Free Republic

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell distanced himself from other Republican lawmakers who have called for the National Guard to be sent in to break up the antisemitic riots and demonstrations that have taken over multiple university campuses throughout the US over the last week and a half. “What needs to happen, at least at the beginning, is these university presidents need to get control of the situation, allow free speech, and push back against antisemitism,” McConnell told Margaret Brennan on the CBS 'Face the Nation' program. “I thought that was largely gone in this country, but we’ve seen a number...

The U.S. military has begun to build the long-awaited port and causeway off the coast of Gaza that will establish a maritime corridor to bring humanitarian aid into Gaza, the Pentagon said Thursday. "I can confirm that U.S. military vessels, to include the USNS Benavidez, have begun to construct the initial stages of the temporary pier and causeway at sea," Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon's press secretary, told reporters, referring to the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, system floating pier delivery system. "We are aware of the significant interest in this important effort and will provide much more information...

News reports about Islamic terrorist attacks are awkward. Videos even more so. Australian authorities have refused to use the “I” or “M” word to discuss the Muslim terrorist attack on a bishop.Now they’re demanding that Twitter take down a video of the stabbing on the Australian Jewish Association Twitter account.At issue is the right of X to publish a video showing the moment a 16-year-old allegedly stabbed a bishop in an Orthodox Christian Church in Sydney earlier this month.Australian authorities say the clips threw fuel on a riot that erupted outside the church after the attack and shouldn’t be available...

The University of Southern California (USC) has canceled its main graduation ceremony due to apparent security concerns after anti-Israel protesters tried to encamp and were removed by Los Angeles Police Department this week. As Breitbart News reported, anti-Israel protesters had tried to occupy the campus, as demonstrators have done at other universities in an apparently well-coordinated and well-funded campaign. In addition, USC canceled the speech of its valedictorian after she was found to have supported the annihilation of the State of Israel in online posts.

A Moroccan man who stabbed to death a passer-by in the street in northeast England in what he later told police was revenge for Israeli action in Gaza was found guilty of murder on Thursday. Ahmed Alid, 45, who had sought asylum in Britain, killed his 70-year-old victim after approaching him from behind on a road in Hartlepool the early hours of Oct. 15 last year, having previously attacked his housemate with two knives, prosecutors said. After his arrest, he told detectives he had committed the acts because of the war in Gaza, and in revenge for Israel killing ..and...

Anti-Israel protesters set up an “intifada” encampment on the campus of state-funded City College of New York Thursday — with participants raising a Palestinian flag over a quad. The encampment was set up Thursday morning, and by the afternoon the Convent Avenue campus was riddled with flags and signs, video from independent reporter Talia Jane showed. “Palestine calls this University Intifada,” Within Our Lifetime organizer Nerdeen Kiswani said into a megaphone, per indie reporter Oliya Scootercaster. “We have a right to control where our tuition goes and that it should never go to oppressing any people anywhere!” Kiswani added in...

Since at least the Vietnam War, exasperated observers of student protests have rolled their eyes and thought: Get a job. In some cases today, activism is a job. Two of America’s largest philanthropic foundations are behind a group that has paid some of the anti-Israel activists for the kind of antics disrupting campuses across the country. Consider Malak Afaneh, a law student at the University of California, Berkeley, and Craig Birckhead-Morton, a senior at Yale. Ms. Afaneh went viral this month for disrupting a dinner at Dean Erwin Chemerinsky’s home. This week the Yale Daily News reported that Mr. Birckhead-Morton...

The response of the U.S. and EU leadership to Hamas’ genocidal savagery against Israel, a Western liberal democracy, has been despicable and dangerous. Blustering protestations of support and solidarity by politicians have been undercut by schoolmarmish hectoring about Israel’s “disproportionate” tactics and alleged callous disregard for Palestinian Arab lives and well-being.This geopolitical virtue-signaling has been correctly interpreted by Hamas and Iran as a green-light to double-down on its aggression, which won’t stop with Israel.Last week Iran showed the way by launching an unprecedent, indiscriminate attack on Israel with a 300-strong barrage of drones and missiles. Aided by the U.S., Great...

Saratu Dauda had been kidnapped. It was 2014, ... Kidnapped from their dormitory exactly 10 years ago, the 276 captives known as the Chibok Girls were catapulted to fame by Michelle Obama, by churches that took up the mostly Christian students’ cause and by campaigners using the slogan “Bring Back Our Girls.” “The only crime of these girls was to go to school,”... Their lives have taken wildly different turns since the abduction. Some escaped almost immediately; 103 were released a few years later after negotiations. A dozen or so now live abroad, including in the United States. As many...

<p>At least nine protesters were handcuffed and loaded into police cruisers at a peaceful, pro-Palestinian protest Wednesday at the University of Texas hosted by the Palestine Solidarity Committee, a registered student group and a chapter of the national Students for Justice in Palestine. And several more were arrested at the university's South Lawn.</p>

Israeli troops foiled an attempted stabbing attack near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, the military said Wednesday. The Israel Defense Forces said a female Palestinian assailant tried to stab troops of the Kfir Brigade’s Shimshon Battalion, who were stationed at an army post at a junction near the settlement. “The troops engaged and opened fire at the terrorist who held a knife and charged toward the force,” the military said. The woman was killed, the army said. No troops were hurt in the incident. The official Palestinian news agency WAFA identified the alleged assailant as Maimouna Abdel Hamid...

Aidan Parisi pledged to 'resist' and called for 'intifada' after Columbia ordered him to vacate his on-campus apartment.. For more than two weeks, Columbia University graduate student Aidan Parisi has defied the university’s suspension, refusing to vacate his dorm room on the school's Manhattan campus. The school announced Parisi’s suspension on April 4 following his participation in a pro-Hamas event. And while Columbia leaders have pledged to enforce the suspension, they have yet to follow through. In the meantime, Parisi has contributed to the mayhem that has engulfed the campus over the past several days, serving as a leader of...

US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell met with Niger’s Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine on Friday and they agreed – after Niger’s demands – that the US would militarily withdraw from the country, according to a State Department official. In the coming days, there will be conversations over the timeline for the withdrawal with the Department of Defense, the official said. The major drawdown will significantly impact the US troop presence on the continent of Africa, and the move comes amid serious US concerns about the country’s deepening relationships with Russia and Iran. The New York Times first reported...

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday said it was readying to deploy two reserve brigades for missions in the Gaza Strip, as the military appeared to move ahead with plans for an offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah as it seeks to remove the Hamas terror group from its last major redoubt in the enclave. The 679th “Yiftah” Armored Brigade and the 2nd “Carmeli” Infantry Brigade, which had been operating on the northern border, were set to take responsibility for areas of central Gaza that have remained under Israeli military control since troops largely pulled back from other...

A North Korean delegation led by the cabinet minister for international trade is visiting Iran, the North’s official media says in a rare public report of an exchange between the two countries believed to have secret military ties. The minister for external economic relations, Yun Jong Ho, left Pyongyang on Tuesday by air leading a ministry delegation to visit Iran, the North’s KCNA news agency says. It gives no other detail. North Korea and Iran have long been suspected of cooperating on ballistic missile programs, possibly exchanging technical expertise and components that went into their manufacture.

The charges against activist and independent journalist Tommy Robinson were dropped on Tuesday after a judge at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court found that a police order banning him from a protest in London was unlawful. Mr Robinson, 40, was arrested in central London on November 26th for supposedly violating a ban from attending a pro-Israel demonstration. Police argued that he refused to comply with the order and therefore used synthetic pepper spray on him, placed Robinson in handcuffs and arrested him. ... Speaking outside the courthouse on Tuesday alongside one-time UKIP backer Lord Pearson of Rannoch and broadcaster Katie Hopkins,...

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an “obstacle” in a two-state solution between Israel and Gaza and said he should resign. In an interview with RTÉ’s Six One News during a visit to Ireland, Pelosi spoke about the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Netanyahu’s deadly counteroffensive that has left more than 34,000 Palestinians dead, according to local health officials. “We recognize Israel’s right to protect itself. We reject the policy and the practice of Netanyahu,” she said. “Terrible. What could be worse than what he has done in response?” “He should...

The Israeli military's intelligence chief has resigned, saying he took responsibility for the failures before Hamas's attack on Israel on 7 October. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Major General Aharon Haliva would retire once his successor was selected. He acknowledged in a letter that his intelligence directorate "did not live up to the task we were entrusted with". He is the first senior figure to step down over the attack, which was the deadliest in Israel's history. Israeli military and intelligence officials missed or ignored multiple warnings before hundreds of Hamas gunmen breached the Gaza border fence that day...

Hardline Iranian parliamentarian and member of Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Javad Karimi Ghodousi tweeted on April 22 implying that if granted permission, Iran could test its first nuclear weapon within one week.[17] Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Deputy Chairman Shahriar Heydari stated on April 22 in response to Karimi Ghodousi’s tweet that Iran has no ”intention” to build or use nuclear weapons.[18] Heydari cited Khamenei’s 2003 fatwa as the reason Iran is not seeking to acquire or use nuclear weapons. Heydari stated that Karimi Ghodousi's tweet may have been taken out of context.

Sen. John Fetterman reiterated his criticisms of activists calling for cease-fire in Gaza, and slammed fellow Democrats for their “crazy” response to the attacks Iran has launched against Israel, in an interview with Fox Digital. “It is not appropriate or legal or helpful to advance your argument if you show up in a Starbucks with a bullhorn and start yelling at people,” he told Fox News Digital in a Friday interview. He also claimed such protests don’t “make you noble.” “It just makes you an (–*&*(,” Fetterman (D-Pa.) said. Since the onset of the war between Israel and terrorist group...