and economic pitch—that it can be a potentially transformational corridor for energy flows, commercial...

Syria’s transitional government said on Tuesday it has recovered “remnants” of the secret chemical weapons program created by deposed dictator Bashar Assad and have arrested 18 suspects who were allegedly involved in the program. Assad was overthrown in December 2024 and sought refuge in Russia, one of the nations that propped up his rule during the long and brutal Syrian civil war. He was replaced by a “transitional government” run by an alliance of insurgents and jihadis and presided over by a former member of al-Qaeda named Ahmed al-Sharaa. The new Syrian government turned against Assad’s old patrons of Russia...

Adam Hamawy’s past relationship with terrorist mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman has loomed over his rapid rise in the race to succeed retiring Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ). Their relationship spanned a 1991 road trip the two took together to Detroit, Hamawy’s service as the sheikh’s translator for a press conference in which Abdel-Rahman denied any role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Hamawy’s testimony on the sheikh’s behalf at his 1995 trial, where the Islamist leader was convicted of plotting to carry out a campaign of terrorist attacks in New York City. But just one year before Hamawy...

Israel has killed two top Hamas military chiefs in 11 days, demonstrating near-total surveillance, air supremacy, and intelligence capabilities across Gaza and the Middle East.What is so shocking about Israel's achievement of assassinating two Hamas military chiefs, Izz-al-Din al-Hadad, and his successor, Mohammed Ouda, within 11 days of each other, is that no one is even shocked anymore. Depending on the country or area, from drones to fighter jets, to the navy, to satellites, to Mossad, Shin Bet, and IDF Unit 504 agents, Israel has its enemies' leaders covered and in its crosshairs practically on demand, including: Iran, the Yemen...

Israel is condemned for surviving a massacre while regimes guilty of actual ethnic cleansing and mass slaughter escape outrage and scrutiny. Since October 7, we have been lectured nonstop about the supposedly singular sins of Israel. The campuses, the left-wing media, and the new Democratic Socialist officials, both federal and state, following the cue of student activists and professors from the Middle East, have painted Israel and their Jewish supporters as Nazis, fascists, and among the worst murderers in today’s bloody world. This is nonsensical. The medieval-style massacre of 1,200 Jews in their homes on October 7, during a time...

Newly released FBI documents say a 15-year-old boy who stole a plane and crashed it into a skyscraper might have originally targeted MacDill Air Force Base in his suicide mission. An FBI review of Charles Bishop's Internet activity showed the teen sought maps of the base and information about it. He also sent an e-mail to a classmate asking where Central Command was located on the base. Bishop died on Jan. 5, 2002, when he flew a Cessna stolen from a flight school into the Bank of America building in downtown Tampa. He left a note expressing sympathy for Osama...

May 21 (Reuters) - Syria will attend the G7 summit in France next month as ‌a guest nation and be represented by President ‌Ahmed al-Sharaa, three sources familiar with the matter said, marking Syria's ​first participation in a summit of the group since the forum was founded in 1975. An invitation to Sharaa to attend the June 15-17 summit in Évian-les-Bains, southeastern France, ‌was hand-delivered to Syrian ⁠Finance Minister Yisr Barnieh, who attended the group's financial talks earlier this week in ⁠Paris, one of the sources said. The source, a Syrian official, said Syria's participation in the talks would likely...

A Russian cargo vessel suspected of carrying components for two nuclear submarine reactors, possibly destined for North Korea, sank in the Mediterranean Sea under mysterious circumstances in December 2024, according to a CNN investigation published today. The Ursa Major (also known as Sparta 3), a heavy-lift ship linked to Russia’s “shadow fleet” and previously used in military operations in Syria, went down approximately 60 miles (about 100 km) off the coast of Spain near Cartagena on December 23, 2024. The sinking followed a series of explosions that killed two crew members and left 14 others rescued by Spanish authorities. Spanish...