Free Republic

Germany’s foreign minister says his government will exert “considerable efforts” to protect the Iran nuclear deal despite Berlin’s misgivings about Iran’s ballistic missiles program and its involvement in the Syria conflict. In a visit to Jordan, Heiko Maas called for a “firewall” between the nuclear deal and Iran’s other activities. Under the deal, Iran agreed to curbs and inspections on its nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions. …

Greek and Turkish fighter jets engaged in two dogfights over the Aegean on Thursday, after the Turkish jets violated Greek airspace 16 times in the northeast, central and southeastern Aegean, the Hellenic National Defense General Staff (HNDGS) said. Six Turkish F-16 jets, one pair of F-4s and one CN-235 transport aircraft entered Athens's FIR without submitting a flight plan, and violated air traffic regulations seven times. In all cases, the Turkish aircraft were identified and intercepted by Greek fighter planes in line with international rules of engagement. Six of the eight Turkish aircraft were armed.

Diplomacy is often considered the most Genteel and cultured of governmental pursuits. And that can work many times, when done right. But it can also fail miserably, as Winston Churchill clearly understood watching the ever-so-Genteel Neville Chamberlain botch what could have preempted World War II. And it has been failing America over multiple presidential administrations. Donald Trump is no Winston Churchill in eloquence or knowledge of history or philosophies or alcohol intake, but he has ChurchillÂ’s fiery love of country and willingness to speak bluntly outside the nicety circles while carrying a big stick to defend that beloved country. Refreshing...

Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the IDF head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, wrote a letter to Tedros Adhanom, the head of the World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations concerned with international public health, warning that Hamas’ plan to burn a massive amounts of tires on the border with Israel on Friday would be an “ecologic catastrophe.” “The Hamas terrorist organization, which controls the Gaza Strip, has issued an order to burn about 10,000 tires this Friday along the border with Israel,” Mordechai wrote. “The burning of tires in such a huge quantity will...

Israel has reached an agreement with the United Nations that will see nearly half of the African asylum seekers it planned to deport go to Western countries.The UN High Commission for Refugees has committed to finding places in Western nations for at least 16,250 of the African migrants from Eritrea and Sudan. In return, Israel will legalize the status of the remaining asylum seekers, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. At a press conference this morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Canada, Germany and Italy would be the countries where the migrants would be settled. As...

Israel Warns Hamas – Do Not Attack Our BorderBy Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel — April 5, 2018 … The Israel Defense Forces is warning the international terror group Hamas, its supporters and all who cooperate with Hamas not to approach Israel’s border with Gaza. “We will protect our borders from being breached and protect our civilians in the face of terror,” said IDF Major Keren Hajioff. “The IDF will not allow any breach of the security fence, which protects Israeli civilians, and will continue to operate in order to prevent terrorists who are involved in these acts of...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to recognize the mass murders of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman government in 1915 as genocide. In the past, the Foreign Ministry had assessed that such a move was likely to lead to the expulsion of Israeli Embassy staff in Ankara and the recalling of TurkeyÂ’s ambassador from Israel. While Turkey denies that the mass killings constitute genocide, some 29 countries and 48 of the 50 U.S. states have officially recognized them as such. ErdanÂ’s call to recognize the Armenian genocide follows a war of words between Netanyahu and Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, in...

Palestinians plan to engulf the Gaza border with smoke and flames from thousands of burning tires on Friday as Israel holds firm to its order to shoot any protesters who come close to the security barrier. In the past several days, groups of young Gazans have been collecting old tires around the Strip and bringing them to the border. Palestinians intend to light the tires on fire to blur the vision of the soldiers on the Israeli side of the security fence, according to a Gaza-based source familiar with preparations for what he called “the Friday of Old Tires.

Federal authorities on Wednesday began legal proceedings to strip U.S. citizenship from two Bosnians, including one living in Oregon, for war crimes including executing civilians during that country’s civil war in the 1990s. The move by the U.S. Justice Department comes years after Rasema Handanovic and Edin Dzeko were extradited and later convicted by courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2011. After serving her sentence, Handanovic returned to Beaverton, Oregon, according to a statement from the Justice department, while Dzeko has not yet been released by Bosnian authorities. The department filed denaturalization lawsuits against the pair in federal courts in...

French special operations troops have moved into two US Syrian bases, Manbij and Remelin, as the US boosts its lines against Turkey. While US President Donald Trump was saying Tuesday, April 3, that he would “decide very quickly” to remove US troops from Syria, our exclusive military sources report that US Marines were heading toward the northern Syrian town of Manbij as reinforcements against Turkish inroads. They took up positions along the Sajur River, one of the three tributaries that feed the Euphrates River in Syria from sources in Turkey. This action blocked the Turkish army’s land access to Manbij,...

Russia's envoy to the U.N. on Friday warned long-term ally President Bashar al-Assad over his vow to retake all of Syria, saying he faced dire consequences if he did not comply with Moscow over the peace process. 'Russia has invested very seriously in this crisis, politically, diplomatically and now also militarily,' Vitaly Churkin told Kommersant newspaper, referring to an international agreement to cease hostilities sealed in Munich last week. 'Therefore we would like Assad also to respond to this,' he said, adding that the Syrian leader's stance 'is not in accord with the diplomatic efforts that Russia is making.'

Former president Bill Clinton confessed to Israeli television that he tried to help Shimon Peres defeat Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s 1996 general elections. In an interview on Channel 10 news that aired Tuesday, Clinton admitted that he tried to help Peres win the election in a way that didn’t “overtly” implicate him, and that he did so because Peres was more committed than Netanyahu to the so-called peace process, which had suffered a huge blow with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin six months earlier.

The Israeli government came under additional pressure to change its policy of deporting illegal migrants on Tuesday, as the Congressional Black Caucus and the Jewish Agency both urged a different approach. The CBC has circulated a letter supporting a proposal being made by advocates for the migrants to send them to other countries via the existing international refugee processing systems, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. The Israeli plan, which took effect this month, gives the migrants a choice between deportation with cash incentives and free airfare, or jail for an indefinite time. “As a close friend of the United States...

Israel said on Monday it has cancelled a plan to deport African migrants to Africa and reached an agreement with the U.N. refugee agency to send more than 16,000 to Western countries instead. Other migrants, many of whom are seeking asylum, will be allowed to remain in Israel for at least the next five years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement. The fate of some 37,000 Africans in Israel has posed a moral dilemma for a state founded as a haven for Jews from persecution and a national home. The right-wing government is under pressure from its...

WASHINGTON — A Democratic congressional delegation urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week to release African asylum seekers being detained in an Israeli prison. In a letter sent to the premier on Tuesday, 11 Democrats who recently visited the Jewish state said “there is no legal justification for deportation” of the roughly 280 asylum seekers from African countries, mostly Sudan and Eritrea, being held in the Saharonim prison in southern Israel. Israel’s Border Authority jailed the asylum seekers last month, after they refused deportation to a third-party country. The Israeli government has said it intends to to force the migrants...

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, announced yesterday he had reached a deal with the UN to resettle thousands of African asylum seekers only to u-turn within hours after a rebellion by his own ministers. The Israeli leader said on Monday afternoon that he had struck an international agreement under which around half of the 40,000 asylum seekers in Israel would be sent to Western countries like Canada, Germany and Italy. Under the terms of the deal, the Israeli government agreed to let the other half stay in the country and to scrap controversial plans to deport them to other...

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Ties between Russia and Turkey are growing closer than ever, as Russia runs into widespread diplomatic fallout from the poisoned spy scandal and Turkey's relations with its Western allies worsens over human rights issues and its military operations against Kurdish militia in Syria. Russian President Vladimir Putin heads back to Turkey on Tuesday, joining Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a symbolic ground-breaking ceremony for a Russian-made nuclear power plant being built on Turkey's Mediterranean coast at Akkuyu. On Wednesday, Putin, Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani are expected to hold a summit in the Turkish...

A caravan of some 1,500 Latin American migrants, welcomed into Mexico on their 1,900-mile trek to the United States where they plan to demand asylum, was welcomed by a third Mexican town 400 miles into their journey. On Facebook, organizer Pueblo Sin Fronteras wrote, “Thanks to the community Matias Romero for his solidarity with the caravan viacrusis migrants in the fight.” It also gave a PayPal account to offer donations. And Washington-based reporters reached out through the Facebook account for help covering the caravan. The town is about 400 miles from the Mexican-Guatemalan border. When they crossed that border, the...

Saudi Arabia's crown prince affirmed Israel's right to exist...pointedly bucking other leaders in the Arab world and signaling support for President Trump's Middle East agenda...the crown prince told The Atlantic. "Hitler tried to conquer Europe. This is bad. But the supreme leader is trying to conquer the world...He is the Hitler of the Middle East. In the 1920s and 1930s, no one saw Hitler as a danger. Only a few people. Until it happened."

Mexico’s National Institute of Immigration (INM) said late Monday that it plans by Wednesday to disband a caravan of hundreds of Central American migrants that has been traveling through Mexico for nine days. A federal delegate with INM who gave only his last name, Rodríguez, told BuzzFeed News that vulnerable people in the group such as pregnant women, people with disabilities, or people with chronic illnesses like HIV, will get humanitarian visas to remain in Mexico. Everyone else will have to petition the Mexican government to stay in the country or they will be ordered to leave. Rodríguez said people...