Free Republic

Israel paid Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend of Sadat. Israel paid Syrian President Bashar Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend to assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Dr. Mahmoud Jame’ said Sadat was briefed on the deal, according to the Jordanian-based Albawaba website. Jame’, a member of the first Consultative Council in Egypt, said, “One morning Sadat took me with him in private and without a guard to the (Syrian part of the) Golan...

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's justice minister on Tuesday said Israel should buy the disputed Golan Heights from Syria as a way of keeping hold of the strategic plateau. Numerous attempts to negotiate Syrian-Israeli peace have collapsed over the question of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War. A peace agreement proposed in 2000 fell apart over Syria's rejection of an Israeli demand to keep the Sea of Galilee's eastern shore, which lies at the foot of the heights. ``We have to find an original way to keep the Golan Heights in Israeli hands in ...

Netanyahu speaks of regional threats; cabinet approves bill to increase number of ministers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the start of a cabinet meeting Sunday morning, mentioned that since the outgoing government's first cabinet meeting two years ago, the region has been in constant tumult. “Despite the many attempts to challenge us from our borders, we fended off all these efforts without exception,” he said. Netanyahu mentioned Hezbollah in south Lebanon, the efforts by Iran to open up a new front against Israel on the Golan Heights, attempts to transfer advanced weaponry from Syria to Lebanon, and efforts by Hamas...

George Clooney pledges to support Hillary Clinton any way he can It looks like Hillary Clinton’s got the #TeamClooney vote on lock. In a new interview with Fusion’s Jorge Ramos, George Clooney says that he’ll assist Clinton, whom he describes as a “tremendous candidate,” in “whatever way [he] can help.”

When the F-15 was created, it was created to be a pure air-to-air fighter, with the philosophy of “not a pound for air-to-ground” guiding designers. So how did Israel end up turning their F-15s into deadly long-range multi-role strike aircraft well before the F-15E Strike Eagle became a reality? Here’s how. In Need Of A Game Changing Fighter Israel’s love affair with the F-15 began out of the need to procure a fighter that could trump the increasingly complex fighters that surrounding Arab states were amassing from Russian and French sources. Both the F-14 Tomcat and the F-15 Eagle were...

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday said that after a new Israeli government has been sworn in he will investigate whether there are "realistic options" for a return to peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), Reuters reports. "Once a new government has been sworn in, the Secretary-General will explore with Prime Minister Netanyahu realistic options for a return to meaningful negotiations on a two state solution," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, after Netanyahu was able to clinch a deal to form a coalition hours before a deadline. Dujarric also said Ban was "deeply concerned by recent...

Lebanon’s Hezbollah is on the verge of launching an offensive against Syrian rebel groups in the mountainous Qalamoun region straddling the Syria-Lebanon border, north of Damascus. But what was once seen as a relatively minor engagement in the broader Syrian conflict has taken on new significance. After military setbacks in the north and south of the country in the past six weeks, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is desperate for a victory and is depending on his Shia Hezbollah allies to deliver it. Assad and his Iranian and Hezbollah allies badly need to defeat — and to be seen...

NEW YORK (RNS) Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart of Aleppo is returning to the front line of the real war on Christians, which he calls home — that is, Aleppo in war-torn Syria, where his ancient church faces the threat of extinction.

Dorin Cioba the leader of three million Roma around the world, landed in Israel on Wednesday. Roma are widely known as Gypsies. On his first visit to Israel, Cioba, who is president of the International Romani Union, plans to visit the Roma community in Jerusalem as well as the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. The photographer Roni Ben-Ari invited Cioaba to Israel for the opening of her exhibit that documents the life of Gypsies in the city of Lugoj, Romania. The exhibit opens on Thursday at the Museum of Israeli Art in Ramat Gan. "This is the first time that I...

Hundreds of people from Iran and around the world have submitted art for a “Holocaust cartoon contest,” an official from the competition said Monday. Secretary Masud Shojaei-Tabatabaii told Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency that 839 works had been submitted to the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, a cynical sequel to a much derided 2006 competition making light of the slaughter of 6 million Jews in Europe during World War II. Organizers putting on the contest say it is designed to highlight the world’s double standard in defending caricatures of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, whose depiction is taboo in Islam. The...

Iran has released a container ship it seized in the Strait of Hormuz last week, state media report. A source at Iran's Ports and Maritime Organisation was quoted by the official Iran news agency as saying that the Maersk Tigris "was free to leave". The Marshall Islands-flagged ship and its crew of 24 were intercepted by Iranian patrol boats on the 28 April.

The agreement, which was struck just two hours before the final deadline for Netanyahu to cobble together a ruling government, paves the way for a narrow, 61-seat coalition. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud faction on Wednesday reached an agreement with the religious Zionist Bayit Yehudi on the formation of a rightist coalition, Israel Radio reported. The agreement, which was struck just two hours before the final deadline for Netanyahu to cobble together a ruling government, paves the way for a narrow, 61-seat coalition. By law, if Netanyahu failed to form a government by midnight on Wednesday, President Reuven Rivlin...

An Iranian naval fleet chased a U.S. warship and military planes through the waters off the southern coast of Yemen late Monday in yet another provocative encounter between the two nations, according to Iranian state media reports. A U.S. warship and several planes reportedly “changed their direction” on Monday after encountering an Iranian naval fleet during a patrol in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen, Iranian state media revealed. The U.S. military assets fled “after they came close to an Iranian naval fleet and were warned to move away,” Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency reported. Iran also released video of...

The Obama administration is quietly pushing Sunni Arab allies in the Persian Gulf to create an advanced missile defense system, and is preparing to ramp up sophisticated weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in an effort to ease regional fears over a potential nuclear deal with Iran. With Secretary of State John F. Kerry set to visit Saudi Arabia Wednesday and Thursday, officials privately say the administration is weighing whether to offer Riyadh — already a major buyer of American and European weaponry — GBU-28 bunker buster bombs Washington has so far only been willing to provide to Israel. The discussions...

Capitalism is a wonderful thing - except when it isn't. Several US businessmen - oil execs for instance - are eagerly waiting for the day when "normalizing" relations with Iran would lead to exploiting the business opportunities offered by the mullahs. The Hill: Leaders from the United States’ oil industry are traveling to Iran this week to discuss potential investment opportunities, Iran’s government said. The delegation of oil company leaders and investors are visiting Iran in anticipation of sanctions being loosened against Tehran, Iran’s state-owned Mehr News Agency reported Monday. “It is forecast that by the visit of [the] American delegation...

(CNN)A series of victories by Islamist rebels against the Syrian regime is raising the prospect of a sea change in the momentum of a war in which the endurance of Bashar al-Assad has for years seemed to many as a given. Substantial territorial losses by the regime in the northern city of Jisr-el-Shugur and beyond, after the city of Idlib also fell to rebels, coupled with a relatively successful series of advances around the southwest of Damascus, are the result of new levels of cooperation among rebel groups that have spent the past years fighting each other for supremacy, to...

Besides the fact that I am recovering from major hand surgery, I am finding it difficult to write these days. I am using a dictation program as well as utilizing Fancy Assistant Brandon’s typing skills, so it’s not that I have no way to communicate with the outside world. The problem is with Israel. It’s on my mind pretty much all of the time. When the three teenagers were kidnapped a month ago, it was on my mind. When they were found murdered and left in an open field, it was on my mind. When Jewish extremists burned a Palestinian...

<p>Now and then I get letters and e-mail messages asking why I am so "obsessed" with Jews and Israel. The question amuses me. It would be one thing if I often wrote about Mali, or Honduras, or Borneo, or any other nation or country most people remember only as a name from geography class.</p>

This is not what the world considers hate speech. What the world considers hate speech is opposing this.“Egyptian Cleric Saad Abu Aziz: Jews Are a Malignant Tumor That Must Be Eradicated,” MEMRI, April 24, 2015 (thanks to Pamela Geller): In an April 24 Friday sermon, which he posted on the Internet, Egyptian cleric Saad Yusuf Abu Aziz declared that the Jews are “a malignant tumor” as demonstrated by their “dark history.” The sermon was delivered in Al-Zawiya Al-Gharbiya Mosque in Ghamrin, in Monufia governorate.

Iran would have enough enriched uranium within three months to be able to make up to eight nuclear weapons if negotiations with the international community blow up, Vice President Joe Biden said late Thursday, noting that "the path has already been paved" for that outcome. Biden's remarks at a dinner for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy played off concerns by critics, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that the Obama administration is negotiating an agreement that paves the path for Iran to get a nuclear weapon. "Let's get something straight so we don't kid each other," Biden said....