Free Republic

Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer tells Bloomberg TV that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the right decision in canceling a trip to Washington where Dermer was to discuss alternate options for dealing with Hamas in Rafah. Netanyahu nixed the trip last night after the US declined to use its veto on a ceasefire resolution in the UN Security Council, thus allowing it to pass. Dermer says he has not spoken to US officials since the resolution passed, but he was in touch with the Biden administration on Sunday night to warn against the move. Shema Unity at The Kotel Keep...

For decades, Democrats have controlled the nation’s largest cities. The results have been catastrophic, including high crime rates, blight, failing public educational systems, rampant poverty, and an expanding homeless population. These horrific outcomes are due to Democrats supporting failed policies, such as raising taxes, increasing regulations, growing the government, and refusing to prosecute violent criminals. Consequently, citizens voted with their feet and left in droves, a trend which has started to accelerate. For example, while the country’s population soared sixty million to 341 million since 2000, it was a much different situation in the progressive hellhole of Chicago. The “Windy...

When you observe renowned landscape artist John Constable’s bucolic painting “Hampstead Heath” above, what feelings does it inspire? Calm? Nostalgia? Spiritual uplift? A surge of white supremacist pride and jingoistic fervor?For some reason – my guess is a toxic mix of colonialist guilt, multiculturalist self-loathing, and pressure from neo-Marxist donors and administrators determined to “deconstruct” Western civilization – England’s Fitzwilliam Museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, recently overhauled its collections with new signage warning sensitive visitors that landscape paintings of the British countryside can evoke dark “nationalist feelings.”Paintings at the Fitzwilliam have been reshuffled into new categories that are...

The Biden regime is in a tough spot. Its far-left base is enraged over its ongoing ostensible support for Israel. Instead of acting with integrity despite the electoral cost and standing by a loyal ally in its time of need, the regime is making a series of moves to betray Israel and give aid and comfort to its enemies.Now it’s mulling over a step that would constitute the biggest betrayal of all and would hand victory to the Hamas jihad terror group. For the unprincipled Biden regime apparatchiks, it’s all about winning in November.The New York Sun reported Monday that...

Today, a side of Adams that was not made much of in his lifetime has for many of us become the most important, and much-needed, part of his legacy: his critical view of Islam and of Muhammad. He derived these views from experience — his own and his father’s — of Muslim behavior (both of the Barbary Pirates and of the Ottoman Turks), from his lifelong study of history, and from his intensive reading of the Qur’an. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were sent in 1786 to negotiate in London with the ambassador from Tripoli, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman, about the...

The bad news is that the Biden administration is ramping up its gun confiscation agenda in the form of a whopping $750 million dedicated to establishing so-called “red flag laws” in every state in the Union. The good news is that epically incompetent Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have been put in charge of the push.On Saturday, Harris toured parts of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where a former student with a legally purchased firearm massacred 17 innocents on Valentine’s Day, 2018. She then announced two administration proposals purportedly aimed at quashing gun violence.The first would...

The Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility for Friday’s jihad terror attack in Moscow, in which the death toll is currently 137 and will likely turn out to be many more once the magnitude of the damage is fully assessed. ISIS’ claim, however, has been greeted with widespread skepticism, as the usual suspects in conspiracy paranoia, notably the CIA and Mossad, have been accused on social media of being the real culprits. Yet there is absolutely no reason to discount the Islamic State’s involvement, as a close examination of its claim of responsibility demonstrates.ISIS issued a statement boasting that “the...

TEL AVIV, March 22 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the top U.S. diplomat on Friday that Israel was prepared to "do it alone" if Washington opposes its plans for an assault on Rafah, the Gaza city where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. Blinken met one-on-one with Netanyahu during a peace mission to the Middle East at a time of evident strain in U.S.-Israeli relations with little precedent in their 75-year-old alliance. Netanyahu said he told Blinken he appreciated U.S. support in its fight against Hamas and that Israel recognises it needs to protect civilians. However,...

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly’s announcement Tuesday that Ottawa will halt arms sales to Israel made headlines worldwide. Israel’s supporters predictably blasted the decision, while pro-Palestinian progressives libelously accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza hailed it. The decision also undoubtedly put a smile on the faces of the hate marchers who have taken to Canada’s streets since October 7, threatening and intimidating Jews as they call for a “free Palestine” “From the river to the sea.” It also surely came as a sorely needed piece of good news to Hamas leaders holed up in their tunnels far underground as they...

I rushed to hope that the U.S. would turn the Gaza port initiative into the first step in the move toward its comprehensive peace vision, in cooperation with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. This was all based on the hope that Qatar, which is Hamas, would be ousted from any role in it, since it is a sponsor of Islamist terrorism worldwide. My hope was indeed consistent with the first reports about the port initiative. I termed it a "port of hope" and considered it a miracle that the Biden administration would take an actual...

"They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” These words were spoken by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in his unprecedented speech last week calling for the end and replacement of Israel’s democratically elected government. How ironic is it then that the policy Schumer championed so much during his speech is precisely that. The two reasons Schumer claimed Benjamin Netanyahu can no longer remain the Prime Minister of the State of Israel and must now be considered an “obstacle to peace” are his empowerment of parties to the right...

As is well known, the senior leadership of Hamas takes good care of itself. Just three of its leaders — Ismail Haniyeh, Mousa Abu Marzouk, and Khaled Meshaal — have between them squirreled away $11 billion, stolen from the aid money that was meant for the people of Gaza. They all now live in lavish apartments in Doha, Qatar, watching the war from a safe distance, while egging on those who are doing the real fighting, and dying.Qatar has been the main financial supporter of Hamas, and it isn’t just money it provides. Qatar thoughtfully built luxury apartments for the...

The Biden regime is in a tough spot. Its far-left base is enraged over its ongoing ostensible support for Israel. Instead of acting with integrity despite the electoral cost and standing by a loyal ally in its time of need, the regime is making a series of moves to betray Israel and give aid and comfort to its enemies.Now it’s mulling over a step that would constitute the biggest betrayal of all and would hand victory to the Hamas jihad terror group. For the unprincipled Biden regime apparatchiks, it’s all about winning in November.The New York Sun reported Monday that...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the Turkish President, and the rude-and-crude master of all he surveys from the 1,100 room “White Palace” that he had the government build for him in Istanbul, at a cost to the Turkish taxpayers of $615 million. But when a man like Erdogan comes along only once a millennium, why should the national exchequer skimp? In Istanbul, having announced to the world that he will not be running for office again (the hundreds of journalists he has imprisoned in Turkish jails must now be breathing proleptic sighs of relief), just to make sure we do not...

When the dangerous and fanatic leaders of Iran called the state of Israel the “Little Satan” and the USA the “Big Satan,” they were planning for the destruction of both.When Muammar Ghaddafi decided not to build nuclear weapons, he envisioned that he would be able to control Europe by having his loyal males marry the women of Europe, and dominate the continent in 30 years!When many radical Muslim spiritual leaders across the globe, preach for world domination of Islam and the destruction of all Infidels, they mean every word that they utter. Unfortunately, their followers take these words as a...

Friday was a day that ended in a “y,” and so it was another occasion for leftist virtue-signaling. Old Joe Biden’s ghostwriter wrote on X: “On the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, we recognize the hate that Muslims face because of their beliefs and the ugly resurgence of Islamophobia following the war in Gaza. Let us rededicate ourselves to a world where people of all faiths are free to live without fear.” Biden hasn’t said a word, however, about the hate that Jews face from Muslims themselves. And it’s no wonder: such talk would clash with the left’s narrative.In that...

Last week, Joe Biden issued a schoolmarmish warning to Israel, which he has been browbeating for months to placate his party’s anti-Israel left and Muslim American voters in Michigan, a critical swing state. Speaking to the press, he threatened, “There’s got to be a ceasefire because Ramadan – if we get into circumstances where this continues to Ramadan, Israel and Jerusalem could be very, very dangerous.”This solicitude for Muslims’ sensitivity about their faith bespeaks the West’s long bad habit of caring more about Islam––the faith that conquered and occupied, and to this day still occupies, much of the Christian Roman...

Hezbollah, the terror group made up of Lebanese Shi’a, is a far more formidable fighting force than is Hamas. It has a vast armory of 160,000 rockets and missiles, many of them precision-guided, supplied by Iran, as compared to fewer than 10,000 much cruder rockets now possessed by Hamas after five months of war. Hamas had 30,000 troops on October 6, before the Gaza war began, and now has about 15,000 fighters still alive, with many of them having been wounded. Hezbollah, on the other hand, has at least 100,000 well-trained and well-armed troops, thanks to the backing, in weapons...

The Left is turning us into a “sh*thole country.” During a White House meeting with Senators in January, 2018, then-President Donald Trump reportedly questioned the reasoning for allowing immigration from “shithole countries” such as Haiti. This triggered the pearl-clutching mainstream media, and charges of racism flew fast and furious, including from Haiti Ambassador to the U.S. Paul Altidor, who said Trump’s language was based on “clichés and stereotypes rather than actual fact.”Today Haiti is a shithole country, and that is not a racist cliché or stereotype but actual fact. It is a failed nation in a state of emergency, becoming...

It turns out that the Biden regime’s open southern border is a national security threat. Why, who could possibly have imagined such a thing?FBI top dog Christopher Wray recently revealed that the border region was full of “very dangerous threats” and that one of these was a smuggling network linked to the Islamic State (ISIS), which has repeatedly called upon Muslims to attack ordinary Americans in order to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60).Wow, who could ever imagined that opening up the border might make Americans more vulnerable to jihad terrorists? Obviously the FBI didn’t, as for...