Free Republic

To date, the Republican presidential primary race has been the only place to have generated any useful contributions to America's collective understanding of current events in the Middle East. Last month, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich became the first major political figure in more than a generation to pour cold water over the Palestinian myth of indigenous peoplehood by stating the truth, that the Palestinians are an "invented people." As Gingrich explained, their invention came in response to Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement. Since they were created somewhere around 1920, the Palestinians' main purpose has not been...

There was a time when the lands now known as Israel, (including Judea and Samaria and Gaza), and most of Jordan were called “Palestine”. In fact, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 declared “His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. There followed considerable cooperation between the Jews, represented by Chaim Weizmann and the Arabs living in Mesopotamia, now Iraq, and Jordan, represented by Emir Feisal. As a result, the Feisal-Weizmann Agreement was signed in January 1919, in which it was agreed that the Jews would get the lands lying west...

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood will not recognize Israel “under any circumstance,” the party’s deputy leader Dr. Rashad Bayoumi told Arabic daily al-Hayat in an interview published on Sunday. … When asked whether it is a requirement for the government in Egypt to recognize Israel, Bayoumi responded by saying: “This is not an option, whatever the circumstances, we do not recognize Israel at all. It’s an occupying criminal enemy.” The deputy leader stressed during the interview that no Muslim Brotherhood members would ever meet with Israelis for negotiations.“I will not allow myself to sit down with criminals.” Bayoumi went on to say...

Daniel Seidemann, the author of “The Myth of Undivided Jerusalem,” published by The Atlantic, is the founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, an “Israeli” non-governmental organization that works to prevent developments, even if good for the city’s residents, from taking place if said developments leave the city indivisible. The top three donors of this NGO are The Norwegian Foreign Ministry, The Swiss Foreign Ministry, and The British Foreign Ministry -- all of whom want Jerusalem divided -- according to the organization’s own website. The article is part of the effort of The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace to “help...

The Peace Process, that horrible masochistic program of terrorist empowerment, is a fading mirage that no one believes in anymore. The "peace process" which created two terrorist states inside Israel may have begun in Oslo, but it ended in Cairo. Normalizing relations with the rest of the Middle East was one of the carrots that got the Jewish state hopping down the appeasement trial-- and that carrot is now officially off the table. ..... As the West follows the Islam appeasement track domestically and internationally, its relationship with Israel will continue to degrade. The Peace Process was an expression of...

This question always elicits different opinions. Obviously, in part, the answers depend on one's definition of "friend" or of "enemy." The most famous articulation of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Israel was made by Henry Kissinger in 1975 when talking to an Iraqi diplomat. To wit: We don't need Israel for influence in the Arab world. On the contrary, Israel does us more harm than good in the Arab world[.] ... We can't negotiate about the existence of Israel but we can reduce its size to historical proportions[.] Before the '67 War, U.S. policy was mostly hostile in that the U.S. imposed...

US Secretary of defense, Leon Panetta, just came to town and warned that Israel is becoming “increasingly isolated” and must restart negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and work to restore relations with Egypt and Turkey. Why? According to Fox News, he said the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East makes it critical for the Israelis to find ways to communicate with other nations in the region in order to have stability. His remarks come on the heels of Bill Clinton's attack on Netanyahu for the failure of the peace process and Gates’ parting shot according to Elliot Abrams “Gates argued...

Secretary of State Clinton, in a sharp departure from her stance when she was a senator, is warning that any American action, even symbolically, toward recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel must be avoided for the reason that it would jeopardize the peace process. Her warnings were issued in a brief she has just filed with the Supreme Court — in which she is arguing that a law she voted for when she was Senator is unconstitutional because it could require the U.S. government to give to an American citizen born at Jerusalem papers showing the birthplace as Israel.

Despite the avalanche of articles analyzing U.S. President Barack Obama's May 19, 2011 Middle East speech, one irony has not been mentioned. The president laid out a magnificent blueprint for the countries in the region to follow in order to ensure dignity, freedom, and hope for their citizens. But all the president had to do was look reality in the face, and find his vision reflected in Israel. Yet Israel was the only country which the president wants both to shrink, and away from which he told Arabs to turn. Obama's refusal to credit Israel's freedom as a value for...

Palestinian negotiators privately agreed that only 10, 000 refugees and their families – out of a total refugee population exceeding 5 million – could return to Israel as part of a peace settlement, leaked confidential documents reveal. PLO leaders also accepted Israel's demand to define itself as an explicitly Jewish state, in sharp contrast to their public position. The latest disclosures from thousands of pages of secret Palestinian records of more than a decade of failed peace talks, obtained by al-Jazeera TV... The latest documents to be released reveal: • The-then Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, repeatedly pressed in 2007-08...

American policy regarding the Arab/Israel conflict has not changed since the Armistice Agreement in 1949. American policy sought to to achieve a holy balance in the Israeli-Arab conflict. ”This policy had its origins in the tripartite U.S.-British-French declaration in 1950, against arms sales to either side. The Soviets exploited this policy to sell arms to the Arabs, and the French looked after their own interests when they supplied weapons to Israel, but the Americans preserved an outward appearance of egalitarianism.” So reported Haaretz in 2007 based on then recently released documents. “Washington's support for the existence, independence and territorial integrity...

For anyone interested in the "Peace Process" in the Middle East, laughingly called the "Road Map" by the deluded or simply antisemitic, it may come as no surprise at all that there are Palestinian claims of responsibility for the Carmel forest fire, and that there are graphics-heavy threads on jihadist sites gloating hysterically over the nice recollections of the ovens of Auschwitz.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is moving away from the principle of a negotiated settlement with Israel under the auspices of the United States because it seems to have concluded that the United States is unable to force or bribe Israel into abandoning its fundamental principles, that: a) The State of Israel is a legitimate, permanent expression of the sovereignty of the Jewish people in its historic homeland.b) The 1949 Armistice Lines are not borders. Borders have to be established through negotiation and the permanent borders of Israel may include land to the east of the line.c) Jerusalem is the capital...

Al Quds al-Arabi reports that PLO, Fatah plan to push for a unilateral abrogation of all Oslo and Road Map commitments, including fighting terror, in response to failed peace talks. The Palestinian Authority will stop coordinating its security with Israel, in response to the US's official announcement that peace talks have failed, Al Quds al-Arabi reported on Friday. Khana Amira, a PLO official, told the UK newspaper that the PA is also considering canceling its other commitments to Israel, including the Oslo Accords and the Road Map, which demand that terror organizations will stop. Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO...

Come hell or high water, President Obama is determined to create a Palestinian state during his watch. He has been doing his utmost to attack and pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu to support the two-state solution, which Netanyahu did in part in his Bar Ilan speech, and to freeze construction, which he did for ten months ending September 26/10. To no avail. Because of the backlash Obama experienced last summer from Jewish leaders, he was forced to start a charm offensive in the lead up to the Nov 2nd mid-terms. Now, all bets are off. His determination to create a Palestinian...

Come hell or high water, President Obama is determined to create a Palestinian state during his watch. He has been doing his utmost to attack and pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu to support the two-state solution which Netanyahu did in part in his Bar Ilan speech and to freeze construction which he did for ten months ending September 26/10. To no avail. Because of the backlash Obama experienced last summer from Jewish leaders, he was forced to start a charm offensive in the lead up to the Nov 2nd mid-terms. Now, all bets are off. His determination to create a Palestinian...

Ever since the defeat of the combined strength of numerous Arab countries in their vain but strident attempt to dissolve the Jewish state and her people, the world has conspired through the United Nations to replace Israel with the figment of a deranged reality known as the palestinian nation. Seek any fragment, mere mention, slightest hint, or even a wisp of smoke that pretended the existence of a palestinian nation made up of palestinian Arabs previous to June of 1967. The only entity you will find was the PLO, which, according to its own charter, was formed not to free...

No doubt PM Netanyahu would have rather spent the last 18 months in hell than to have spent it participating in the peace process under brutal pressure by the Obama administration. Come to think of it, it must have been hell. Keep in mind that Netanyahu was voted into office on a platform which denied the two-state solution. The Obama administration succeeded in forcing a dramatic change in that policy. Or did it? On June 14/09 Netanyahu delivered a speech at Bar Ilan University in which he appeared to accept a two state solution with these words, “In my vision...

Israel must say “no” to extending the freeze formally or de facto. Israel must also say “no” to the peace process sooner or later. Even if Israel continued to build and the PA was prepared to return to the peace process, Israel should refuse to negotiate unless of course she is prepared to swallow the deal the international community has in store for her. According to FM Avigdor Leiberman, “During my recent visit to the US I learned that Washington is planning to force a permanent agreement on Israel – two states for two peoples along the 1967 borders, plus-minus...

Last week Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad angrily left a UN Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee meeting and canceled a scheduled subsequent press conference with Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon in New York. He did so after Ayalon refused to approve a summary of the meeting which said “two states” but did not include the words “two states for two peoples.”. Ayalon said afterwards “What I say is that if the Palestinians are not willing to talk about two states for two peoples, let alone a Jewish state for Israel, then there’s nothing to talk about, … if the Palestinians mean, at...