Free Republic

In 1996, after brutal sanctions had wreaked enormous hardship on the Iraqi people, the international community found a better way. Under the watchful eye of the United Nations, it launched the oil-for-food program, which would allow Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil, as long as the proceeds were used to buy food and medicine for the Iraqi people. The oil money would flow through the UN, which would monitor the spending. It was to be the largest humanitarian-aid effort ever undertaken. So much for theory.  In reality, the oil-for-food program was one of the larger rip-offs of all...

<p>In a remarkable shift for formal American policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict and morass, an American president has actually recognized reality. Out loud.</p> <p>George W. Bush has acknowledged the Israelis can't be expected to retreat to the vulnerable armistice lines of 1949, the old borders that invited one war after another in the years since. All the invaders had to do was cut a wasp-waisted Israel in two, then roll up each half. Not for nothing did the late Abba Eban refer to the old borders as "the Auschwitz lines."</p>

When Mordechai Vanunu ends his 18 years of mostly solitary confinement Wednesday morning, he will likely be greeted with complete silence from all four of his parents. Mr. Vanunu, 50, became an international cause célèbre in 1986, when he was kidnapped by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and imprisoned for treason after telling the world about Israel's secret nuclear-weapons program. Israeli officials believe Mr. Vanunu is one of the most dangerous men in the country, and have ordered him not to leave his town in Israel, to speak to foreigners, to use a cellphone or the Internet, or to come within...

<p>How is it, sir, that you still have your job?</p> <p>As if presiding over the deadliest domestic intelligence failure in the history of the nation wasn't enough to relieve the top spook of his duties, Tenet's appearance before the commission on Thursday provided more reason.</p>

<p>April 19, 2004 -- JERUSALEM -  Defiant Hamas leaders yesterday said they've already picked a new chief to replace assassinated Gaza Strip head Abdel Aziz Rantisi - but refused to publicly identify him.</p> <p>The move came as hundreds of thousands of frenzied Palestinians rampaged through Gaza, vowing to start a bloody "earthquake" against Israel for killing Rantisi less than a month after assassinating his predecessor, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.</p>

The Decline of Islamic Science, the Rise of Extremism The United Nations Development Program, in a report published last year, described in often painful detail some of the factors that have contributed to the decline of science and the rise of extremism in Arab societies. Among them are: Increases in average income have been lower in the Arab world than anywhere else for 20 years, except for the poorest African countries. "If such trends continue...it will take the average Arab citizen 140 years to double his or her income, whole other regions are set to achieve that level in a...

JERUSALEM; Israel's proposed evacuation of Jewish settlements and soldiers from the Gaza Strip would allow the military to continue to enter Gaza and permit Israel to maintain control over its airspace, seaports and border crossings, according to the first official text of the plan made public. All 7,500 Jewish settlers and the Israeli troops that protect them would be evacuated by the end of 2005, according to the document. Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan, evacuated settlements would not be destroyed — as they were when Israel evacuated the Sinai Peninsula in the 1980s — but Palestinian leaders and militants...

<p>THE United States is a member of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which this month will address the growing problem of how governments should respond to anti-Semitism.</p> <p>I have been designated by Secretary of State Colin Powell to serve as chairman of the U.S. delegation - which includes members of Congress as well as private citizens who had been leaders in the battle against anti-Semitism - to the OSCE's Berlin conference, beginning on April 25.</p>

UNITED NATIONS - With strong U.S. backing, Israel launched a campaign at the United Nations to win international support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to withdraw from Gaza and part of the West Bank.Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman said he briefed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday about the plan and Sharon's trip to Washington this week."You could describe this meeting as the beginning of a diplomatic onslaught by Israel to try to elicit international support for the disengagement plan," Gillerman told The Associated Press.He said Israel also wanted to point out the "absurdity" of Palestinian objections to...

Yasser Arafat on Thursday angrily rejected the US decision to back an Israeli plan to retain some of the territory it captured in the 1967 war. In an impassioned speech that was televised live from Ramallah, the Palestinian leader said Israeli security could never be achieved in the shadow of occupation and the assassination of Palestinian leaders. Israel's policy of "collective punishments, house demolitions and the construction of an apartheid wall would only serve to strengthen the resolve of the Palestinian people to force the occupiers and settlers to leave their land", he said. "The fanatical Israeli rulers are wrong...

AP- CAIRO, Egypt Arab anger over Israel's plan to leave Gaza and parts of the West Bank is focused on the United States, which Arabs accuse of abandoning the role of impartial mediator. They fear a partial withdrawal will turn into a permanent reality, with Israel controlling most of the land they want for a Palestinian state. That Arabs wouldn't simply applaud an Israeli pledge to withdraw from territory claimed by Palestinians is testament to the complexity of politics in the Middle East, a region where promises aren't always what they seem and compromise is a frustratingly rare commodity. President...

The Palestinian Authority's overtures to Hamas reveal the “plight of the Palestinians” to be just part of the global jihad All the hard work, all the bribes to diplomats and members of the media, all the subventions to public relations firms, all the enrolling in the Jihad against Israel even of “Christian” Muslims among the “Palestinian” Arabs such as Hanan Ashrawi, Naim Ateek, and Archbishop Sabbah, may now come to naught. With the Palestinian Authority (PA) inviting Hamas into its government, and with the Christian population among the “Palestinian” Arabs now so small (it was once over 20%, and now...

The following article is the text of President Bush's comments at a press conference following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. I'm pleased to welcome Prime Minister Sharon back to the White House. For more than 50 years, Israel has been a vital ally and a true friend of America. I've been proud to call the Prime Minister my friend. I really appreciate our discussions today. The policy of the United States is to help bring peace to the Middle East and to hope -- bring hope to the people of that region. On June 24, 2002, I...

WASHINGTON - In what experts said was a historic change of position, the United States said Wednesday that Israel should not have to withdraw completely from the West Bank or allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes inside Israel. President Bush said in an official letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that it was time to recognize "new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers." He wrote that it would not be "realistic" for Israel to withdraw from those centers or to admit the several million Palestinian refugees. While top administration officials insisted these...

San Francisco - Google Inc the leading Internet search engine, said Monday that it had no plans to alter its search results despite complaints that the first listing on a search for the word "Jew" directs people to an anti-Semitic Web site. The dispute points to one of the most difficult challenges that has plagued Web search engines: what to do when the results of a search are offensive to some, but legal? In this case, the first listed site on a search for "Jew" is "Jewwatch.com," which promotes itself as "Keeping a close watch on Jewish communities and...

http://www.gamla.org.il/english We all seemed surprised when France linked with Germany in an attempt to thwart America and the Bush plan to displace Saddam Hussein.    Why do we always focus on the wrong reasons in an attempt to re- define the obvious? France, since the days of Charles De Gaulle, has tried to re-instate France as a legitimate, leading power in Europe instead of being regarded as the commercial prostitute of Europe. France begged for rescue during WWI and WW2 and, after America rescued that decayed nation, France quietly hated those "cowboy" Americans.  Always they tried to separate Europe...

ALSO SEE: UN's Terrible Shame: Durban 2001 Jews Fear Durban Conference to Demonize Israel (JT Agency) By Micheal J. Jordan (01/08/03) URBAN, South Africa, Sept. 3 — The United States and Israel walked out of the United Nations meeting on racism here tonight, denouncing a condemnation of Israel in a proposed conference declaration and lamenting that a meeting intended to celebrate tolerance and diversity had degenerated into a gathering riven by hate. South Africa rushed tonight to convene emergency meetings to redraft the declaration and program of action in the hope of averting other walkouts, and a spokesman for the...

<p>For many American Jews, the past two weeks have been eye-opening in the same way Sept. 11 was eye-opening.</p> <p>Just as America was awakened to the threat of terrorism on that awful day, Jews who have never experienced a moment's anti-Semitism have had a chance to see it on the loose - and to consider that they too might fall victim to it.</p>

In a previous press release, Anti-CAIR (ACAIR), documented the relationship between the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington DCUnited States and Canada. based organization that claims to protect the civil rights of Muslims in the As part of a continuing investigation into the sources of CAIR’s funding, we have come across Dr. Ahmad Mohamed Ali, the first, and present, president of the IDB.  Why is Dr. Ali noteworthy?  Dr. Ali served as Secretary General of the Muslim World League, (MWL), from 1993 to 1995.  He was charged with “restructuring the MWL.”     ...

A LEADER IN A NEW IRAQI ORGANIZATION NAMED 'THE IRAQI TRIBAL ALLIANCE' ACCUSED ARAB TELEVISION SERVICES OF 'SYSTEMATIC IRRESPONSIBLE REPRESENTATION OF THE NEWS,' AND SAID 'THEY GRAVELY ENDANGER IRAQ… [BECAUSE] THEY ARE HELPING THE FIFTH COLUMN OF THE DEPOSED REGIME.' (AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT, LONDON, 4/16/03) A SAUDI NEWSPAPER REPORTED THAT THE 'TRUE REASON' FOR THE FALL OF BAGHDAD WAS THE BETRAYAL OF GENERAL MAHER SEIFAN AL-TIKRITI, SADDAM'S PATERNAL COUSIN WHO WAS IN CHARGE OF DEFENDING THE HEART OF THE IRAQI CAPITAL WITH SPECIAL NATIONAL GUARD UNITS. THE PAPER ADDED THAT AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE SUCCEEDED IN REACHING AN AGREEMENT WITH HIM. (AL-WATAN, SAUDI...