Free Republic

A Senate Armed Services hearing turned heated this week when Sen. Angus King, chairman of the Strategic Forces subcommittee, laid into John Hill, deputy assistant defense secretary for space and missile defense, about why the Biden administration’s 2025 missile defense budget request falls far short on funding to maintain readiness against the growing threat of hypersonic missiles from adversaries — namely Russia. “We have no defense for hypersonic missiles, yes or no? Mr. Hill? Any defense on hypersonic missile?” Mr. King asked during one exchange. If Russia launches a hypersonic missile traveling 6,000 mph and “you are the commander of...

Public confidence in the military has slipped. One major reason is the politicization of senior military officers, who show an increasing propensity to compromise their integrity to gain influence and achieve both budgetary and policy goals. Their willingness to spin carefully parsed and knowingly misleading testimony and advice compromises civilian control of the military. Simply stated, these generals and admirals are not providing full and complete representations of plans, concepts, and assessments to senior civilians in the executive and legislative branches, thereby depriving them of the unbiased information they require to make decisions required by the Constitution. In an era...

President Kornbluth assured us … that the encampment would be removed in time for our Yom Ha'atzmaut celebration,' letter from Jewish group says.. In the run-up to an annual Israeli Independence Day celebration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, university president Sally Kornbluth assured student organizers that an unauthorized anti-Israel encampment—located in the same area where the Jewish students planned to hold their event—would be cleared in time. It wasn't, prompting school officials to walk back their promise and press the Jewish students to reschedule or relocate the event, messages obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. On April 24,...

Aviv Kochavi admits IDF knew of Hamas's tunnels and number of rockets prior to October 7, but was more focused on confronting Iran and Hezbollah.

Hamas opened fire near the Keren Shalom crossing that had been used to bring in aid to Gaza. The attack was predictably launched from near a civilian shelter in Rafah. Meanwhile, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, whose employees have been shown to be Hamas, again and again, accused Israel of blocking aid. Every UN and international aid body in the region keeps claiming that there’s famine in Gaza. As they’ve been claiming for the past 6 months. Except that the famine is always on the verge of arriving, but never quite does. Israel has not only moved aid through...

Survey comes after federal judge shouted down on campus More than one third of Stanford University students say using physical violence to stop a speech is acceptable in at least some circumstances, according to a new report. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression conducted the survey after federal Judge Kyle Duncan’s speech on campus was shouted down last year. The report evaluated students’ perspectives about free speech on campus and protests in the aftermath of the event. FIRE Chief Research Advisor Sean Stevens told The College Fix the research found “considerably higher” support for canceling a speaker among Stanford...

National Security Council chief Tzachi Hanegbi spoke about a military operation in Rafah, stressing that, "the decision has been made - the question is not if, but when." Speaking to Israel's "Meet the Press" program, Hanegbi said, "Sinwar is living on borrowed time." "He escaped from one burrow to the next, we were very close to him. There are those who would say that we were incredibly close, at one point. Maybe even less than a few days." Comparing Sinwar to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was eliminated by US forces in 2011, Hanegbi promised that Sinwar "won't...

Russia said on Wednesday that sending NATO troops into Ukraine would potentially be extremely dangerous, and Moscow was closely watching a Ukrainian petition that called for such an intervention. The petition, posted on the Ukrainian president's website, says Ukraine should ask the United States, Britain and other countries to send troops to help it repel Russia's invasion. "We have repeatedly said that direct intervention on the ground in this conflict by the military of NATO countries potentially carries enormous danger, so we consider this an extremely challenging provocation, nothing less, and, of course, we are watching this very carefully."

"The Chinese are imposing a kind of sanction on us. They don't officially declare it, but they are delaying shipments to Israel.... In electronic products, there are tens of thousands of components, but if even one component doesn't arrive, we cannot deliver the product." — Unnamed senior figure in a factory, Ynet, December 24, 2023. Also immensely disturbing is that "massive" amounts of advanced Chinese military equipment were found in Gaza by the IDF during its military operations there. "[I]f you set up systems with technology for critical infrastructure, like electricity, energy, water, transport, these are tied to one another....

‘Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden’s biggest donors,’ headlined an article by Politico.. Politico’s editors are “surprised” to find the far-left demonstrations overwhelming college campuses this spring are funded by the same sources fighting to keep President Joe Biden in power. On Sunday, the Beltway magazine published an exposé on the financiers bankrolling the campus protests, for which demonstrators trained for months. “Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden’s biggest donors,” the headline reads. “ Joe Biden has been dogged for months by pro-Palestinian protesters calling him ‘Genocide Joe’ — but some of the groups...

Murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on Oct. 7 Maya Bitton, 22, and her fiance, Eliran Mizrahi, 23, from Petah Tikva, were murdered at the Supernova music festival on October 7. They told their family that morning that they were hiding from the terrorists and the gunfire in large trash receptacles at the site of the rave. The couple sent a video clip of themselves hiding in the trash bins, the last anyone saw them alive. Several days later, their bodies were recovered and identified. The engaged couple, who met in high school, were buried side by...

Ukraine has detained two security officials allegedly involved in a Russian plot to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky, which Kyiv’s state security service (SBU) said it foiled.Two colonels in Ukraine’s government protection unit were accused of carrying out “subversive activities against Ukraine in exchange for financial compensation,” Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s office said Tuesday.Both colonels were charged with treason; one was also charged with preparing a terrorist act.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres demanded that Israel end its military operation in Rafah, less than a day after the IDF launched an operation to destroy the final four Hamas battalions in Gaza. "I am disturbed & distressed by the renewed military activity in Rafah by the Israeli Defence Forces," Guterres wrote on X today (Tuesday). "I urge the Government of Israel to stop any escalation, and engage constructively in the ongoing diplomatic talks." .....

Another week, another Muslim terror stabbing.. The “Islamophobia” alerts are really flashing red in Australia. This started with a Muslim teen stabbing a bishop in Sydney, Australia. That led to the arrests of 7 Muslim teens. It turned out that they wanted to go on a rampage killing Jews. And now a white teen 16-year-old convert to Islam stabbed a man in the back in Perth and was shot dead by police. The 16-year-old was apparently in an “online radicalization” program for years which suggests that he’d converted to Islam a while back and the authorities had been tracking him...

Russia has likely been recruiting Cuban nationals to fight in its army in Ukraine, research by the BBC has shown. In September and October 2023, passport details belonging to over 200 Cubans who allegedly joined the Russian army were leaked online by a pro-Ukrainian platform called InformNapalm. The passport details were obtained, the site said, by hacking the emails of a Russian military recruitment officer in Tula, south of Moscow. A Facebook search has shown that 31 of the names mentioned in the Ukrainian leak match accounts whose owners appear to be in Russia or linked to the Russian army....

The New York Times has confirmed that on Monday night, the Hamas terror group proposed a counteroffer for a ceasefire-prisoner swap deal, and did not "agree" to the deal approved by both Israel and the US. Nevertheless, the counteroffer - though not deemed acceptable - was seen by the US as a sign of progress. The New York Times stressed that Israel's strikes in Rafah were "retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks that killed four Israeli soldiers," and a way to pressure Hamas, but did not constitute the strike that US President Joe Biden was warning against. Biden is still insisting...

Russia warned Britain on Monday that if British weapons were used by Ukraine to strike Russian territory then Moscow could hit back at British military installations and equipment both inside Ukraine and elsewhere. Russia said British Ambassador Nigel Casey was summoned to the foreign ministry for a formal protest after Foreign Secretary David Cameron said last week that Ukraine had the right to use British weapons to strike Russia. Russia's foreign ministry said the Cameron remarks recognised that Britain was now de facto a part of the conflict and contradicted an earlier assurance that long-range weapons given to Ukraine would...

DAWN is leveraging clout with the Biden administration to push sanctions on Israeli military units for alleged human rights crimes.. Senior Biden administration officials have been coordinating since at least early 2022 with an outside anti-Israel group to isolate Jewish Israelis living in the West Bank, internal government emails show. The previously unreported emails show top officials at both the State and Defense Departments fielding concerns from Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a human rights group that is highly critical of the Israeli government and has lobbied the Biden administration to cut off military aid to the Jewish...

Should Russia succeed in its war on Ukraine, the United States will likely have to intervene with more than just money - but also with troops, said U.S. Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries. "We cannot allow Ukraine to fall, because if it does, there is a significant possibility that America will have to intervene in the conflict — not just with our money, but with our troops," he told CBS News.

Russia plans to hold drills simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the Defense Ministry announced Monday, days after the Kremlin reacted angrily to comments by senior Western officials about the war in Ukraine. The drills are in response to “provocative statements and threats of certain Western officials regarding the Russian Federation,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement. It was the first time that Russia has publicly announced drills involving tactical nuclear weapons, though its strategic nuclear forces regularly hold exercises. Tactical nuclear weapons have a lower yield compared to massive warheads that arm intercontinental ballistic missiles intended to...