Free Republic

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...

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...

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...

The knives were out for me in January 2017 when I arrived in Washington as the White House correspondent for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. You see, I worked for what scolds liked to call Sheldon Adelson's paper -- and that was a no-no. Adelson died Monday night, and I never got a chance to say this. Had he given me marching orders? I heard that question a lot in 2017. In fact, I didn't meet or talk to Adelson until 2018, when I introduced myself at an event ahead of the Jerusalem Embassy opening. The "marching orders" question is one...

Can you guess who played a major role? This December 23rd is the fourth anniversary of the infamous United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which declares that “the establishment of settlements by Israel in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.” The Obama-Biden administration broke with the longstanding practice of both Democratic and Republican administrations to protect Israel from one-sided, anti-Israel United Nations resolutions when it refused to veto Resolution 2334 and abstained instead. Biden was reportedly involved behind the scenes in pushing the resolution forward...

"Goods produced in some areas of the West Bank shall be marked as products of “West Bank” and goods produced in Gaza shall be marked as products of "Gaza." US SECRETARY of State Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan, visit Psagot Winery in the hills north of Jerusalem, last month. (photo credit: MATTY STERN/US EMBASSY JERUSALEM/FLASH90) The Trump administration granted de facto recognition of West Bank Area C sovereignty when it issued labeling requirement that all goods produced in that region, either of Israeli or Palestinian origin, should be labeled "Made in Israel." On Wednesday, the US Customs and Border...

BEIRUT: Israeli jets flew very low over parts of Lebanon early Friday, terrifying residents on Christmas Eve, some of whom reported seeing missiles in the skies over Beirut. Minutes later, Syria’s official news agency reported explosions in the central Syrian town of Masyaf. Other Syrian media said Syrian air defenses responded to an Israeli attack near the town in the Hama province. The Syrian Ministry of Defense issued a statement saying Israel “launched an aggression by directing a barrage of rockets” from the north of the Lebanese city of Tripoli toward the Masyaf area. It said Syrian air defense “confronted...

His latest autobiography goes out of its way to demonize the Jewish state. Great news: Barack Hussein Obama is now not only a Nobel laureate, but he has opened up a big lead among the presidents as the one with by far the most autobiographies. The marvelous narcissist now leads all other presidents who have written autobiographies by two, as he has written three, compared to a number of his peers who are tied at one. However, his latest one, A Promised Land, is more than just an update on the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the Most Undeservedly Celebrated...

Close coordination between Israel and Qatar to facilitate sufficient funding for Hamas to keep Gaza’s economy from collapsing will likely be the key to moving Doha to a normalization deal. Relationships developed between Israel and Qatar to provide sufficient funding to Hamas and avoid an economic collapse and war in the Gaza Strip could be the engine for normalization between Jerusalem and Doha, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Pressed that in November, Qatar rejected any imminent normalization with Israel, sources told the Post confidently that this would likely change during the incoming Biden administration’s term. Ironically, even as Hamas is...

As he publishes a dramatic memoir covering nearly 40 years of service to the U.S., former CIA chief John Brennan talks about Netanyahu, Biden – and voting Communist John Brennan’s first encounter with Israel left a distinctly unfavorable impression. On a cold winter night in December 1975, the 20-year-old, who had just visited Jordan, arrived at the Allenby Bridge to enter Israel as a tourist. Brennan, an American student at the American University in Cairo, wanted to see the Holy Land and learn about Israel and the region in depth. At passport control he asked an Israeli soldier who was...

Last November Habibullah Ahmadi, 24, was found guilty of second-degree murder in the October 8, 2017, beating of Sara Anne Widholm in Windsor, Ontario. The 75-year-old grandmother did not die until December 17, 2018, but according to Dr. Balraj Jhawar, the beating left her in a “worse state than death.” For this heinous crime, a Tuesday hearing revealed, Habibullah will not receive the worst possible sentence. “Second-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence,” wrote Trevor Wilhelm in the Windsor Star, but Habibullah Ahmadi would not get a life sentence. Instead the hearing focused on “when Ahmadi should become eligible...

Welcome to Wiki propaganda on topics of Islam, Jihad and the Arab war on Israel. Wikipedia now has 55 million separate articles. It would be churlish to complain about them all. Some of them are very good, in fact; for example, the entry on the Russian playwright Alexander Griboyedov, whose Woe From Wit I studied, line by line, in Moscow, with a teacher at Patrice Lumumba University (I believe I am the only American to have studied with a faculty member at Lumumba U.). So is the one on Minkowski Space, which I have neither the time nor the space...

There are numerous well armed Palestinians militias in Judea and Samaria poised to seize power for competing personalities and factions the moment that Mahmoud Abbas exits the stage. Their guns for the most part will be aimed at each other. After all, it wasn't Jews that Hamas militiamen threw off of the roof tops in Gaza, it was Fatah members. Nonetheless, it can be expected that various forces also attack Israelis both to garner favor on the Palestinian street and to compel Israel to inject itself into the fray. Who ends up in power is anyone's guess. Perhaps the only...

Pakistan is once again engaged in an intellectual debate about its religious identity. The issue is whether to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, which, seen as the Jewish state, Pakistanis deem ideologically incompatible with the Islamic State of Pakistan. Pakistanis view their country as the Medina-e-Saani, the second Medina, after the holy city of Medina, which was the first Islamic state established by Prophet Muhammad after he proclaimed Islam.Image courtesy of Tribune.com.pkAlthough this debate has been a recurring theme in Pakistan's intellectual life, it re-emerged recently after several Islamic countries – the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco – decided to...

The rioter who was slapped with federal charges after sitting at a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the siege of the US Capitol claimed on video that he was “pushed” inside her quarters. “They started it! I came to peacefully protest! They Maced me,” Richard Barnett tells YouTuber Brandon Buckingham. “I didn’t break in — I got pushed in,” Barnett adds as he holds an envelope with Pelosi’s letterhead. “I paid a quarter for this. I’m not a thief! It had my blood on it.” Barnett, who goes by the nickname Bigo, also says he left the...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel considers it “problematic” that Twitter would toss President Trump off its social media platform, saying through a spokesmen Monday that the president’s ability to express his opinion is a fundamental right of “elementary significance.” “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin. “Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked,” he...