Free Republic

There is general agreement that George W Bush sent troops into Iraq as an outcome of the industrial war machine policy to advance U.S. interventionism; thereby completing the job his father President HW Bush was prudently not willing to escalate after the liberation of Kuwait.President Donald Trump attempted to draw-down U.S. military all around the globe, specifically Europe and the middle-east. However, as history often repeats, now it appears we are see the JoeBama administration sending troops back into Syria; perhaps to attempt the same regime change objective they failed in 2013 and 2014. The mid-east war machine is oiled...

Iran had a peaceful nuclear programme for many years, but in the early 2000s concerns were raised that it was developing technology that could create nuclear weapons - despite the country being a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Not long after the firebrand then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a series of bold claims about uranium enrichment, the first of a number of UN resolutions was passed, aimed at forcing Iran to backpedal. It wasn't until the 2015 nuclear deal, which happened after Mr Ahmadinejad was replaced as president by the incumbent Hassan Rouhani, that relations began to improve - albeit temporarily....

A large U.S. military convoy was seen entering northeastern Syria on Thursday, marking the first time since Damascus issued its letter to the United Nations Security Council demanding the immediate withdrawal of American forces from the Arab Republic. According to a field report from northeastern Syria on Thursday, the U.S. military convoy entered the Al-Hasakah Governorate from neighboring Iraq, as they were observed entering the Arab Republic via the Al-Waleed Crossing. The report said the U.S. military convoy consisted of a large amount of weapons and logistical equipment, which were transferred to their bases inside the Al-Hasakah and Deir Ezzor...

Change occurs after Trump ambassador David Friedman relinquishes account, but is swiftly reversed; spokesman says it was not indicative of policy shift The US Embassy in Israel briefly changed its Twitter account name to include the West Bank and Gaza, sparking an immediate storm on the social media network by many who wondered whether it represented a policy shift on President Joe Biden’s first day in office. The @USAmbIsrael account’s name changed to “US Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza” around noon in DC (7 p.m. in Israel), when Biden was sworn in as president and David Friedman,...

A new administration's unbridled hostility towards Israel. In an interview with The New York Times last month, President-elect Joe Biden restated his intention to return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Israel opposes this plan because the 2015 deal ensures Iran will become a nuclear-armed state. Media reports over the past few weeks have detailed some of Israel’s plans to convince the incoming administration to reconsider its position. Among other things, the government intends to use documents from Iran’s nuclear archive, that Mossad agents spirited out of Tehran in 2018, to show Biden and his advisers that the 2015...

The attack on the U.S. Capitol by an angry mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters shocked many Americans who thought such a violent assault by their fellow countrymen wasn’t possible. But for Oklahoma City bombing survivor Dennis Purifoy, the Capitol assault was a clear parallel to what happened at the federal building in his hometown more than 25 years ago. The anger against the government, a radicalized perpetrator fueled by right-wing extremism, a desire to spark a revolution — all commonalities with Timothy McVeigh, whose fertilizer truck bomb ripped apart the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995,...

Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib — who is definitely not an anti-Semite — is absolutely disgusted with the State of Israel’s refusal to vaccinate the Palestinians it regularly persecutes against COVID19. After all, Israel has become a global model in COVID19 vaccinations.Why does Israel hate the Palestinians so much? Why does Israel want Palestinians to die???Rep. @RashidaTlaib on Israel not vaccinating Palestinians: “It’s really important to understand that Israel is a racist state, in that they would deny Palestinians like my grandmother access to a vaccine, that they don’t believe she’s an equal human being who deserves to live.” pic.twitter.com/vPCeXjdqrZ— Tom...

Canceled from the Israeli/Palestinian debate. In the campus war against Israel, the all too familiar refrain from student anti-Israel activists, many of whom form the loose coalition of groups and individuals spearheading the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, is that their quarrel is only with Israel and its government’s policies, not with Jews themselves. But that specious defense continues to fall away, revealing some caustic and base anti-Semitism and representing a seismic shift in the way that Jewish student leaders are now being indicted not just for supporting Israel, but merely for being Jewish. One of the latest victims...

Sheldon Adelson, the multibillionaire casino mogul and Republican Party megadonor, died Monday at age 87. Adelson died from complications related to treatment he was receiving for non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.......

Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson has died at the age of 87. Adelson died on Monday night after complications from his treatment for non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Las Vegas Sands said in a statement regarding the death of the company’s chairman and chief executive officer. “It is with unbearable pain that I announce the death of my husband, Sheldon G. Adelson, of complications from a long illness,” his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, said in a Tuesday statement provided by Las Vegas Sands to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “To me — as to his children, grandchildren, and his legions of friends and admirers, employees...

Could Iran develop a nuclear weapon on President Biden’s watch? Yes. While Democrats might blame President Donald Trump’s abrogation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) for recent Iranian nuclear violations, they should not: The 2015 Iran deal reversed decades of non-proliferation precedent which demanded a complete accounting and dismantlement of nuclear infrastructure. Exculpating Iran due to hatred of Trump also ignores that Iran is treaty-bound to uphold its Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement commitments. To understand just how close the Islamic Republic is to nuclear weapons, consider the three general components of a nuclear weapons capability: enrichment, warhead design,...

The Biden administration has already unrolled its plan to return to the 2015 nuclear deal and has begun holding quiet talks with Iran, an Israeli TV station reported Saturday. Officials for the incoming administration have also updated Israel about the conversations, Channel 12 News said. A separate report by the Israel Hayom daily said Israel, wary of Biden’s promise to return to the deal, is crafting military options to “undermine Iran’s nuclear efforts or, if need be, counter Iranian aggression, which will soon be presented to the government.” The paper also quoted Defense Minister Benny Gantz as saying: “Israel needs...

Why does the jihad terror group keep lying? Because it works. It was, supposedly, yet another IDF atrocity: the Times of Israel reported Saturday that Hamas had “denounced as ‘barbaric’ overnight strikes by the Israel Defense Forces — in response to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip — that it said damaged a children’s hospital in the Palestinian enclave.” Reality, as always, was different, but as the old saying goes, a lie travels around the world before the truth has finished tying its shoes. The IDF, according to the TOI, “flatly denied hitting the hospital, and said exploding Hamas munitions...

And how they further the dark purpose of the BDS movement. While the pandemic greatly disrupted campus activities in 2020, the student governments of at least three universities managed to focus their efforts to pass BDS resolutions, bills that asked their respective universities to divest from holdings of companies doing business with Israel. At the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, that school’s resolution “called on the university to divest from Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Company, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar Inc. and Elbit Systems Ltd. for what the resolution alleges is partaking in human-rights violations in the Palestinian territories. . . .” Additionally,...

While the Biden campaign was announcing a slate of radicals sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood to stack its foreign policy desk if it ever takes over the government, a very different sort of trip was underway in the middle east that clarified how wrong and dangerous they were. In an event that would have been inconceivable under Barack Obama, the Shillman Fellows of Reservists on Duty, an organization founded by Israeli military veterans that tours college campuses to speak about the realities of fighting terrorism, were on their way to Dubai. Dubai, as part of the United Arab Emirates, had...

In his December 13, 2020 column in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, senior Lebanese journalist Hazem Saghiya defends the countries that recently normalized their relations with Israel. These countries, he says, have crucial existential concerns and national needs of their own, and they cannot be expected to sacrifice them for the sake of the Palestinian cause, "to which nobody ascribes much importance any longer." He stressed that, although everyone recognizes the Palestinians' right to an independent state, their cause is no longer consistent with the national interests of other Arab states, and sometimes even contravenes these interests. He adds...

This past year was full of adversity and hopelessness for many around the world. But for we Palestinians, it was even harsher – we were forced to face a deadly pandemic in an apartheid state, amid a collapsing economy, and a general feeling of hopelessness and abandonment... In the second half of the year, a series of Arab states added to our collective misery by announcing their decision to normalise their relations with Israel. By effectively abandoning their supposed commitment to supporting Palestinian self-determination for money, weapons and a few short-term political gains, they sent us a clear message that...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia agreed on Monday to let Israeli airliners cross its airspace en route to the United Arab Emirates after talks between Saudi officials and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, a senior Trump administration official said. Kushner and Middle East envoys Avi Berkowitz and Brian Hook raised the issue shortly after they arrived in Saudi Arabia ...

"We were expecting the missile launch," one official said, but there was concern just how close Iran was willing to push the envelope. While 100 miles is well over the horizon and not visible from the aircraft carrier or its escort ships, American spy satellites orbiting high above in space tracked the missile launch from the Islamic Republic. It's not immediately clear if the AN/SPY-1 radar aboard the guided-missile cruiser escorting the aircraft carrier Nimitz tracked the launch. Nimitz has remained in the northern Arabian Sea on the orders of President Trump through the inauguration. Earlier this month, in an...

At least 23 members of Iranian and Syrian-regime forces were killed in Israeli air strikes in eastern Syria early Wednesday, and more than 28 militiamen wounded, some seriously, according to a U.K.-based war monitor. The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that Israel had struck targets in Deir ez-Zor Governorate, quoting a military source as saying that the strike occurred just after 1 a.m. but providing no further details. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that the area between the city of Deir ez-Zor and the Syria-Iraq border, in the al-Mayadin and al-Bukamal districts, had been hit no...