Free Republic

What do backward Yemen and the developed United States have in common? An apparently insatiable urge to get stoned on a green bush. In Yemen the green bush, khat, generally is chewed. In our country the green bush, marijuana, is smoked, chewed, vaped, and applied as a cream. The effect is more or less the same: incapacity and degradation. Imagine being a fly on the wall at the recent Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) senior staff meeting where Biden politicals hanging on at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) uncorked their plan to downgrade marijuana on the controlled substances...

Terror group said to tell mediators it doesn’t have 33 living people who meet ‘humanitarian’ criteria of initial phase — after Israel agreed to lower previous demand of 40 people Hamas has said some of the 33 hostages it would release under the first phase of a prospective hostage deal with Israel would not necessarily be alive. In an announcement detailing the clauses to which it had agreed Monday in the latest proposal for a deal, the terror group said, “During the first phase, Hamas releases 33 Israeli detainees (alive or corpses).” The New York Times reported Tuesday that the...

An Iranian warship has embarked on a mission in oceanic waters, Iran’s state media reported, in the wake of a warning by Houthi rebels that they could renew their attacks on vessels transiting the region. The aircraft carrier Shahid Mahdavi, operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has reached southern hemisphere waters, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, without specifying its exact location

The president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq, Nechirvan Barzani, traveled to Tehran on Monday to meet with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who warned him to prevent “anti-revolutionary elements” from getting too friendly with the autonomous Kurdish region. The warning appeared to be a threat intended to dissuade Kurdish cooperation with the United States and any potential cordial ties with neighboring Israel. The KRG maintains friendly relations with the United States and cooperates militarily with Washington, particularly against the Islamic State (Isis) jihadist organization. The KRG’s Peshmerga forces were pivotal in the ouster of the ISIS “caliphate” from...

Israeli fighter jets during the night shot down a drone that was heading toward Israel from “the eastern direction,” the military says. The IDF says the aircraft had been tracked throughout the incident, and there was no threat to civilians.

The media in America is destructive, inhumane, utterly immoral, and has no conscience as a group whatsoever, and they are tearing this country apart through their lies and projection. Donald Trump has been the greatest friend Israel and the Jewish people have ever had in the Oval Office, and the only president to have a Jewish family, but to people who don’t like him, he is Hitler. Democrat media outlets like Media Matters and people like Joe Scarborough make a mockery of the Holocaust by calling their political opponents Hitler as they do to Donald Trump, while they repeat Hamas...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a utopian plan for a rebuilt Gaza on Friday called “Gaza 2035.” In a PowerPoint file apparently published by the Prime Minister’s Office, and available (in Hebrew) on the Ynet news website, the Israeli government envisions a future for Gaza as a thriving center of trade and innovation under a Palestinian administration that is de-radicalized and focused on economic growth rather than on terror and hate. The “Gaza 2035” plan seeks to capitalize on Gaza’s historical role as a crossroads on the east-west route between Cairo and Baghdad on the one hand, and the...

On Thursday's broadcast of MSNBC's "Alex Wagner Tonight," Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) stated that the encampment on Columbia was "completely peaceful" and "Some of the images that we saw from UCLA and other places made it look like a bunch of disorder. But the majority of these protests are peaceful. When you send in hundreds of military-dressed law enforcement officers into a college, that brings the disorder and that brings the chaos."Bowman said, "We want the protests to be peaceful. We do not want violent protests. I visited the Columbia encampment last week, and they were completely peaceful. There was...

After Abu Marzouk claims good relations with Amman, veteran Jordanian diplomat responds that country ‘has closed the book on Palestinian cells’ Jordan on Tuesday quickly dispelled the idea that Hamas leaders would be welcome to set up their offices on their territory after a senior Hamas official suggested the terror group’s political bureau would move to the kingdom if it was forced to leave its current home in Qatar. It was reported earlier this month that Hamas’s political chiefs are exploring moving their base of operations out of Qatar, as the Gulf state faces increasing pressure over its influence with...

CNN’s Dana Bash confronted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) Sunday over Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN)’s visit to Columbia University, where she gave a statement about the pro-Palestinian protests. Omar’s own daughter was suspended from Columbia-affiliated Barnard College last week after being arrested at the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the Morningside Heights campus. Omar was recorded saying, “I think it is really unfortunate that people don’t care about the fact that all Jewish kids should be kept safe and that we should not have to tolerate anti-Semitism or bigotry for all Jewish students, whether they are pro-genocide or anti-genocide.” Bash asked Sanders,...

Security services received reports of an explosion near an unidentified vessel today in the Red Sea. It is the first acknowledged report in days and came just hours after the Houthis issued a renewed threat on their official channels. Details were vague on today’s incident with the UK Maritime Trade Organization issuing only brief details. They received a report from a vessel of an explosion in the water approximately 72 nautical miles southeast of the port of Djibouti. The statement only said that there had been an explosion “at a distance,” and that the crew and vessel were reported safe....

We could call this A Tale of Two Facilities. Iran launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel in retaliation for the targeted strike on IRGC and Hamas commanders. That attack did little damage despite a volley of well over 300 missiles and drones, thanks to the regional defenses and the several hours of lead time necessitated by Iran's launch from its own territory.That demonstrated the facility Iran has for offensive operations in the region. Israel responded by demonstrating its facility, and as the New York Times hears from officials in Iran and the West, the result shocked the Iranians:An Israeli...

Seven were injured by a direct hit by an explosive UAV in a communal building in the settlement of Arab al-Aramshe in the Western Galilee. in the artillery for the launch sources. Ader Gitsis | Branu Tegene | N12 | Published 13:34 17.04.24 Seven injured, two of them in a serious condition, from a direct hit today (Wednesday) in a populated community center in Arab al-Aramsha in the Western Galilee. Another injured is in moderate condition, and four are in light condition. MDA teams, along with IDF medical teams, evacuated the seven to the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya.

Lebanon's Hezbollah said it launched missiles and drones on an Israeli military facility in Arab al-Aramshe on Wednesday, in response to the Israeli killing of Hezbollah members and commanders in Lebanon. This escalation comes as tensions between Israel and Iran are reaching new heights after a series of strikes and counterstrikes.

Something extraordinary happened above Israel over the weekend. It wasn’t that Israel repelled a massive Iranian rocket and drone barrage, although that was sufficiently miraculous. Nor was it that amazing that Saudi Arabia helped defend Israel against Iranian incursions because it’s been rumored for decades that Saudi Arabia occasionally lends a hand in those matters. What was truly extraordinary was that Saudi Arabia openly admitted to helping Israel fight back against Iran’s attack. It shows the truth of the ancient proverb that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Many people are pointing to President Trump’s Abraham Accords as...

“In fact, it shows Louis Tomlinson fans near Four Seasons Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina last week,” a fellow BBC fact-checker said of the 32-year-old singer and one-time Harry Styles bandmate in One Direction. The footage, also shared by numerous online influencers, was just one of a number aired by Iran’s state TV claiming to show scenes of devastation from the weekend’s air strikes, despite Israel shooting down around 99% of the drones and missiles fired at the Jewish state. Another that IRINN claimed to be the fiery aftermath of a missile strike was actually from a February forest fire...

Iran informed Turkey in advance of its planned operation against Israel, a Turkish diplomatic source told Reuters on Sunday, adding that Washington had conveyed to Tehran via Ankara that any action it took had to be "within certain limits." The Turkish source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan had spoken to both his US and Iranian counterparts in the past week to discuss the planned Iranian operation, adding Ankara had been made aware of possible developments. Earlier this week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Fidan to make clear that escalation in the...

Iran said it warned its allies and neighbors in the region 72 hours before the drone and missile attack on Israel began, the Iranian foreign minister said Sunday. "We informed them that the Islamic republic's response was legitimate and definitive," Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a televised meeting.

Democrat Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) broke ways with President Joe Biden on Sunday after he said he wouldn’t support Israel if it retaliated against Iran. During an interview with CNN, Fetterman told host Jake Tapper that he disagreed with Biden’s stance, saying he would never "capitulate to the fringe" or “pander” to the Democratic Party. “Do you think that's the right call or should direct U.S. military action, as some of your colleagues in the Senate are suggesting, should that be on the table?" Tapper asked. The president made it clear that he would not back Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin...

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton claimed Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that former President Donald Trump did not have any idea what to do in the Middle East. Anchor Jake Tapper said, “Former President Trump last night at a rally in Pennsylvania, Shanksville, said that none of this would have happened if he had been president. Take a listen to what he said.”