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Hezbollah, a radical Islamist movement, is recruiting Druze, Christian and Sunni men to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Lebanese daily news website the Daily Star reported Wednesday. The recruitment process, which is taking place in east Lebanon, is reportedly still ongoing. The new recruits are offered weapons and trainings to “to counter the threat of ISIS and its affiliates.” Lebanon is engaged in a battle against jihadists from ISIS and the Nusra Front along its northern and northeastern border with Syria

A coalition of moderate rebel factions known as the Southern Front took control of the Brigade 52 base by early afternoon, spokesman Issam al-Reis said. Brigade 52 is the largest military installation in Daraa province, which borders Jordan, and is key to the defense of northern routes leading to the Syrian capital, Damascus... The loss of the base is another blow to Assad's forces, which have recently suffered a string of battlefield defeats. A largely Islamist rebel alliance that includes al-Qaeda's powerful Syria affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, has seized most of northwestern Idlib province. The Islamic State militant group has captured...

The Syrian army is a threat that has ceased to exist for the coming decade and the regime is in "the most grave predicament" since the outbreak of war in March 2011, a senior Israeli army officer said Wednesday in a briefing. Hezbollah, the Assad regime's ally, has lost 700 men since the start of the fighting and 100 over the past two weeks alone, he said. The officer characterized Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who has delivered four saber-rattling speeches over the past eight days, as suffering from "no small amount of embarrassment" in Lebanon, and said that Israel has...

Don’t look now but ISIS fighters are just a few short miles away from Bashar al-Assad’s Presidential Palace in Syria after taking control of the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus where some 18,000 are trapped in what the UN calls a “beyond inhumane” situation. The camp, which has been under siege by the Assad regime for years came under attack by ISIS earlier this month who reports indicate may be working alongside al-Qaeda’s Syrian arm al-Nusra in what would be a break with recent precedent. Some Palestinian factions — who, alongside the Free Syria Army are battling ISIS for control...

CBS NEWSMarch 16, 2015 Clarissa Ward On 4 Years Of Civil War In Syria Sunday marked four years since Syria plunged into chaotic civil war. As the conflict enters its fifth year, President Bashar Assad remains resolute in the face of a rebel movement determined to remove him from power. The consequences of the war are staggering: more than 215,000 people have been killed and nearly 4 million are now refugees. The change was precipitated by the formation of the Free Syrian Army, and with it, the militarization of the conflict, said Ward. "The fiercer the bombardments came from the...

Moves in Washington may curtail the availability of workplace “flexible spending accounts” for medical and child-care expenses. FSAs can allow families to set aside thousands of dollars of their salaries each year to pay qualifying expenses without that pay ever being subject to federal income tax. If a family in the 33% marginal tax rate sets aside $5,000, for instance, it could save $1,650 in U.S. tax. Still, many families have a love-hate relationship with these benefit programs. Creating anxiety are the “use it or lose it” terms: Employees often have to guess at future expenses, and they forfeit some...

A remarkable report by Anne Barnard of the New York Times this weekend confirms my multiple reports here at PJ Media about the increased alliance between the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) and al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra.As Barnard reports: In northern and eastern Syria, where Mr. Assad’s opponents won early victories and once dreamed of building self-government, the nationalist rebel groups calling themselves the Free Syrian Army are forced to operate under the extremists’ umbrellas, to go underground or to flee, according to Syrian insurgents, activists and two top commanders of the American-financed F.S.A. groups. Two weeks ago...

It is no secret that Al Jazeera is the media arm of Qatari foreign policy, which has suffered a successive series of setbacks, particularly in Syria. But some time ago, signs that changes had taken place in the editorial line of Al Jazeera began to emerge, as evident in the terminology the Qatari satellite channel started using. For example, Al Jazeera no longer refers to opposition fighters as “rebels.” Moreover, Al Jazeera has been giving airtime for discussions about the mistakes of the Free Syrian Army. Soon enough, coverage of Syria in Al Jazeera news bulletins started decreasing. A few...

Defense minister: In north, Hezbollah remains deterred, and Free Syrian Army-linked groups are preventing radical Islamists from approaching our border. gaza tunnel A Palestinian tunnel in Gaza. . (photo credit:REUTERS) Hamas has begun to reconstruct its network of tunnels within Gaza, and Israel is watching for signs it is working on cross-border attack tunnels as well, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Tuesday. Under no circumstances will Israelis have to get used to a “drizzle of rockets” anywhere, “not in the North and not in the South,” Ya’alon vowed. Israel retaliated for Friday’s Gazan rocket attack on the Eshkol region...

Earlier this month I reported here at PJ Media on the surrender and defections of U.S.-backed Syrian rebel troops to Jabhat al-Nusra (Al-Qaeda’s official affiliate), most notably the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, which the DC foreign policy establishment was hailing as “the West’s best fighting chance against Syria’s Islamist armies,” and Harkat al-Hazm, the first group to receive heavy weaponry from the U.S. earlier this year.Now Mona Mahmood of the Guardian reports that elements of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are defecting to ISIS: US air strikes in Syria are encouraging anti-regime fighters to forge alliances with or even defect...

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Mughdeed sits in a pickup truck equipped with an anti-aircraft weapon as he and his men wind through steep roads to their base in the rocky Zartik Mountains. Mughdeed's Iraqi Kurdish forces are members of the Peshmerga, a key U.S. ally in the fight against the so-called Islamic State. Also known as ISIS, the Sunni extremists have taken control of about a third of Iraq. In October, Mughdeed's men retook this area east of Mosul from ISIS occupation. The mountain road winds through villages that now look like a post-apocalyptic tableau, with homes reduced to knee-high...

Revolutionaries posing as cooks infiltrated an ISIS camp and poisoned meals in a bid to kill as many fighters as they could. Sources in the Syrian Free Army said a dozen Islamic State militants perished after eating a contaminated lunch at the Fath El-Sahel camp, where 1,200 are based. The rebels who hatched the plot were a group of defected Syrian soldiers who are fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. The Times of Iraq reported that witnesses said around a dozen were killed and 15 transferred to nearby field hospitals. The 'cooks' immediately fled, along with their families, with the...

Barack Obama did not tell the whole story this autumn when he tried to make the case that Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attack near Damascus on 21 August. In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack. In the...

The family of Michael Brown have said that the cop who shot him dead will 'feel the wrath of God's vengeance' after the officer claimed he was acting in self defense. Sheryl Davis, Brown's aunt, told MailOnline that she believes Darren Wilson committed murder and that he will suffer retribution in a 'mighty way'. She said that Wilson's actions were 'evil' and that he will be punished by a higher power for what he did - even if he is cleared. Her comments are the most outspoken yet from Brown's family since Wilson's account of what happened was published in...

When the North Carolina State Assembly set out to pass a resolution in 2007 expressing the body’s regret for its participation in the institution of slavery, conservatives objected on the grounds that black North Carolinians would use it to advance the cause of reparations. Republican Assemblyman Thom Tillis, who is now challenging Democrat Kay Hagan for her U.S. Senate seat, sought to allay those conservatives' concerns by flipping the argument. Reparations already exist in the form of welfare programs, he noted, and Republicans would be better positioned to oppose them if they purchased some goodwill with conservative Democrats by acknowledging...

Given that the “moderates” are our allies, you would think this problem could be avoided by coordinating with them on where to attack and where not to. But there’s a hitch: We … don’t trust them enough to rely on the intelligence they give us.You’d trust a group that’s fighting so closely alongside Al Qaeda (a.k.a. the Nusra Front) that bombing the latter means collateral damage for the former, wouldn’t you? Since U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria began on Sept. 22, there has been no coordination between the U.S. military and its alleged partners on the ground, according...

The White House says it wants to work with Syria’s moderate rebels. But warplanes from the U.S.-led coalition came awfully close to striking one of their HQs. Last week, an airstrike from the American-led coalition nearly hit a command-and-control facility affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the moderate rebels the Obama administration says are America’s “boots on the ground,” according to two opposition leaders. They are asking the Obama administration to please coordinate with them in the future before America bombs its only allies in Syria. Since U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Syria began on Sept. 22, there has been...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)A documentary filmmaker who spent time with the Free Syrian Army said that moderate rebels are “laughing” at President Obama’s plan to arm them against the Islamic State, claiming they simply “don’t take this seriously.” Matthew VanDyke, an American filmmaker and a friend of executed journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, spoke with Fox News’s Shepard Smith about the White House’s plan to arm and train thousands of rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, a more moderate rebel group that’s friendly with the West, in order to encourage them to fight the Islamic State. VanDyke warned that removing the...

The inter-relational dynamics between separate Sunni Muslim groups is very difficult for westerners to understand. Consider the relationship between ISIS and Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi. When ISIS front man Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself Caliph of an Islamic State, al-Qaradawi denounced him; ISIS then denounced the Muslim Brotherhood, as Shoebat.com reported.Yet, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is reportedly standing by ISIS: A Syrian Muslim Brotherhood spokesman says attacks on the Islamic State by the United States and its allies are not the answer.“Our battle with ISIS is an intellectual battle,” Omar Mushaweh said in a statement published Sept....

Gen. Michael Nagata is promising to build a new force to destroy ISIS, but lawmakers worry he has been given an impossible mission. As lawmakers prepared to take a risky and fateful vote on Obama’s plan to train and equip the Syrian rebels, the man who assured them it could be done was Gen. Michael Nagata, Obama’s point man for the mission to build an ISIS-killing army in Syria. There are skeptics both inside and outside the government who doubt Obama’s new plan to arm the Syrian rebels can work. First of all, the administration has said for years that...