Free Republic

The Trump administration late Friday announced that it had cut $200 million in U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until it can ensure this American taxpayer money will not be used to fund terrorism, according to U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.The announcement follows the recent passage of the Taylor Force Act in Congress, a bill aimed at providing greater oversight over how U.S. taxpayer dollars fund the Palestinians. The PA has for years been accused of using aid dollars to pay accused terrorists and their families annual salaries.President Donald Trump directed his administration to freeze $200...

In high contrast to nearly every other non-U.S. country, Israel passed a law on Monday that would expand the number of citizens eligible for firearms ownership licenses. As justification for the new policy, Israel’s Security Minister Gilad Erdan cited increased protection from “lone wolf” terrorist attacks. “Many civilians saved lives during terror attacks and in an era of ‘lone terrorism.’ The more skilled civilians carrying weapons, the greater the chance of thwarting attacks without casualties and reducing the number of casualties,” Erdan said, according to the Jerusalem Post. Previously, Israel operated under a system similar to the “good cause” scheme...

Russia is "stuck" in Syria and looking for others to fund its post-war reconstruction, US National Security Adviser John Bolton said, describing this as an opportunity for Washington to press for Iranian forces to quit the civil war-wracked country. Bolton said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had told the United States that Moscow could not compel the Iranians to leave Syria. "But he also told us that his interest and Iran's were not exactly the same. So we're obviously going to talk to him about what role they can play," said Bolton, who meets his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, in...

A growing number of Russians are reportedly requesting asylum in Israel, where officials say they are gaming the system to obtain work permits. Russia provided the biggest number of immigrants last year under Israel’s repatriation program. “We have noticed a new phenomenon of Russians, who arrive mainly for economic reasons, seeking asylum that worries us and sets off warning lights,” the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority’s Yossi Edelstein was quoted as saying Tuesday. “The wage gaps are enormous and motivate people to come work in Israel,” the authority’s head of enforcement said. The number of Russian citizens who have been...

“Jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam”.John Brennan John Brennan is all over the news, playing the victim for having his security clearance pulled. It's obvious from his record that he should have never had any access to classified information considering his toxic and radical views. After Helsinki, Brennan accused President Trump of treason. He's since doubled down on the accusation. But if you want to see treason, look at his own past comments. As I discuss in today's article on Twitter's censoring of David Horowitz when he tried to discuss Brennan's record and Islamic anti-Semitism.

Several weeks ago, an article in the Hebrew-language Yediot Achronot revealed that, according to Palestinian sources, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have received more than $100 million per year over the last few years from Iran. That represents a substantial fraction of the cash that President Barack Obama put on pallets and flew to Tehran shortly before he left office. Today it was announced that two Iranians had been indicted for spying in the United States for the Iranian government. What were they looking at? Missile bases? Nuclear reactors? Grand Central Station? No. They were indicted for taking pictures of “Israeli...

Abu Dhabi: The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is set to launch a major offensive against the last remaining Daesh stronghold on the eastern side of the Euphrates Valley in Syria, as the coalition seeks to finally drive the terrorists out of the area. Colonel Sean Ryan, spokesperson for the US Central Command’s operations against Daesh in Syria and Iraq, briefed reporters at the US embassy in Abu Dhabi on Sunday about the planned offensive to retake the town of Hajin from Daesh. This will be part of the third phase of ‘Operation Roundup’. Launched in May, the operation is...

<p>The Trump administration is ending funding for Syria stabilization projects as it moves to extricate itself from the conflict.</p> <p>The State Department said it had notified Congress on Friday that it would not spend some $230 million that had been planned for Syria programs and would instead shift that money to other areas.</p>

The protection of Palestinian civilians could be improved by the deployment of U.N.-mandated armed forces or unarmed observers, a beefed-up U.N. civilian presence or expanded U.N. assistance, Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a report on Friday. The United Nations General Assembly requested the report in a resolution adopted in June that condemned Israel for excessive force against Palestinian civilians and denounced the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israeli civilian areas, but did not mention Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza. The resolution asked for proposals to ensure “the safety, protection and well-being of the Palestinian civilian population under...

The spasm of Hamas-provoked violence that gripped the Gaza Strip and parts of southern Israel last week has temporarily halted for the time being. According to credible reports, Israel informed Cairo that it would begin targeting Hamas leaders and commanders if Hamas failed to rein in its assorted thugs and gangsters. Hamas heeded the call, and for good reason. Over the years, Israel’s various security branches have developed a penchant for liquidating dangerous enemies who seek to inflict harm on the Jewish State. Hamas is keenly aware of this fact having recently lost two of its operatives – Mohammad Zawari and Fadi...

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (JTA) — Brazil’s front-running presidential candidate has announced he will close the Palestinian embassy in Brasilia in addition to moving his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “Is Palestine a country? Palestine is not a country, so there should be no embassy here,” Jair Bolsonaro, a lawmaker from the Social Liberal Party, declared on Tuesday when the National Congress reopened after a three-week recess. “You do not negotiate with terrorists,” he added.

A Muslim man who immigrated from Jordan to the United States was found guilty of participating in an “honor killing” plot — including a plan to kill his own daughter for converting to Christianity — and was sentenced to death by a jury in Houston on Tuesday. Although the “honor killings” were to include five victims, the Muslim father, Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan, was also found guilty of murdering his daughter Nesreen’s new husband, Coty Beavers, 28, and her best friend, Gelareh Bagherzadeh, 30, reported the Houston Chronicle. Ali Mahwood-Awad Irsan apparently was enraged over his daughter’s conversion from Islam to...

The IDF has uncovered another Hamas network posing as attractive young women on social networks in order to honeypot soldiers, this time on Instagram, in order to access as much information and intelligence on the army that they can. “This is a network in which the culture of sharing is paramount and where everything revolves around pictures and ‘see me,’” said Lt.-Col. A, the head of information security policies at the IDF’s Information Security Department. Be the first to know - Join our Facebook page. According to him, “Popularity and the need to follow back increases the risk” of soldiers...

Qatar pledges to make direct investment in Turkey, currently hit by currency crisis amid a diplomatic stand-off with US.

Map of the planned Turkish Stream (Wikipedia). Russia’s Gazprom has begun constructing the first stage of the Turkish Stream pipeline that will run gas from southern Russia across the Black Sea to Turkey, Reuters reported on Sunday.Switzerland’s Allseas Group S.A has begun laying pipes on the Russian shore of Black Sea. The pipeline will when completed by the end of 2019 allow the state-owned Gazprom company to send gas direct to southern Europe through the Turkish Stream while bypassing Ukraine.The Turkish Stream intergovernmental agreement was signed in October 2016 after having been halted for almost a year following the shootdown...

Donald Trump’s anti-press rhetoric is “very close to incitement to violence” that would lead to journalists censoring themselves or being attacked, the outgoing UN human rights commissioner has said. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, a Jordanian prince and diplomat, is stepping down this month as UN high commissioner for human rights after deciding not to stand for a second four-year term, in the face of a waning commitment among world powers to fighting abuses. Zeid said the Trump administration’s lack of concern about human rights marked a distinct break with previous administrations, and that Trump’s own rhetoric aimed at minorities and at...

The Democrats Don’t Have a Foreign Policy, They Have A Trump Policy Not just treasonous, stupid. May 10, 2018 Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism. Quick, what’s the Dem position on Syria? What about China? Don’t bother. There was once a time when Democrats could discuss Syria, North Korea, the South China Sea, economic tensions in the European Union and the future of Africa. But that was before Trump. Democrats don’t have a foreign policy anymore. They have a Trump...

One of the instruments that the enemies use is creating discord among us. I insist that we stress and place great emphasis on this matter. Brothers, sisters, Muslims in the world of Islam, if this call reaches your ears, you should know that the day when the words “Sunni” and “Shia” appeared in the American discourse, we became concerned. Every insightful person became concerned. What does America have to do with Sunni and Shia? What does such and such a Jewish Zionist politician in America – who has done nothing except for showing malevolence against Islam and Muslims – have...

A top Iranian official has admitted for the first time that Iran knowingly helped al-Qaeda terrorists — including some of the 9/11 attackers — travel secretly through the Middle East. “Their movements [through Iran] were under the complete supervision of the Iranian intelligence,” Mohammad-Javad Larijani said in a recently surfaced interview. That was one of the main accusations leveled against Iran in the U.S. government’s 9/11 Commission Report, which named the nation as a state sponsor of terrorism. Larijani, the secretary of the Iranian judiciary’s High Council for Human Rights and a former diplomat, is a prominent member of the...

RUSH: A couple of weeks ago, and it might be three weeks ago now, I shocked many people in this audience unintentionally by predicting that at some point down the road the left is gonna figure out that the number one thing standing in their way to them acquiring perpetual power, which they think they are entitled to, the one thing standing in the way, they will conclude, is elections.And it will be not long from now... Not next election and not 2020. It's not gonna happen overnight. But it's gonna happen. The left is going to start... In fact,...