Free Republic

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, reports to Congress 4 times a year about how things are going in Afghanistan. The answer is not well. Not well at all. SIGAR is a relic of the Afghan war, and I was not aware it was still a thing, although I am glad it is. Given the hundreds of billions of dollars we poured into that country, somebody with a conscience should be rooting out all the corruption and incompetent actions that took place and keep tabs on what our blood and treasure bought. UN team identified up to...

President Joe Biden’s decision to withhold bombs from Israel will cause more Israeli soldiers to die in booby-trapped buildings that would otherwise have been destroyed from the air, according to a military source in Israel. As Breitbart News reported, the Biden administration confirmed this week that it had withheld 2,500-lb. and 500-lb. bombs, and would also withhold artillery rounds, in opposition to Israel’s decision to attack Hamas’s last stronghold in Rafah. Israel, which views the defeat of Hamas in Rafah as a military necessity, has decided to continue its operation. But in order to avoid antagonizing Biden, or running out...

May 10 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to submit a highly critical report to Congress as soon as Friday on Israel's conduct in Gaza that stops short of concluding it has violated the terms for its use of U.S. weapons, Axios said on Thursday. The report, citing three officials, added that the State Department was reviewing the use of weapons by Israel and six other countries engaged in different armed conflicts. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the Biden administration was set to miss a Wednesday deadline to report to Congress on whether Israel is violating...

Bret Stephens warned his New York Times readers on Friday that Presidentish Joe Biden "just made his biggest blunder" when he paused delivery of more than 3,000 much-needed aerial bombs to Israel this week. Stephens is the NYT's Conservativish™ writer, so he must drag his readers to the truth like a dog on a leash when he figures out you're taking him to the vet. That's why Stephens has to include phrases like Biden's "laudable motive" and to remind readers that the absolute worst part is that the suspension is "a political gift to Donald Trump." But the truth is...

The West has retreated from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Atheists and Marxists demonize that tradition. Their new worldview is not an absence of religion; humans cannot live without religion. All humans believe in dogma; practice rituals; quote scripture; embrace a tribe; elevate teachers, healers, and saviors; model themselves after saints; interpret patterns from apparent chaos; and insist on a larger meaning.A new religion practiced by many in the West is distinguished by several features. Genesis and Talmudic commentary insist that we are all equally made in the image of God; and we all equally descend, literally or spiritually, from the first...

Who would have ever expected that the first terror bases in our nation would be on American campus?We did. And we warned you about it.Recently, Robert Spencer, the Director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, was invited to speak at UCLA.Then UCLA blocked him from speaking because of the Hamas riots. But Robert wouldn’t give up and neither would we. The story made national news and his speech, telling the truth about Islamic terrorism at ground zero for terror supporters, is back on.After the Hamas riots, the Freedom Center went back to...

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett says US President Joe Biden’s decision to delay a weapons shipment to Israel is “deeply misguided,” in an interview with CNN. “If Hamas is granted immunity because it hides behind civilians… that means that the whole global jihad organizations are all going to adopt human shields as the core way of conducting terror,” he says. Interview clipBennet: "...We never target civilians.” “In fact,” he continues, “we have the lowest ratio of collateral damage in the history of urban warfare.” Israel is “bending over backward in order to prevent unnecessary deaths,” he says. “Otherwise we’d get...

Articles to impeach President Joe Biden over his decision to withhold aid to Israel for political reasons are in preparation, freshman Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) announced Thursday. Biden’s decision to withhold bombs from Israel is concerning due to its political implications. Biden’s base wants him to defund Israel, while many moderate Democrats support Israel’s ability to defend itself against terrorists. Biden appears stuck between competing coalitions during an election year. He currently trails in the polls to Trump and has a historically low approval rating to win reelection as an incumbent. Democrats accused former President Donald Trump in 2019 of...

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday on CBS’s “The Late Show” that President Joe Biden should have cut off weapons to Israel sooner. Wednesday on CNN, Biden said he would not supply offensive weapons for Israel to attack Rafah. Psaki said, “I do think that there’s some leverage we’re all seeing being used. Should it have been used earlier? I think the answer is yes to that. But we are seeing them pull back in the sending of weapons. That’s actually a pretty significant sign, given that the United States and Israel has a long-standing connection on...

Ben Gvir hammered by president, opposition over ‘Hamas Lapid and Yesh Atid lawmakers urge Netanyahu to fire minister for ‘infantile’ response to US arms freeze threat, amid worries quip could harm national security. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir faced calls for his sacking Thursday after he quipped online that the Hamas terror group loves Joe Biden, in reaction to the US president’s comments to CNN that he would freeze arms transfers to Israel should the military advance into the Gazan city of Rafah. Opposition head Yair Lapid led a chorus of lawmakers from his side of the aisle excoriating...

On Wednesday, former President Trump blasted President Biden after Biden accused Israel of attacking population centers and threatened to withhold military aid to the Jewish state if Israel attacked Rafah, the last stronghold of the terrorist group Hamas. Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in reference to 2,000-pound bombs the U.S. has supplied Israel, “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as the consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” despite the fact that Israel does not target “population centers” and takes exhaustive steps to warn civilians that they need to leave specific areas before...

Last week an event took place that illustrates the folly of negotiating with passionate ideologues and autocrats with whom there is no common ground for a meeting of the minds necessary for a true agreement. This practical wisdom, based on human experience going back 28 centuries to Homer, has been forgotten by most modern Western leaders and foreign policy hands, who believe that negotiations, non-lethal “engagement,” and persuasion can override an autocratic adversary’s passionate interests and ambitions that by nature conflict with our own.The occasion was a three-day, humiliating meeting that our Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, attended in China....

Ireland, Spain and a number of other EU member states are considering 21 May as the date on which they will jointly recognize the State of Palestine, RTÉ News understands. Two sources have said that 21 May is being looked at. A third source said contacts between Dublin and Madrid, as well as between Slovenia and Malta, have been intensifying with a view to the countries jointly recognizing Palestinian statehood. […] Currently, eight EU member states recognize the State of Palestine, the most recent being Sweden in 2014. Ireland has been in ongoing discussions with “like-minded” states for a number...

During a portion of an interview with CNN set to air on Wednesday’s broadcast of “OutFront” that was aired on Wednesday’s broadcast of “The Situation Room,” President Joe Biden stated that if Israel goes into population centers in Rafah, “I’m not going to supply them the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, to deal with that problem.” And that while Israel will still get supplies for the Iron Dome and to give them the “ability to respond to attacks” he has “made it clear to Bibi and the War Cabinet, they’re...

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,...

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...

Hamas terrorists swarmed through Chen Goldstein-Almog’s home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, shooting and killing her husband and her 20-year-old daughter before bundling her and her three surviving children into her car and driving them into Gaza. Goldstein-Almog and two other released hostages spoke in person at a screening of testimonials prepared by the Government Press Office and screened in the GPO’s offices in Jerusalem on Monday for press and diplomats. She described seeing terrorists swarm through their house, yelling “Jews, Jews” in Arabic. Goldstein-Almog’s husband, Nadav, tried to protect the family and was quickly shot in the...

‘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...

The US last week paused a bomb shipment for Israel over concerns it was going ahead with a major ground operation in Rafah, southern Gaza, a senior administration official says. The shipment consisted of 1,800 2,000lb (907kg) bombs and 1,700 500lb bombs, the official told CBS News, the BBC's media partner in the US. Israel has not "fully addressed" US concerns over humanitarian needs of civilians in Rafah, the official says. Israel made no immediate comment. Overnight, there were further Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip, hours after Israeli forces backed by tanks took control of the key Rafah...