Saudi authorities last week decapitated a Yemeni citizen and then crucified his headless body. A Saudi court had convicted Mohammed Rashad Khairi Hussain of sodomizing and murdering Pakistani national Pashteh Sayed Khan. Both are crimes punishable by death in Saudi Arabia. The public execution, conducted in the southern city of...

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An internationally funded NGO founded and chaired by prominent Palestinian legislator and media personality Hanan Ashrawi is struggling to regain its credibility after accusing Jews of using the blood of Christians as part of Passover rituals, then defending the blood libel, then removing the accusation, and now finally apologizing. In...

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Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan risks destabilizing the region and alienating the United States as he scrambles to deal with “hardline domestic criticism” in the aftermath of having been diplomatically out-maneuvered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in settling on terms for restoring ties between Israel and Turkey. At...

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Arabic media sources report that France is ready to add Hezbollah’s military wing to the European Union’s list of terror organizations. Al-Hayat, a pan-Arab daily based in London, describes a meeting earlier this week between French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Secretary of State John Kerry, in which Fabius informed Kerry...

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Iran’s nuclear program is moving ahead at a “murderous pace,” a high-level Israeli source said in remarks printed Friday, and Tehran could have a nuclear weapon as early as July. “The Iranians aren’t messing around after North Korea. What Kim Jong-un has Ahmadinejad has,” the unnamed security source told Maariv, referring to...

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The Israeli army has completed the installation of a field hospital set up on the Israeli-Syrian border to treat injured Syrians. The humanitarian gesture comes at the risk of encouraging further efforts by Syrians to cross into Israel: Ben-Dror Yemini writes that, now that the word is out that Israel...

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New census figures released today in Israel show that the Jewish state has taken its place, for the first time in modern history, as the country with the country with the largest share of global Jewry. The United States came in second with approximately 5.5 million Jews, followed by France...

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Bulgaria’s interim prime minister Marin Raikov announced today that his government will present new evidence linking Hezbollah to the July 2012 in Burgas, Bulgaria that killed five Israelis and a Bulgarian. Bulgarian government officials announced in February that they had found proof that two of the suspects in the bombing had ties...

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Gunfire from across the Syrian border struck Israeli army vehicles over the weekend, triggering an Israeli retaliation that destroyed a Syrian machine-gun position. The Israeli military judged that the attack was deliberate, in contrast to previous cross-border gunfire: The cease-fire line between Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan, which...

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Barack Obama has traveled a long way over the past four years in his Middle East policy. In other words: The Mideast has traveled a long way since the president took office. The tête-à-tête vis-à-vis Israel has now become hugs and kisses, and Obama is gradually bidding adieu to his...

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