Free Republic

On Obama's watch, the regional balance of influence and power has shifted even further away from the United States and toward Iran and its allies. The Islamic Republic has continued to deepen its alliances with Syria and Turkey and expand its influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine. And, now, the Obama administration stands by helplessly as new openings for Tehran to reset the regional balance in its favor emerge in Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and perhaps elsewhere. If these "pro-American" Arab political orders currently being challenged or upended by significant protest movements become at all more representative of their populations,...

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. Several years ago, the Israeli satirical series, Latma, produced this funny sketch on the Iranian mullahs’ push for a nuclear bomb. “The bomb, the bomb, I’ll get the bomb. Listen to me, Honey, it ain’t gonna be too long” sings the frolicking mullah in the online version of this humorous look at a most serious subject. The Israelis can joke about an Iranian nuclear bomb because they are on the front line. They know what it would mean. They don’t go on and on about “stability” in the Middle East the...

(CNSNews.com) – Turkey’s president on Sunday rejected U.S. proposals to arm Syrian Kurds fighting against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL) near the Turkish border, shortly after the White House said he and President Obama had pledged to “strengthen cooperation” against the jihadists. “It would be wrong for the United States, with whom we are friends and allies in NATO, to talk openly and to expect us to say ‘yes’ to such a support to a terrorist organization,” said President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His comments were the latest sign that Turkey and the U.S. are far from being...

An Arab Israeli doctor has been killed fighting for the Islamic State group in Syria, Israel's Shin Bet domestic security service said on Sunday. The agency said Othman Abu al-Qiyan, who studied medicine in Jordan and worked as an intern at an Israeli hospital, had died in the fighting in August. His brother Idris had been arrested by Israeli security forces in April and charged the following month with aiding Othman and another relative, Shafiq Abu al-Qiyan to travel to Syria via Turkey to join IS. All three were from the Bedouin village of Hura in Israel's southern Negev desert,...

The announcement by Sweden’s new prime minister that his government plans to extend recognition to a “Palestinian” state raises major questions in both international and United Nations law. Israelis are frequently asked: “Why is Israel opposed to recognizing a Palestinian state? Detach yourselves from the Palestinians like the French detached themselves from Algeria and the two states will live in peace with each other as was originally envisaged under the 1947 Partition Resolution...”

On Sunday morning, Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount—the holiest site in Judaism—were appalled to find that Muslim worshipers had daubed anti-Semitic graffiti equating the Jewish Star of David to the Nazi swastika. Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick first uploaded a photo of the shocking graffiti onto his Facebook account, along with a statement blaming the lack of proper response by authorities to Islamist rioting and provocations, and accusing the government of burying its head in the sand. “When they make light of the torching of a police station on the Temple Mount, when the sole response to daily Muslim...

Germany does about-face on refusal to grant 30-percent discount for vessels Germany has agreed to slash about one-third off the price of three fast missile boats, which Israel wants to buy, putting to rest a crisis between the two countries. he vessels, priced at almost $1 billion, are intended to protect the gas rigs off Israel’s shore. According to the daily Haaretz, Israel had asked for a 30-percent discount such as it had received on the purchase of German submarines. But at the beginning of May, German’s national security adviser Christoph Heusgen told his Israeli counterpart Yossi Cohen following the...

DEBKAfile remains temporarily on hold, due to the chief editor's sudden illness. Service is due to be resumed early December, 2014. Please accept our apologies for this interruption and assurance that DEBKA will be up and running again after this delay.

The Obama administration stopped shipping to Israel all defense items – and not just Hellfire missiles as previously reported – for a short time in the middle of the war against Hamas, reported Israel Defense’s Amir Rappaport, the well-informed and highly credibly editor of the website. Makor Rishon added to that report that the US actually cut off all communications with Israel’s Ministry of Defense purchasing offices in the US for days.

Arab terrorists hurling molotov cocktail firebombs at Jewish homes, trying to burn entire families as they sleep - it has become part of a routine of terror in the Israeli capital of Jerusalem, where a "silent intifada" has been raging under the radar of major news outlets. A new video shows just shocking and potentially lethal the wave of terror has become; the video, uploaded to YouTube on Thursday, shows Arab terrorists from the Al Sawana neighborhood just east of the Old City, between the Mount of Olives and Hebrew University's Mount Scopus campus, lobbing firebombs at Jewish homes. The...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman called Jews visiting the Temple Mount a "herd of cattle" on Saturday, less than 24 hours after he incited violence against Jews visiting Judaism's holiest site and called to prevent their access "by all means." "The Palestinian leadership will be taking the necessary legal measures, at the international level, regarding the aggression of settlers on the Al-Aqsa mosque," Abbas said in a speech to the Revolutionary Council of his Fatah party. "We will not allow settlers to attack the mosque," he added, referring to Jews visiting the site as a "herd of cattle." On Saturday, Abbas...

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the terror organization behind the Palestinian Authority (PA), called for a comprehensive strategy against Islamic extremism on Saturday - by blaming Israel for rising radicalization a la' the remarks of US Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry insisted on Friday that the failure of peace talks between Israel and the PA - not Western apathy to Islamism nor the US's failures to resolve tensions in Iraq - was the culprit for the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) group, sparking outrage from Israeli officials. "There wasn't a leader I met... who didn't raise with me...

Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon criticized Economic Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) on Saturday night, after the latter issued a fiery response to the words of US Secretary of State John Kerry Friday linking peace talks with ISIS. According to Ya'alon, Bennett's criticism lacks respect for the financial and diplomatic support the US has provided for Israel's right to self-defense against Hamas terrorism. "Relations between the United States and Israel are based on shared interests and values​​, and a dispute or other comments should not cast a shadow over that," Ya'alon stated. "The United States supports Israel in a variety of...

The US State Department highly disparaged the remarks of Economics Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) against Secretary of State John Kerry's linkage of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and ISIS, claiming that Bennett was "distorting" the remarks for his "own political purposes." "I would take issue with the part of your question that Israeli leaders, plural, have disagreed with what they thought the Secretary said," State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf stated Friday, when questioned over Kerry's remarks at a press briefing. "I saw one in particular. And we would say to that that we know passions run high, politics are intense,...

A regional judge in Munich is embroiled in a highly charged dispute over her statement in a civil case that German anti-Semitism was limited to the Nazi period of 1933-1945, suggesting that post-Holocaust anti-Semitism is not a factor in Jew-hatred. The Munich regional judge, Petra Grönke-Müller, sparked outrage on October 8 with her courtroom assertion during a civil case that “a fiery anti-Semite is someone in Germany who talks, with conviction, in an anti-Semitic way and, with conviction, does not condemn the Third Reich and cannot view the period 1933-1945 as separate from the background of history.” […] Speaking to...

The Palestinian U.N. ambassador said Friday his government wants the U.N. Security Council to vote on a resolution before the end of the year that would set November 2016 as the deadline for Israeli troops to withdraw from all Palestinian territories. Riyad Mansour said Friday that if the resolution is defeated—which is almost certain because of opposition from Israel’s closest ally the United States and others—the Palestinians have other options. …

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suggested Jews should be banned from a holy site revered by both Jews and Muslims after hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza participated in a Hamas-organized rally Friday over Jerusalem’s flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque, the scene of recurring clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in recent days. […] Abbas said Jews should be prevented from entering the site “by any means,” adding that “this is our Noble Sanctuary… they have no right to enter and desecrate it.” Palestinians also say Israel is unfairly restricting access at the site. Israel limited male Muslim worshippers this past week to...

For more than a decade, Berlin has been governed by an openly homosexual mayor. But is the city, renowned for its tolerance, ready for a leader from a Palestinian background? It may have to be. […] … Berlin SPD parliamentary leader Raed Saleh only needs to open his mouth to stand out from the crowd. Saleh came to Berlin at the age of five with his Palestinian parents, and although his German is beyond reproach, he speaks the language with a distinct Arabic twang. “Berlin is a city of diversity; a city of 100 different accents,” Saleh told DW. “People...

The latest round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program took place this week, pitting the United States and its European partners against the Iranian regime’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. It seems safe to say that if Iran and the United States can’t come to a workable compromise this week, and it certainly appears that way based on what has already transpired, there will be no basis for a final deal on Nov. 24. But there are serious outstanding questions about what a viable compromise would look like. This was made clear last week, when Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s...

Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. This piece is reprinted with permission and can be found on Abrams' blog "Pressure Points" here. The New York Times, whose hostility to Israel is visible in both its news and its editorial ‎pages, was at it again this week. In an editorial (about the symbolic vote in the U.K. ‎parliament backing Palestinian statehood) titled "A British Message to Israel," The ‎Times's editorial board unloaded yet again with a barrage of advice, opinion -- and untruths.‎ Here are some of the key words:‎ "The...