Free Republic

At first glance, Mike Waltz’s visit to Israel this week may look like a new UN ambassador’s routine orientation tour – a series of meetings, border briefings, and handshakes meant to signal continuity. But nothing about the timing or the choreography of this particular visit suggests anything routine. Waltz’s first major foreign trip since taking office is not just a symbolic gesture. It is the operational rollout of the Trump administration’s Gaza plan, carried out under the umbrella of UN Security Council Resolution 2803, which the US drafted and pushed through. And the visit comes just days after the UN...

Tens of thousands rallied in Paris on Saturday to show support for Palestinians in Gaza, as protesters accused Israel of violating a fragile US-brokered ceasefire and demanded tougher international action amid soaring death tolls and ongoing restrictions on aid. Gaza’s health ministry, run by Hamas, said Saturday that more than 70,000 people have been killed since the war began. “Gaza, Gaza, Paris is with you.” Marking the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, tens of thousands of people, according to organizers, marched in Paris on Saturday to show support for Palestinians in Gaza, devastated by more than two...

Will the European Court Decide Whether to Recognize Polygamy as a Right?The European Union, in words, boasts of being a bulwark of Western civilization, a guarantor of international peace, a guardian of free enterprise, democracy, stability, and peace among peoples, having created the largest single market in the world and promoting “rights, freedoms, and cooperation.” In reality, as repeated in other analyses, the European Union is undergoing a drastic Sinicization, with all that this entails.Moreover, to confront the steep demographic decline and the growing Islamization of the continent, bureaucrats—especially the more progressive ones, though not only them—must reckon with internal...

Today has been officially declared World Toilet Day by the United Nations (but you knew that already, didn’t you) with “climate change” blamed for making sanitation less available across the planet. The globalist organization has marked the scatological tribute event by throwing its full resources into an effort to promote toilets for all, “with the poorest, especially women and girls, worst affected.” It has also published a list of demands for the world to heed to make toilets more accessible while “climate change is reshaping our world – with glaciers melting, weather worsening, and sea levels rising.”

The progressive and Islamist movements, both global in scope, have far more in common than meets the eye. As New York City celebrates a socialist-Islamist mayor and we approach the tenth anniversary of the ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in San Bernardino, it is worth reflecting on the many commonalities that unite the Blue-Green (Democrat-Islamist) alliance. Many have remarked on the absurdities of these misfit ideologies as bedfellows. LGBTQ often professes love for Hamas irrespective of the latter’s nonnegotiable religious injunction to sentence gays to death. Feminists who rage against the so-called white western patriarchy offer unconditional support for an unyielding theocratic...

Nov 18 (Reuters) - Hamas rejected the United Nations Security Council passing a U.S.-drafted resolution endorsing U.S. President Donald Trump's Gaza plan, saying it fails to meet Palestinians' rights and demands and seeks to impose an international trusteeship on the enclave that Palestinians and resistance factions oppose. "Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation," the group added.

Officials have said the prospects of EU environment ministers agreeing ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions by 2040 will go down to the wire when they gather for an emergency meeting in Brussels. Member states have been tasked with agreeing on a 2040 target at today’s meeting so that they could in turn agree on an interim target for 2035, which the EU would then bring to the United Nations COP30 summit in Brazil on Thursday. However, officials have said securing an agreement will be “challenging”. The European Commission had proposed a target of cutting carbon emissions by 90% by...

Tucker Carlson’s shift from provocative media personality to a figure openly giving platforms to Holocaust revisionism and coded antisemitic tropes shows a disturbing trajectory. His kind of criticisms of Israel, invocation of classic antisemitic cliches (such as Jewish conspiracies and collective guilt), and lack of theological credibility undermine any claim to being a genuine Christian defender of Judeo-Christian values. Most Christians support Israel, and many conservative thinkers have long resisted Carlson’s frameworks of victim-blaming, replacement theory, and false equivalencies. His recent actions show how hidden antisemitism can suddenly reveal itself -- and with influential amplifiers. [SNIP] On October 13, 2025,...

Cornell’s student newspaper sparked furious backlash after it published a professor’s incendiary artwork depicting a bloodied Star of David and Nazi “SS” symbol scrawled on the back of a Palestinian person. The Cornell Daily Sun later took down the disturbing graphic after it was widely blasted as antisemitic, but the ordeal is raising concerns about a deeper cultural problem on campus. “To me, it reflects the normalization of Holocaust inversion, both on the internet and now on Cornell’s campus,” William Jacobson, a law professor who founded Legal Insurrection, a conservative publication, told The Post. “This [SS lighting bolt] graphic is...

Late-night host Bill Maher is questioning where all the college anti-Israel protesters went as the terror group Hamas continues its wave of violence, turning weapons against Palestinians in Gaza. On Friday’s episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher," the comedian asked his guest, billionaire businessman Mark Cuban, where "keffiyeh-wearing college kids" went now that Hamas is "shooting everybody." "Where are the protesters?" Maher asked Cuban. "Suddenly, the keffiyeh-wearing college kids are very quiet," the HBO host noted. "Shooting everybody," Cuban answered and Maher repeated the sentiment. His comments come after months of student-led anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses across the country....

Geneva (AFP) – UN chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for a fightback against climate disinformation ahead of next month's COP30 summit after US President Donald Trump branded climate change the "greatest con job ever". Guterres issued a robust defence of "clear-eyed" climate science and data, without which, he said, the world would never have understood the emergence of the "dangerous and existential threat of climate change". "We must fight mis- and disinformation, online harassment, and greenwashing," Guterres said at the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) weather and climate agency. "Scientists and researchers should never fear telling the truth." The...

To recap the past week: Hamas films themselves executing over 100 Palestinians. The media is silent. Hamas launches RPGs at Israeli troops, murdering two. The media is silent. Israel responds by striking a Hamas commander. The media says Israel violated the ceasefire.

UN has condemned US strikes on small boats it believes to be trafficking drugs as extrajudicial executionsDonald Trump said the US has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off Venezuela, killing six people.“The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed,” Trump said in a statement on his Truth Social social media platform.The United Nations has condemned the US strikes on small boats it believes to be trafficking drugs as extrajudicial executions. The US defends the attacks as countering...

Candace Owens doesn’t agree with Trump getting a Nobel Peace Prize because the people of Gaza are in danger. She said : "And Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize, by the way. For the planned ethnic cleansing so that they could profit on land and turn it into a beach town. So let me say this. This is our never again, okay? This is a Holocaust. A Holocaust just happened. A real Holocaust just happened. We will never forget this. You need to tell your children what happened in Gaza. You can tell them exactly who did it, exactly whose...

President Donald Trump’s proposal to end the Gaza war has not only won support from Israel, but also from the Arab and Muslim world — and from the Palestinian Authority, which has opposed his plans in the past. The 20-point plan, as Breitbart News has noted, would fulfill Israel’s goals of freeing the remaining hostages, as well as disarming Hamas and removing it from power. It also offers the prospect of a Palestinian state — if Hamas complies with the plan and the Palestinian Authority agrees to sweeping reforms of its policies and anti-Israel culture. If Hamas does not agree,...

The UN Human Rights Council has released a report detailing a “black list” of international companies operating in Judea and Samaria. The council listed 112 companies which it claims violate international law by continuing to operate in the Jewish communities in the area, including Airbnb, Expedia, and TripAdvisor. Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz responded to the black List, saying that “the UN Human Rights Council’s announcement of the “black list” of business companies is a shameful surrender to the pressures of countries and organizations interested in hurting Israel, even though most countries in the world have refused to join this political...

Resignations Come After Sanctions on Israel-Focused Rapporteur: In the week prior to the commissioners’ resignation announcements, Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UNHRC special rapporteur dedicated to scrutinizing Israel, for her role in supporting International Criminal Court (ICC) efforts targeting U.S. and Israeli citizens. The commission panelists met with top ICC staff in The Hague in 2022. In June 2024, the commission stated that it was “cooperating with accountability processes in the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.”

President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he may travel to Egypt this weekend as his negotiators seek to seal a Gaza hostages-for-ceasefire deal. Trump said at the White House that a deal is "very close," and that he may depart Saturday for the region. He spoke after talking to his team about the talks. Negotiators have been meeting in Egypt to try to complete an agreement. As Trump held an event, Secretary of State Marco Rubio entered the room and handed Trump a note. Trump read it and then described what the note said.

After two years of war, there is a chance of a deal that will end the killing and destruction in Gaza and return the Israeli hostages, living and dead, to their families. It is an opportunity, but it is not certain that it will be seized by Hamas and Israel.It is a grim coincidence that the talks are happening exactly two years after Hamas inflicted a trauma on Israelis that is still acute. The 7 October attacks killed around 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians, and 251 were taken hostage. The Israelis estimate that 20 hostages are still alive and they...

Israel and Hamas will begin indirect talks in Egypt on Monday after Hamas said it would accept parts of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan, including releasing all remaining Israeli hostages. I spoke with my colleague Josh Keating about what we know about the deal and its chances of succeeding for Vox’s daily newsletter, Today, Explained. Our conversation is below, and you can sign up for the newsletter here for more conversations like this. What happened on Friday? Is the war actually about to end?On Friday, Hamas issued a response to the 20-point Gaza peace plan, which had been put...