Free Republic

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has requested an all-member briefing on the evolving situation in Ukraine, her office confirmed to The Hill, amid growing concerns of a Russian military incursion. Pelosi’s office didn’t immediately provide further details of the request, which was first reported by Punchbowl News.

Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer on Sunday revealed how the Biden family have profited from business with individuals “linked to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence.” Schweizer, the author of Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, said Biden’s son Hunter, while the elder Biden was serving as both vice president and president, was engaged in deals with individuals tied to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence. He called the Biden family’s business dealings “unprecedented.” “One of the most startling things we uncovered is the simple fact that the Biden family, while he was vice president of...

Ukraine is about to become Afghanistan 2.0 for Americans hoping to evacuate. Fox News Channel is reporting that the Biden Administration will not be able to evacuate U.S. citizens from Ukraine. “Given that the President has said military action by Russia could come at any time. The US government will not be in a position to evacuate US citizens. So US citizens, currently present in Ukraine should plan accordingly.” Arrange commercial flights,” a State Dept. official is quoted as saying on a phone call. The announcement is reminiscent of the administration’s feckless handling of the evacuation of Afghanistan — when...

Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg believes that President Joe Biden essentially gave Vladimir Putin the green light to invade Ukraine because the Ukrainian energy company Burisma stopped bribing him after the 2016 election of former President Donald Trump. Speaking with politics editor Matthew Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday, Nunberg expanded on a tweet he posted Friday suggesting that Biden abandoned Ukraine due to Hunter Biden’s corruption.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Using Iranian bank funds freed from American sanctions, South Korea has paid Iran’s $18 million in delinquent dues owed to the United Nations, Seoul said Sunday. The step was apparently approved by Washington to restore Tehran’s suspended voting rights at the world body. The South Korean Foreign Ministry said Seoul had paid the sum using Iranian assets frozen in the country after consulting with the United States Treasury — a potential signal of flexibility amid floundering nuclear negotiations. The funds had been impounded at Korean banks under sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump...

Germany is preventing fellow NATO member Estonia from providing Ukraine with military support by declining to offer export permits for weapons of German origin, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. "Germany, they have a lot of hesitation to deliver to us," Ukraine's defense minister, Oleksiy Reznikov, told The Journal. A German government spokesperson explained to the outlet that the decision on the exportation of weaponry is a result of a long-standing policy. "The principle governing arms exports is always the same—whether they come directly from Germany or from third countries—and no permission has been issued at this stage," the...

While largely established to forge "friendly relations among nations," the U.N. has been anything but friendly toward the Jewish state: Israel. In fact, the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) has long afforded a platform and impunity for those promoting Israel's destruction and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homeland. In 1974, the UNGA hosted the then-chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, who infamously referenced his "freedom fighter's gun" during his speech. At that time the PLO was an "internationally recognized terrorist organization" with its charter stating that "[a]rmed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine." Some...

Together, the SEALs formed a political action committee called SEAL PAC, and this week, they released a joint campaign ad indicating their runs for Congress. In the ad, the SEALs are shown taking their oaths to defend the Constitution. Photos show the men while enlisted on various missions. “They took a blood oath to protect America,” the ad’s narrator says. “They understand that the only easy day was yesterday. They know that our enemies are no match for their strength and their courage. These former Navy SEALs have protected America from enemies all over the world. Now they have one...

On Chanukah 2002, four Hercules planes bearing hundreds of people evacuated from Africa landed in Israel. The passengers included Israeli families who had been vacationing in Kenya, some alive, some wounded, and some children returning to their homeland in small coffins. Now, Biden has decided to release Mohammed Abdul Malik Bajabu, an Islamic terrorist who, “participated in the planning and execution of the terrorist attacks”, from Guantanamo Bay.. 2002 had been a bad year in Israel. 457 Israelis were murdered by terrorists in one of the worst years of the Islamic campaign of genocide against the country’s indigenous Jewish population....

California Gov. Gavin Newsom clarified this week that when he called criminals accused of stealing packages from cargo trains in the state "gangs of people" he wasn’t implying the thefts were gang-related. This is not one-off," Newsom said in a news conference near Union Pacific Railroad tracks in Los Angeles on Thursday, according to the Washington Times. "This is organized theft. These are organized gangs of people that are coming out." "Forgive me for saying ‘gangs,’ that’s not a pejorative," he clarified. "They’re organized groups of folks that move from site to site."

Emma Watson, the actress who played Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, made news recently when she declared on Instagram “Free Palestine” and declared her “solidarity” with the oppressed Palestinians. Why her opinion should matter tells us something about the mental state of our giddy globe. What’s next? Should we consult Mick Jagger for his views on the expansion of NATO? Or ask Randy Quaid for his thoughts on the IMF? Watson’s sentiment isn’t wrong, writes Stephen Flatow: the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank do indeed need to be free, but she’s sending her message to...

British police said Thursday they arrested two people in connection with a hostage-taking at a synagogue in Texas. Counter Terrorism Police North West said one man was arrested Thursday in Birmingham, central England, and another in the northern English city of Manchester. They were being held for questioning and had not yet been charged. The force said it was continuing to support U.S. authorities with their investigation into Saturday's hostage incident. Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old British citizen, took four people hostage at a Texas synagogue in a 10-hour standoff that ended in his death. All four hostages were unharmed....

BEIRUT — Anne Frank's diary has been censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon following a campaign by the militant group Hezbollah claiming the classic work promotes Zionism. The row erupted after Hezbollah learned excerpts of "The Diary of Anne Frank" were included in the textbook used by a private English-language school in western Beirut. Frank wrote the diary while her family hid from Nazi police and sympathizers in an Amsterdam attic from 1942 to 1944. She later died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the age of 15, and the diary was published posthumously.

Gary Mond is an important figure in British Jewry: he is — or was until January 12 — a vice president of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the treasurer of the Jewish National Fund (JNF-UK). Some of his past comments on social media that have recently come to light caused such a furor that he felt compelled to resign. Robert Spencer wrote about this here, and an additional report on the events surrounding Mond’s reluctant resignation is here: “British Jewish leader resigns following comments about ‘war with Islam,’” by Cnaan Lipshiz, Times of Israel, January 14, 2022A senior...

In the last article, I discussed the impacts Covid-19 may potentially have on all our lives in 2022. In this article, I want to look at one of the main potential geopolitical flashpoints of 2022: Israel and Iran. The Israel–Iran issue has been largely out of our news feeds during the past twelve months, yet the drumbeat of war between Israel and Iran has not calmed in 2021; it is just that the rest of us have been very much distracted by Covid-19. With each passing month, Israel’s growing need to defend itself against what it perceives to be an...

On January 5, a giant statue of Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian regime's dead terrorist mastermind, was displayed in the city of Shahr-e Kord. The regime unveiled the statue with much noise and fanfare just ahead of the second anniversary of Soleimani's elimination in a US drone strike in 2020. Mere hours later, the statue was engulfed in flames by dissidents, dealing a major blow against state propaganda to bill the former commander of the terrorist Qods Force as a "hero." Just a couple of days prior, the regime’s President Ebrahim Raisi delivered a televised speech in which he promised revenge...

President Joe Biden removed from a commission that monitors Holocaust sites a Trump appointee with ties to white supremacists. In a letter obtained by a reporter for Politico, the White House asked Darren Beattie on January 14 to resign from the Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad by the end of the day or be removed.

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel’s Environment Minister said Thursday a clandestine oil deal that would have turned a scuba divers’ paradise into a waypoint for Emirati oil headed for Western markets has effectively been blocked.... ...The secret deal would have significantly increased the number of oil tankers docking and unloading in the Israeli resort city of Eilat. It was struck last year between the Europe-Asia Pipeline Company, the Israeli government-owned corporation, and MED-RED Land Bridge, a joint Israeli-Emirati venture, following the historic agreement establishing formal diplomatic ties... ...Senior officials in former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — including his...

One morning this week, I went to run some errands near my home in the Judean mountains. In addition to being cold out, there have been an increased number of security/terrorist incidents around Israel in recent weeks, leaving several dead and injured, Israelis edgy and on guard, and many more soldiers on duty guarding us. Of course, it’s unspeakable that we should have to live with the threat of terrorists stabbing and shooting at civilians, or ramming their cars into Israelis on the side of the road. But it’s also sad that in response, many more young men and women...

A new poll of Arab residents of Jerusalem by a Palestinian media outlet found that 93% of them prefer to remain under Israeli rule and would not give up their Israeli identity card. Arab residents of Jerusalem are, for the most part, not Israeli citizens, but can request citizenship if they wish. Those who are not citizens carry a special ID card allowing them freedom of movement within Israel proper.