Free Republic

The mystery of the Mountain Meadows skull has apparently been solved. The skull, which had been found in a box marked “Mountain Meadows” in an Idaho pawn shop in February, had what was thought to be a bullet hole in it. There was speculation that the skull was that of a victim of the Mountain Meadows massacre, a September 1857 event in which about 120 men, women and children, mostly emigrants from Arkansas, were killed in Utah. According to Phil Bolinger and Jake Fancher, it has been determined that the skull is that of a Vietnamese female. Bolinger and Fancher...

Sunday, May 17, 2015 Liberating Our Jerusalem Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog When Jordan's Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city-- the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and...

A confrontation broke out between security personnel from the American consulate and settlers from the Adei Ad outpost in the West Bank on Friday, after settlers hurled stones at two vehicles from the consulate. According to both Palestinian and settler sources, the American security guards drew their weapons at the settlers. A preliminary police investigation of the clashes between American security personnel and Israeli settlers discovered the consulate employees had arrived at the Adei Ad outpost in Samaria without coordination with the appropriate defense officials. An official from the village of Turmus Ayya, near the scene of the incident, said...

The Islamic Jihad terrorist group said on Wednesday that “settlers” were a “legitimate target” for “the resistance”, the Ma’an news agency reported. In a statement, Islamic Jihad held Israeli authorities and the army responsible for what it said were “continuous attacks on Palestinians, their lands and religious sites.” The statement condemned the “crime” of the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, which the group blamed on Israel and said was “a continuation of a series of crimes by the Israeli army and settlers.” The burnt body of 16-year-old Abu Khdeir was found in the Jerusalem Forest area on Wednesday morning. While...

The European Union (EU) on Thursday condemned Israeli announcements earlier in the day and on Wednesday night to build another 3,300 housing units in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. The EU said it is “deeply disappointed” by the Israeli plans to build more Jewish homes in the Biblical heartland of Israel. […] European diplomats told Walla! that by announcing the construction, Israel was “playing with fire,” threatening that the construction “will cause international isolation and damage to Israel.” …

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said on Monday he had asked world powers to classify Israeli settler groups who attack Palestinian communities and holy sites as terrorist organizations. The move comes as part of a Palestinian drive to refer their demands for an independent state in Israeli-occupied territory to more international bodies since U.S.-backed peace talks collapsed last month. Malki said militant settlers known as the "Hilltop Youth" and vigilantes who use the "price tag" slogan "practice terror ... constantly against the Palestinian people, their land, holy places and property." "Price tag" refers to retribution the settlers say they will...

ormer Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Friday that if talks he held with Palestinians in 2008 had produced a peace deal, it would have forced tens of thousands of Jewish settlers to leave their homes in the West Bank. If a deal had been reached at the time, it would also not have included an Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, Olmert said. More than five years on, the fate of the Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley, along with recognition of Israel as the Jewish national homeland, are key sticking points in the ongoing Mideast peace talks brokered...

As expected, the Palestinian Authority (PA) reacted with outrage on Sunday to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s idea that if a Palestinian state is established in Judea and Samaria, Jews who wish to remain in that state should be allowed to do so. While Netanyahu did not publicly make this statement, a source in the Prime Minister's Office told reporters that Netanyahu believes there is no reason for the Palestinian state, if it is created, to be “mono-ethnic.” The source explained that the idea is a continuation of Netanyahu's statement in his speech at Davos, Switzerland, on Friday, in which he...

Former minister Yossi Beilin said Saturday that former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was a man with a short temper and a long streak of nastiness when it came to dealing with residents of towns in Judea and Samaria. “It wasn't worthy behavior for a Prime Minister,” said Beilin, a former Labor politician who was identified with the radical-left elements of the party. Beilin, one of the proponents of the Geneva Initiative, which advocated a total Israeli withdrawal from all lands liberated in 1967, said that Rabin “would fight with the settlers for fighting's sake. When you want to remove thousands...

In an outdoor café, wearing jeans and his trademark black T-shirt, Finance Minister Yair Lapid gave his first interview to foreign press since taking office. “Lapid has embarked on a media blitz, deploying his telegenic good looks and sound-bite savvy,” the newspaper observed. In the interview, Lapid acknowledged that thousands of settlers would someday be uprooted, something he called “heartbreaking.” The interview itself revolved mainly around the stalemated negotiations with the Palestinians, but also on the future aspirations of the Yesh Atid chairman. Lapid told the NYT that he is still hoping to succeed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but clarified:...

France and the Netherlands have joined an initiative by 13 EU states to help European consumers boycott goods made by Israeli settlers on Palestinian land.Foreign ministers from the group—which also includes Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and the UK—put forward their ideas in a letter to EU foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton on 11 April. … In a sign the letter is more than just rhetoric, the ministers pledged “effective implementation” of existing EU laws and promised to “circulate” Ashton’s previous appeal on labeling “to our [other] ministries and enforcement bodies.” …

Support for Naftali Bennett’s ascendant right-wing Jewish Home party comes largely at the expense of the Likud-Yisrael Beytenu list and its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — and nowhere is this more pronounced than among the largely Orthodox settler population. Reportedly, the trend has prompted Likud to “play rough” and convey the message that if these Israelis fail to vote for Likud-Beytenu in January 22′s election, the consequences for the entire settler movement could be grave. The emphasis of the ruling party’s new approach is on the many settlers who enlisted as Likud members so they could participate in the...

Some 20 settlers entered the Palestinian village of Jalud near the Esh Kodesh outpost on Wednesday night, threw stones at windows and attacked a child, according to security sources. The child was lightly injured and taken to the hospital. Incidents such as this, a security source said, are viewed very seriously. They undermine safety in the area, and divert the IDF and Border Police’s attention, a source said. The source noted that the IDF was still investigating the incident, which stemmed from a land dispute between the Esh Kodesh outpost and nearby Palestinian villages, including Jalud.

Israel's Right praises US Republican presidential candidate after he is filmed mocking Palestinian interest in peace; Peace Now: Romney, Netanyahu both backed by extremist coalition of evangelicals, Sheldon Adelson. US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney found himself in the heat of a decades-old political debate in Israel Wednesday after he was taped criticizing a proposed two-state solution and mocking the Palestinian interest in achieving peace with the Jewish state. Romney’s comments at a Boca Raton fund-raiser about peace being “almost unthinkable to accomplish” were praised by the Israeli Right and residents of Judea and Samaria, and slammed by the Left.

And I thought women were supposed to be smart.... This evening, I received an email entitled "Bibi was here" from someone named Lee Whitnum. I did a little googling and found out that Lee Whitnum is a woman and is one of six declared candidates for the Democratic nomination to replace Joe Lieberman in the Senate. According to Wikipedia she is not one of the front runners, and we can only hope that the eventual nominee will not be as obsessed with Israel as Whitnum obviously is. AIPAC describes her as "anti-AIPAC activist and software engineer." "What do you do...

There they go again. The story is so old already. Arab militia or Arab army or Arab terrorist attacks non-Arab. Or was that Muslim fanatic attacks non-Muslim? This time, it's happening in Sudan. While we're sitting and talking, probably a few hundred more black Africans in Sudan have starved to death, or been brutally killed, raped, enslaved, or simply pushed off their land by 7th century Arab imperialist invaders, or more rightly "Arab settlers". Oh yes, that's right. "Arab settlers". Like the ones Saddam Hussein brought into Kurdistan - i.e., the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq - in the 1970s...

Western cartoonists often depict the "settlers" as animals. The main zoomorphic motifs used today for Jewish settlers are spiders, the octopus and the blood-thirsty vampire. The demonization of the “settlers” and the manner in which part of the Israeli society is gloating over their displacement will remain an indelible blot on Jewish history. They want to transform these idealistic citizens' Maginot defense line into their Massada. The "settlers" of Judea and Samaria represent a highly constructive element in the Jewish nation. They serve on the front lines and bore the brunt of Arab terrorism, suffering more casualties than any other...

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beitenu faction, said Monday that the attacks against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria (Yehuda and Shomron, or Yesha) are wrong and hypocritical. "There is no justification, and no excuse can be accepted with regard to hurting IDF soldiers," he said, in reference to the incident a week ago in which Yesha youths allegedly vandalized an IDF base. "Between that and shooting protesters – and it doesn't matter if they are Jewish or not – there is a great difference." "In the media frenzy regarding the outposts, too, the media is not...

Even the far left B'Tselem organization criticized the extremist comments made by Labor MK Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who suggestied that IDF soldiers “shoot settlers” who clash with them when security forces try to demolish homes in Judea and Samaria. Some of the radical left applauded his remarks. The B'Tselem group, known chiefly for its advocacy for Arabs in disputes with the IDF and over Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria, condemned the idea, saying that shooting live ammunition at Jewish protesters was “an unacceptable method of dealing with civilian violence by Jewish residents” of Judea and Samaria. In a statement,...

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Agencies) - Some 30 Jewish settlers broke into a Christian baptismal site late Monday in a closed military zone along the Jordanian-Israeli border to stage a protest, Agence France-Presse reported. The Associated Press reported that the radical settlers cut a fence to enter the closed military zone along the border with Jordan on Monday night, quoting security officials. AP said they took over an abandoned church on the Jordan River before Israeli security forces removed them and arrested the 17 people involved, quoting officials. Jordanian officials said the Israelis did not cross the border into Jordan. On Tuesday,...