Free Republic

Former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth called the plight of the 101 hostages held in Gaza one of a number of "utter irrelevancies" following the International Criminal Court's decision to issue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. "The Israeli government responded to the ICC war-crime charges with the usual diversionary excuses – the need to liberate the hostages, Hamas’s use of human shields, Israel’s democracy and self-defense, supposed ICC antisemitism – all utter irrelevancies," Roth wrote in an op-ed for the British newspaper The Guardian and in a post on X...

A flurry of reports over the weekend said that the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, considered a sharp critic of Israel, is to be named to a top intelligence post in the administration of President Barack Obama. Chas W. Freeman Jr., who was U.S. ambassador to Riyadh from 1989-1992, is set to be named chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which has a strong influence on the content of the intelligence briefings presented to the President (and puts together the National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, which in 2007 dissuaded the Bush regime from attacking Iran). The Council chairman is...