Free Republic

An Iranian general has accused Israel of stealing its clouds in order to manipulate weather and cause drought in the Islamic Republic. Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran's Civil Defence Organisation said that the changing climate in Iran is 'suspect'. 'Foreign interference is suspected to have played a role in climate change,' said Jalali, who insisted results from an Iranian scientific study 'confirm' the claim. 'Israel and another country in the region have joint teams which work to ensure clouds entering Iranian skies are unable to release rain,' he said. 'On top of that, we are facing the...

Rioters hurl rocks, Molotov cocktails and a bomb at troops, incendiary balloons spark 15 fires in Israel; small Israeli drone downed; over 100 Palestinians said hurtTwo Palestinians were killed Friday in violent demonstrations along the Gaza Strip’s border with Israel, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said. A 13-year-old was fatally shot in the head and a 24-year-old man died of gunshot wounds to his leg and abdomen, the ministry said. According to some reports, the boy was shot while sabotaging the border fence. A paramedic told AP the teenager was throwing stones “very close to the fence” before he was shot.Around...

Israel is rushing to secure its northeastern border after the latest onslaught from Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad drove 120,000 people to flee their homes. A war monitoring group said today that most of the refugees are heading towards the border with Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. A senior Israeli minister said refugees gathering at the Golan frontier must be prevented from crossing into Israel.

The socialist congressional candidate whose primary-election upset of a Democratic House leader made national news this week claimed Israel committed a “massacre” of Palestinians in Gaza, despite the admission of Hamas that most of the dead were Hamas operatives. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, wrote in a May 14 tweet that the killing of some 60 Palestinians in “March of Return” protests that day was a “massacre” and that “no state or entity is absolved of mass shootings of protesters,” reported the Jewish News Syndicate. “There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else,” she said. “Democrats can’t...

A progressive Democrat in New York who called Israel’s killing of violent Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border a “massacre” scored a major upset over incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a contentious party primary. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, defeated Crowley, 56, by a margin of 58-42 percent in Tuesday’s election, toppling a lawmaker who was viewed as the successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ocasio-Cortez belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America and is a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who ran as a Democrat in the 2016 presidential primaries. New...

Four Arab countries are backing Donald Trump’s plan for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, according to an Israeli newspaper, and are willing to sideline the PA’s President Mahmoud Abbas to see it done. According to a report in Israel Hayom, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan told Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law and the man charged with solving the Israel-Palestine issue, and envoy Jason Greenblatt they were behind Washington’s so-called “deal of the century”. Israel Hayom, a daily newspaper owned by billionaires Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, reported that it spoke to officials from...

The U.S. has reportedly suspended aid to the Palestinian Authority amid ongoing Middle East peace talks. I24 News, which is based in Israel, reported Monday that the U.S. froze funding as part of the Taylor Force Act, which requires Palestinian officials to end payments to terrorist groups and take steps to stop those groups’ behavior. The news outlet, citing a White House official and a Senate aide, also reported that certain Palestinian programs have been put on hold because the West Bank and Gaza office of USAID have not received a budget for the coming year. USAID provides funding for...

Over the weekend, Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated the Obama administration’s commitment to taking in 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next fiscal year and announced that the federal government would be increasing its annual total refugee cap from 70,000 to 100,000 by 2017, to accommodate more refugees from war-torn Syria. “This step that I am announcing today, I believe, is in keeping with the best tradition of America as a land of second chances and a beacon of hope,” said Kerry on Sunday during a trip to Germany. Also on Sunday, Hillary Clinton called on the administration to...

“What the regime feared most is happening,” Alinejad tells me. “Tehran had stayed calm as nationwide protests at the beginning of the year engulfed 80 cities. Now an impromptu protest in Tehran by merchants against economic mismanagement has turned into a massive anti-regime event, with chants of death to dictator and death to Palestine.”

Report says plan requires Hamas return soldiers' bodies, missing Israelis in exchange for port's establishment

Prince William arrived in Jordan on Sunday on the first stop of a five-day Middle East tour that will make him the first British royal to pay an official visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Duke of Cambridge was greeted by Crown Prince Hussein, the son of Jordan's King Abdullah II, at the airport in Jordan's capital, Amman. The Jordanian prince then drove William to a technology-focused event for young people linked to the Crown Prince Foundation. Kensington Palace tweeted that Prince William was "looking forward to building a real and enduring relationship with the people of the...

Hamas paid family to claim Gaza baby was killed by Israeli tear gas, says cousin Mahmoud Omar, arrested by Israel for terror-related offenses, tells interrogators his relatives lied: 8-month-old Layla actually died from fatal blood condition that runs in family. A 20-year-old Palestinian indicted Thursday on terror-related charges told Israeli investigators during his interrogation that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar paid his relatives to falsely tell the media that his baby cousin died of tear gas inhalation. The story of baby Layla Ghandour’s death, purportedly from inhaling tear gas fired by Israel at the Gaza border, made headlines around the world...

At least five projectiles fell within Israeli communities, two landing near a community center and one next to a kindergarten where children later arrived for the last day of the school year, officials said. The kindergarten, “the second to be struck by mortars launched from Gaza in the past two weeks, has a reinforced ceiling,” Conricus said. In response, Israeli fighter jets hit 25 targets belonging to Hamas, the militia that governs the Palestinian territory. The night-long salvo followed two Israeli air force strikes against infrastructure belonging to Hamas on Tuesday. One of the targets, the Israeli military revealed on...

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are relentlessly flying a variety of airborne arson and explosive devices into Israel, causing hundreds of fires, millions of shekels in damageFor over two months, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been flying kites, birthday balloons and inflated latex condoms into Israel, relying on the gentle Mediterranean coastal breeze to push them across the border. Silly as they may sound, these weapons are no joke. Most of them carry metal mesh pouches containing a burning piece of coal or oil-soaked rag, which have sparked hundreds of fires in southern Israel, destroying thousands of acres of...

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, when the Welsh magus Glendower boasts, “I can call spirits from the vasty deep,” the sceptic Hotspur retorts, “Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?” For seven decades the West’s foreign policy establishment has been trying to call Middle East peace from depths of endless summits and conferences and agreements with ritualistic chants of “land for peace” and “two-state solution.” But all they’ve managed to produce is war, terrorism,...

Israel will strike against Iranian efforts to entrench itself militarily throughout Syria, and not only along the Syrian-Israeli border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Russian President Vladimir Putin and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over the weekend. Netanyahu told the weekly cabinet meeting that he spoke with both men and discussed the region, with an emphasis on Syria. The prime minister said he reiterated and made clear the principles guiding Israeli policy toward Syria. “First of all, Iran needs to withdraw from all of Syria,” he said. “Second, we will take action – and are already taking action –...

Elham Ahmed confirmed that we are fully prepared for dialogue and starting direct negotiations with the Syrian regime if the latter is already ready to initiate such a step. Hawar news agency (ANHA) interviewed with the Co-chair of Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), Elham Ahmed about recent events that are taking place, said we are fully prepared to negotiate. Where Elham Ahmed said that the war and military option will not solve the Syrian crisis. "We from the beginning said and still say that we are ready for dialogue and start direct negotiations with the regime." Elham Ahmed said they were...

There is a long way to go before the UN can gain any legitimacy on anything to do with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict At an emergency meeting held on June 13th, the United Nation General Assembly adopted another one-sided resolution against Israel. The resolution, proposed by Turkey and Algeria, deplored the use of allegedly excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate force by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and particularly the Gaza Strip. The anti-Israel resolution demanded that Israel refrain from such actions and fully abide by its legal obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention relating...

GENEVA (Reuters) - Talks with the United States over how to reform the main U.N. rights body have failed to meet Washington’s demands, activists and diplomats say, suggesting that the Trump administration will quit the Geneva forum whose session opens on Monday. A U.S. source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the withdrawal appeared to be “imminent” but had no details. Diplomatic sources said it was not a question of if but of when the United States retreats from the Human Rights Council, which is holding a three-week session through July 6. A separate U.S. official in Geneva had...

Sarah Idan, Iraq’s 2017 Miss Universe beauty pageant contestant, is visiting Israel this week, a trip that has enraged people back home. Idan was criticized and received death threats after taking a selfie with Israeli contestant Adal Gandelsman during last November’s competition. She arrived in Israel this week and reunited with Gandelsman during a visit organized by the American Jewish Committee to “talk about peace.” Miss Iraq, who currently resides in the U.S., received the title in 2017 after the original winner was disqualified for being married. Her appearance in Israel drew harsh criticism from Iraqis on social media. Iraq...