Free Republic

The Arab Spring, which started with the self-immolation of a Tunisian vegetable vendor at 11.30 am on 16th December, 2010, has resulted in two failed states in the region so far.  Libya has become “Scumbag Woodstock” because of the number of terrorist organisations headquartered there.  The French and English attempt at regime change created a terrorist haven with consequences as far afield as Mali and the 300 Christian girls kidnapped in Nigeria.  Fortunately, Syria has become a meatgrinder for Islamic terrorists and for the moment has ceased being a net exporter of terrorism.  In that conflict, the Obama Administration has...

TEL AVIV – The U.S. last week held a clandestine meeting in Egypt with Ghazi Hamad, the deputy foreign minister of Hamas, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials. The officials would not say whether the meeting was with a current member of the U.S. government or a former diplomat acting as a proxy for the Obama administration. Messages were exchanged about Hamas’s intentions as part of a newly formed Palestinian unity government with the rival Fatah party, led by Mahmoud Abbas, the officials said. Last week, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper quoted an unnamed White House official stating the Obama administration...

European Union (EU) Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen spoke to reporters in Jerusalem on Tuesday, saying that he didn’t feel peace talks should have been stopped last month over the unity deal between Fatah and the terrorist group Hamas. “I don’t see a reason for the peace talks stopping in order to send a message that there’s a difference between Fatah and Hamas,” opined Faaborg-Andersen. While indeed Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction has made clear that there is little distinction between them and Hamas in terms of their goal of destroying Israel, which would of course call...

GAZA — For 14-year-old Aseel Radi, the promised reconciliation between warring Palestinian political factions is viewed through a forlorn fountain in a crowded market on the eastern side of Gaza City. Aseel used to visit the fountain in what is known as Palestine Square with her father, Maher, a member of the Fatah faction’s armed wing who was killed by militants from its rival, Hamas, during the bloody six-day battle for control of the Gaza Strip in 2007. Now, only a few bricks remain of the broader basin, which is filled with trash. The lights have been turned off and...

"It would be impossible to implement any peace agreement between Israel and just one portion of the Palestinians,” the former president wrote in the "Washington Post." The Palestinian unity agreement between Hamas and Fatah offers Israel an opportunity to move the peace process forward since any future agreement would incorporate all of the West Bank and Gaza, former president Jimmy Carter argues in an op-ed he wrote for The Washington Post on Tuesday. “This reconciliation of Palestinian factions and formation of a national unity government is necessary because it would be impossible to implement any peace agreement between Israel and...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Palestinian Official: Soak the Land with Blood to ‘Liberate JerusalemPosted By Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik On May 5, 2014 @ 12:10 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Visit Palestinian Media Watch.Even at the height of the peace negotiations with Israel, in December 2013, Fatah official Tawfiq Tirawi said that Palestinians were not committed to non-violence. Rather, he said that negotiations are just one option, and do not preclude use of the “rifle,” which the Palestinians have never abandoned. Last week, Palestinian Media Watch reported that Tirawi had essentially proclaimed the end of the peace...

And if I had to do it all over again, I’d do it in the exact same way. If a reporter agrees that a conversation or event is off-the-record, then of course he cannot print what was said during that interchange. But the unwritten rule—the one that directly applies here—is that if a reporter enters an off-the-record event uninvited and has not agreed to the off-the-record terms, he is free to report what happens inside that event. It’s the responsibility of the event organizers to keep reporters from entering events without invitations. As long as the reporter does not misrepresent...

Since the start of the ill-named “Arab Spring,” the Muslim Brotherhood has been very much in the news. Coming to power through democratic elections in Egypt and Tunisia, they were toppled within a short time by the people, who discovered their true intentions. There were some in the West – but not all – who saw the light as well. British Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered a comprehensive review of the movement,... its activities in Britain and its impact on the country’s interests. The decision was made because the Brotherhood is allegedly behind terrorist operations in Egypt, and because...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry admitted on Thursday that the unity deal between Fatah and Hamas had been unexpected. Speaking in Ethiopia, where he said it was time for the United States to take a “pause” in Israeli-Palestinian Authority (PA) peace talks, Kerry said that the deal announced last week took the U.S. by surprise, according to The Associated Press (AP). That deal, he noted, “came as a complete and total unannounced event, without any heads-up, so to speak, at the moment of important negotiations.” …

Israel-bashing figures prominently in 'teach-ins' where San Franciscans seek a flavor of the Vietnam era Let's admit it - San Francisco is gorgeous, and deserves its name as the capital of resistance to what the US is trying to do in the Middle East. After all, while other places from coast to coast had rallies and marches before and during Operation Iraqi Freedom, only there were thousands "hauled off by the pigs" for blocking the financial district, and only there was there a rally and march almost every Saturday for weeks and weeks until Saturday, April 19. But were all...

According to Robert Serry, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, the so-called reconciliation deal reached by rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas to form a “unity” government in the coming weeks may be a good development that is consistent with continued peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. He reached this conclusion based on the word of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Serry said President Abbas assured him, during a meeting he held with President Abbas in Ramallah, that the reconciliation agreement will be implemented under President Abbas’s leadership and on the basis of...

The Egyptian military recently used American-made Apache helicopter gunships to fire rockets into houses in the Sinai Peninsula, the latest in a series of lethal raids targeting a little-known Al Qaeda-inspired group that has bombed civilians. The April 23 raid came on the same day that the State Department lifted a hold on military aid to Egypt. The Obama administration has struggled for months to limit the political crackdown launched by former Field Marshal Abdel Fattah Sisi, who now heads the Egyptian government.

Sen. Rand Paul Introduces Stand with Israel Act of 2014 Bill ends foreign aid to Palestinian government Apr 29, 2014 Sen. Rand Paul today introduced the Stand with Israel Act of 2014. This legislation halts all U.S. aid to the Palestinian government until they agree to a ceasefire and recognize the right of Israel to exist. The bill, S. 2265, can be found HERE and below: "Today, I introduced legislation to make all future aid to the Palestinian government conditional upon the new unity government putting itself on the record recognizing the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish...

Wednesday, April 30, 2014 The Peace Process is the Process of Blaming Israel Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Big lies don't always start out big. They don't even always start out as lies. They only grow big in the cover-up when the truth has to be beaten off with a stick made out of even bigger lies. A brief read of the daily newspapers, a quick flick through the cable news networks and an ear cocked to the drive time news minute might give you the idea that Israel is isolated and besieged. Israel is indeed...

“Our aim is the liberation of all of historic Palestine from the (Jordan) river to the (Mediterranean) sea, even if the conflict continues for a thousand years or many more generations.” - Faisal Husseini, considered a great Palestinian moderate, in his last interview, shortly before his death in 2001. A Rubicon has just been crossed. Wednesday’s announcement by Abu Mazen of the Palestinian Authority that he has joined a national unity government with Hamas has unmasked the nature of the Fatah beast, once and for all, and revealed the naked intentions of the P.A. The fig leaf has fallen, and...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - The Self-Inflicted Palestinian VictimhoodPosted By Joseph Puder On April 29, 2014 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Palestinians are viewed on some college campuses in North America as victims of Israel, largely thanks to organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and their Islamist allies.The professional propagandists in groups such as SJP are relying on provocative imagery in their attempt to portray Israel as the oppressor. This is patently false when considering the facts. The picture of an Israeli tank facing a Palestinian rock thrower, painted by SJP and...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction espouses the same ideology of destroying Israel as Hamas, with which it signed a unity deal last Wednesday, according to newly revealed video segments of a senior Fatah official. Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi last week posted a video to YouTube of his comments from a pro-terrorist ceremony in Gaza. In his speech mere days before the unity deal, Tirawi said Gaza "will return to the bosom of legitimacy." Tirawi added "the homeland...is...all of Palestine, from its [Jordan] River to its [Mediterranean] Sea," describing a map that effectively wipes out the...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction espouses the same ideology of destroying Israel as Hamas, with which it signed a unity deal last Wednesday, according to newly revealed video segments of a senior Fatah official. Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi last week posted a video to YouTube of his comments from a pro-terrorist ceremony in Gaza. In his speech mere days before the unity deal, Tirawi said Gaza “will return to the bosom of legitimacy.” Tirawi added “the homeland…is…all of Palestine, from its [Jordan] River to its [Mediterranean] Sea,” describing a map that effectively wipes out the...

The Associated Press UNITED NATIONS — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the U.N. General Assembly Thursday that the planned national unity government will recognize Israel. The Hamas-led Palestinian government that won elections in January has refused to recognize Israel, end violence, and honor past agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Abbas heads. Abbas told the assembly's annual ministerial meeting that he has recently sought to establish a government of national unity "that is consistent with international and Arab legitimacy and that responds to the demands of the key parties promoting Mideast peace _ recognition, ending violence and...