Free Republic

Federal Judge Rosemary Collyer refused the Fraenkel family's request to reconsider the low compensation imposed on Iran and Syria as those responsible for the kidnapping and murder of their son Naftali, along with Eyal Yifrach and Gil-Ad Sha'ar. The verdict set a compensation of $ 4.1 million, while the suit demanded $ 340 million, an amount that was common in previous similar suits. The suit was based on the fact that Naftali's family had American citizenship. The judge explained her decision with an outrageous statement that also imposed responsibility on the Fraenkel family, which she asserted had exposed itself to...

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...

Following the explosions on June 27 in Afrin that resulted in the death of dozens of gang members, over 100 civilians have been abducted by Turkish forces. The invading Turkish soldiers abducted 18 young Kurdish people today in Afrin. The invading Turkish forces raided homes that belong to Kurds in two neighborhoods of Afrin today. 18 young people have been abducted in the house raids. Reports say at 08.00 in the morning, invading forces raided homes that belong to Kurds in the Ashrafiyah and Mahmudiyah neighborhoods in Afrin and took 18 young people away to an unknown location. Local sources say...

Muslim Cleric: Armenian Genocide A Lie Fabricated By The British, The Muslims Never Perpetrated A Racial Massacre.(Full title). Genocide denial. Criminal when non-Muslims do it, tolerated even venerated when Muslims do it. So it stands to reason that the Armenian genocide of millions of Christians by Muslims has not been designated as such by so many Western countries. ... Egyptian Cleric Sheikh Sharif Abadi: The Armenian Genocide Is A Lie Fabricated By The British, The Muslims Never Perpetrated A Racial Massacre ... Egyptian cleric Sheikh Sharif Abadi said that throughout history, the Muslims never fought peoples, never conquered in order...

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.

A NEW Syria is emerging from the rubble of war. In Homs, which Syrians once dubbed the “capital of the revolution” against President Bashar al-Assad, the Muslim quarter and commercial district still lie in ruins, but the Christian quarter is reviving. Churches have been lavishly restored; a large crucifix hangs over the main street. “Groom of Heaven”, proclaims a billboard featuring a photo of a Christian soldier killed in the seven-year conflict. In their sermons, Orthodox patriarchs praise Mr Assad for saving one of the world’s oldest Christian communities.

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...

At least 17 civilians have been killed in an air strike on a basement shelter in south-western Syria, activists say, as warplanes pound rebel-held areas. A monitoring group reported that five children were among those who died when aircraft identified as Russian bombed Musayfira, east of the city of Deraa. Russia is backing an army offensive in the region, which borders Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. More than 90 civilians are said to have been killed since it began 11 days ago. The provinces of Deraa and Quneitra had been relatively calm for almost a year because of a...

French cement giant Lafarge was charged Thursday with complicity in crimes against humanity and financing terrorists for paying millions to jihadists, including the Islamic State group, to keep a factory open in war-torn Syria. The company, whose Syrian subsidiary allegedly paid the armed groups through middlemen, has also been charged with endangering the lives of former employees at the cement plant in Jalabiya, northern Syria. {snip} Lafarge is suspected of paying nearly 13 million euros ($16 million) to IS and other militant groups to keep the Jalabiya plant running long after other French companies had pulled out of Syria. The...

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...

WASHINGTON - The Trump administration is asking U.S. allies around the world to lower their level of oil imports from Iran to zero by November 4th of this year, a senior U.S. Official said on Tuesday. The official added that the administration isn't planning to produce any waivers that will exclude certain countries or companies from this requirement. "We are pushing allies to cut oil imports to zero by November," the senior official said. "We view this as one of our top national security priorities." Talks on this demand have been ongoing for recent weeks, but the senior official said...

“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

Jordan’s King Abdullah II Bin Al-Hussein shared an unusually flattering assessment of President Donald Trump on Monday, praising the president’s “humility” and “grace” during a visit to the White House. “If the rest of the world just took a little bit of your humility and your grace, we’d be in a lot better position,” Abdullah said. Trump thanked Abdullah for the compliment, pointing out to the press that he used the word “humility” to describe him. “I’m happy with that word,” Trump grinned. “It’s probably the nicest compliment I’ve been given in a long time.” Trump praised the king of...

BEIRUT, LEBANON (12:20 A.M.) – The Russian military officially entered the southwest Syria offensive this evening, a source told Al-Masdar from the Dara’a Governorate. The Russian Aerospace Forces unleashed a massive assault over northeastern Dara’a, tonight, targeting several areas controlled by the jihadist rebels. According to a military source in the government stronghold of Izra’a, the Russian Aerospace Forces launched over 20 airstrikes across northeastern Dara’a tonight. The source told Al-Masdar that the Russian Aerospace Forces specifically launched airstrikes over the towns of Masikah, Aeeb, and Busra Al-Harir. The added that the majority of the airstrikes were launched on the...

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...

One could easily argue that Iran’s ruling theocracy is facing the greatest internal threat to its rule since the 1980s. In the beginning of this year, the country was rocked by a mass uprising. The chain of protests was a major step forward for the domestic Resistance movement in the sense that it extracted political activism from farmers and the rural poor, despite the fact that these groups had long been thought to tolerate or even support the clerical regime. The December-to-January uprising was comprised of protests in upwards of 140 cities and towns spanning the entire country. And this...

IRBIL, IRAQ — A brother of an Iranian Kurdish man sentenced to death for belonging to a Kurdish nationalist group says the dissident has told a lawyer that he has hours to live after being transferred back to death row.Speaking exclusively to VOA Persian on Thursday, Amjad Hossein Panahi said his detained brother Ramin Hossein Panahi was moved to death row at a prison in the northwestern city of Sanandaj in the past day. Amjad Panahi, who is based in Germany, said Ramin met with defense lawyer Hossein Ahmadiniaz on Thursday and told the lawyer that he expected to be executed...

Tribal clashes have been renewed near the Lebanese-Syrian border and have expanded over the past few days under criticism from Hezbollah and the Syrian regime and accusations of failure to control the issue. The clashes broke out about a month ago between the Al-Ja'far and Al-Jamal tribes. Lebanese media reported that this happened because young men from Al-Jaafar stole a car belonging to a Hezbollah official from Al-Dirani in the border town of "Zita" of "Hermel" area in the Syrian side. The car was immediately spotted in Syria in "Aqrabiya" in the countryside of al-Qusir and held in the detachment...