Free Republic

Senator Marco Rubio, who announced Monday he is running for president in 2016, withdrew his amendment that would have required Iran to recognize Israel's right to exist. Some lawmakers warned extraneous elements could upend the bill, and Rubio acknowledged the importance of a securing congressional review of the Iran agreement. Washington's powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC voiced approval of the measure, saying: "Congress should review any agreement to ensure it meets US objectives, and object if it fails to do so." A final deal, the group said, "must be subjected to the constitutional system of checks and balances that is the...

Israel’s ambassador to the US, Ron Dermer received Saturday the full backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, amid chatter in Washington that replacing Dermer may be necessary to restore the working relationship with the Obama administration. In a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu reiterated what he had said at the AIPAC conference earlier this month that he “couldn’t be prouder to have Ron Dermer representing Israel in Washington.” “That is as true today as it was then,” the statement read. “The prime minister has full confidence in Ambassador Dermer, whose service to the people and State of Israel...

AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, hosted a speaker on Sunday that a decade ago most Jews would have been abhorred to meet: Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef. The younger Yousef was an informant for the Shin Bet security service from 1997 to 2007 before seeking asylum in the United States. On Tuesday, the conference attendees greeted him with enthusiastic applause. "Sometimes I try to rationalize what a son of a Hamas leader is doing in a big Jewish event like this. And the only way to see it, I came up with...

Pro-Israel lobby the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) urged the Obama Administration late Thursday to recommit to improving the US-Israel relationship. In a statement to reporters, AIPAC further urged the administration to accept the sincerity of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The strong public statement, a rarity for the lobby, follows mounting hostility from the White House towards Netanyahu who won a landslide electoral victory earlier this week. Before the Israeli election, Prime Minister Netanyahu said he was opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state. In response, the Obama Administration indicated that it...

Dr. Elie Wiesel, left, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and Senator Ted Cruz at Rabbi Boteach’s panel discussion.An array of Jewish groups condemned an ad by a foundation associated with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach that accused National Security Adviser Susan Rice of turning a blind eye to genocide. “Susan Rice has a blind spot: Genocide,” said the advertisement, which appeared in Saturday’s New York Times, touting a talk on Iran in Washington hosted by Boteach, the Englewood-based author and pro-Israel advocate. As soon as Shabbat ended, Jewish groups rushed to condemn the ad by This World: The Values Network. The American Jewish Committee...

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has claimed that heightened anti-Israel sentiments across the globe serve as a sign of "divine help" in the Islamic Republic's fight against its arch enemy. "Increasing global hatred of #Israel is a sign of divine help," he wrote late Monday on Twitter.Iran's leading cleric came out against the pro-Israel lobby, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the group's annual confab on Monday. The premier warned of the existential threat a nuclear Iran would pose to Israel during his speech at the AIPAC conference, which came ahead of his...

Susan Rice told AIPAC It was "neither realistic nor achievable" to expect Iran to stop enriching uranium: "We cannot let a totally unachievable ideal stand in the way of a good deal. I know that some of you will be urging Congress to insist that Iran forgo its domestic enrichment capacity entirely," Rice told AIPAC, as the crowd broke in to chear. "But, but, but as desirable as that would be, it is neither realistic nor achievable."

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf says leaks on the Iran nuke talks by Israel would “betray” the US’s trust. “We’ve continuously provided detailed classified briefings to Israeli officials to keep them updated and to provide context for how we are approaching getting to a good deal,” she told reporters in Washington. “Any release of any kind of information like that would, of course, betray that trust.”

Netanyahu to speak soon.

Live broadcast from AIPAC on youtube. Netanyahu's speech today will focus on the US-Israeli relationship. Tomorrow's speech to Congress at 10:45am EST will focus on Iran.

BEN GURION AIRPORT, Israel: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu headed to Washington on Sunday on what he said was a “historic” mission to try and stop a nuclear deal with Iran, an AFP correspondent said. The controversial 48-hour visit will see the Israeli leader addressing a joint session of the US Congress in a bid to garner last-minute support to halt an emerging world deal with Iran over its nuclear program, in a move which has infuriated the White House. But Netanyahu, who will also address the annual policy conference of the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby, has refused to back down....

The nasty weather didn’t stop a group of around 60 anti-Israel activists from storming the steps of the Washington Convention Center and blocking at least one entrance to the conference grounds. Code Pink and other anti-Israeli groups went into a frenzy against AIPAC, the “Israel lobby,” and what they believe is the “Apartheid” State of Israel. I also saw harassment of men, women, and children who had done nothing to deserve it except make the mistake of revealing their conference badge before they reached the door. Those who were obviously religious Jews (based on their head coverings, clothing, and...

Habayit Hayehudi leader and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said on Sunday that the developing agreement between world powers and Iran is a disaster of historic proportions. Speaking on Sunday at the AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) conference, Bennett said that the deal legitimizes Iran's uranium enrichment and nuclear programs, and will pave the way for the Islamic Republic to obtain nuclear weapons "within several years." Bennett said that the Iran talks are "a 2015 March of the Folly" – a reference to historian Barbara Tuchman’s famous 1984 book. Like in the book, said Bennett, the deal with Iran goes...

President Barack Obama is sending National Security Advisor Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power–widely seen as among the most anti-Israel members of his administration–to address a prominent pro-Israel gathering next week. The move is described by the Associated Press as an effort to mend fences after the administration had withheld speakers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference. In reality, it is a further slap in the face. Rice caused an uproar earlier this week when she told interviewer Charlie Rose that the forthcoming speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a special joint session...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power will attend a meeting of the powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC next week amid a time of strain between the United States and Israel. A White House spokeswoman confirmed Rice and Power would attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog Sunday of undermining his efforts to prevent Iran’s nuclearization by declining to call a potentially nuclear Iran an existential threat to the State of Israel. “I agree that a nuclear Iran is extremely dangerous, and I believe that it must be prevented,” Herzog said in an interview with Washington Post correspondents William Booth and Ruth Eglash. “No Israeli leader will accept a nuclear Iran. All options for me are still on the table,” including Israeli military strikes. When they asked if he agrees with Netanyahu that a nuclear Iran would...

Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog announced Tuesday he will not be traveling to the US to appear before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference, amid growing tensions over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned speech to Congress on March 3. "Netanyahu's spin about who is going to Washington must stop," Herzog told a gathering of foreign media in Israel. "My firm position against a nuclear Iran is known by every Israeli and American, including the US president, and I know how to voice it in a sharp, clear manner - from here, not from there." Herzog added: "A...

White House may not send a cabinet-level official to largest annual gathering of pro-Israel Americans - and the president won't go either The White House confirmed on Monday that President Barack Obama doesn't plan to attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's conference next week, held annually in Washington, D.C., and that no cabinet-level U.S. official is currently scheduled to make an appearance. The 'largest gathering of America's pro-Israel community,' according to the confab's organizations, AIPAC draws a crowd of roughly 14,000 attendees, many of whom are of Jewish heritage. The last time Obama showed up at the conference was...

The White House isn’t happy that John Boehner circumvented them to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress, and so they are mulling over ways to counter Netanyahu’s address.According to a new AP report, one option they already discarded is having President Obama give a speech of his own on Iran to counter Netanyahu’s. What is still on the table, administration officials say, is Obama doing an interview with “a prominent journalist known for coverage of the rift between Obama and Netanyahu.”RELATED: Obama on Bibi Speech: Don’t Cloud U.S.-Israel Pact with ‘Partisan Politics’They are also considering a...

The supposedly unprecedented step taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his plan to speak directly before Congress about the Iranian nuclear threat on March 3, rather than working exclusively with the White House on the issue, actually has an interesting precedent—established in 1975 by none other than Yitzhak Rabin and America’s Democratic Party. That spring, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger undertook a round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The negotiations quickly ran into trouble, when Egypt refused to offer anything more than a brief a period of “non-belligerency” in...