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Today, the president of the United States told the prime minister of Israel he was reassessing America’s “options” with regard to Israel in light of remarks Benjamin Netanyahu made about potential Palestinian statehood and an election-day Facebook post urging Israeli right-wingers to go to the polls on Monday to counter a surge in Israeli Arab voters. The crisis in the relationship we discuss in our new editorial statement has entered a new and potentially unprecedented phase. It may well be that the president is going to present American Jews with a choice over the coming months no American president should...

WASHINGTON — The White House is stepping up its antagonism toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite his victory in this week’s elections, signaling that it is in no rush to repair a historic rift between the United States and Israel. The sharpened tone indicates that the Obama administration may be re-evaluating its relationship with its closest ally in the Middle East, having lost patience with Mr. Netanyahu in the closing days of an election campaign in which he spotlighted deep disagreements with President Obama over a Palestinian state and a nuclear deal with Iran. “You reach a tipping point,” said...

A new European Union (EU) report says that Jerusalem is at a “boiling point” and recommends sanctions against Israel over the “polarization” in the capital. The leaked report comes after Israeli officials said in February that EU member states were readying themselves to enforce sanctions on Israel and will strike hours after the March 17 elections. The report, obtained by the British Guardian on Friday, says that Jerusalem has reached a dangerous boiling point of “polarization and violence” not seen since the end of the second intifada in 2005. The report calls for tougher European sanctions against Israel over its...

Foreign elections don't always interest Americans very much. But Benjamin Netanyahu has become a familiar name in America, almost pronounceable, since his speech to Congress. Many Americans, Democrats and Republicans, cheered him to the polls in Israel this week. They were persuaded by his argument, expressed in near-Churchillian rhetoric, that the negotiations with Iran to prevent an Islamic bomb could lead to a "very bad deal." They know the only democracy in the Middle East stands in mortal danger, and that means America and the West are in danger, too. To hear the big ayatollah and all the little mullahs...

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf wrote her college honors thesis on “how conservative evangelical support for Israel complicates U.S. foreign policy,” according to Indiana University records. Harf’s thesis further illustrates the collegiate thinking in an Obama administration that has alienated a key American ally in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Harf, 33, previously worked on Obama’s 2012 campaign. Harf’s Indiana University honors political science professor said that Harf did not plan to pursue political science like her professor father Jim, but that she ended up becoming “pretty good” at it. “I always had a soft spot for Jim, since he...

If Obama decides to use the UN to help enable the isolation or surrender of Israel, he will have sabotaged the only democratic, pluralistic state in the Middle East while continuing to coddle the repressive Iranian theocratic regime After seeing their hopes for regime change in Israel go up in smoke, Obama administration officials have been attacking what White House spokesman Josh Earnest called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “divisive rhetoric” during the election campaign. They did not like that the prime minister rejected a two-state solution as they envision it should be designed. They were unhappy with likely plans by...

A Jewish school in Paris was evacuated on Thursday — three years to the day after the brutal massacre at a Jewish school in Toulouse, French news website JSS News reported. The evacuation follows disturbing instances of increased antisemitic violence throughout France and Europe. Police searched the classrooms and common areas at the Ecole Alliance Gustave Leven in Paris using bomb-sniffing dogs. Though the report did not indicate whether the police found any explosives, sources did tell JSS News that it was a fairly serious threat. The evacuation at the French school occurred on the third anniversary of the horrific...

The U.S. government might impose sanctions on Israel or allow its greatest ally in the Middle East to be tried in the International Criminal Court, according to Politico. Michael Crowley reports: Obama officials must now decide whether more international pressure on Israel can help bring a conservative Netanyahu-led government back to the negotiating table with the Palestinians — or whether such pressure would simply provoke a defiant reaction, as some fear. Obama has other diplomatic options. He could expend less political capital to oppose growing momentum within the European Union to impose sanctions on Israel for its settlement activity.

“You Still Have ‘White Privilege’ Even if you ‘Survived a Nazi Concentration Camp’ ” This extraordinary claim, that “it doesn’t matter what hardships you’ve had to face, you still have white privilege,” was directed to husband and wife survivors of Nazi tyranny by Robin DiAngelo, Professor of Multicultural Education at Westfield State University. With a scholarship in Social Justice Education and Whiteness Studies, DiAngelo teaches courses in Multicultural Teaching, Inter-group Dialogue Facilitation, and Cultural Diversity & Social Justice. It is to progressive thinkers and holders of powerful educational credentials like Professor DiAngelo that Jerry Todd has directed his response today....

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday night joined the chorus of those calling on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government to work towards the establishment of a Palestinian state. According to The Associated Press (AP), in a statement following Netanyahu’s landslide victory in Tuesday’s elections, Ban called on the Israeli Prime Minister to form a new government that will negotiate a peace agreement that will create “a viable Palestinian state.” UN spokesman Farhan Haq made clear that the unusually pointed statement reflects the secretary-general’s expectation and response to Netanyahu’s campaign comments opposing a two-state solution. […] According to AP, Haq said...

Conservative author and radio host Mark Levin unloaded on the Obama Administration tonight after President Obama refused to call and congratulate Prime Minister Netanyahu. Levin told Sean Hannity that Obama was anti-Semitic. Mark Levin: This is important. Eric Holder said that this nation is full of cowards because we won’t have a discussion about race. Well I think this nation needs to have a discussion about what’s going on in this White House and this administration about anti-Semitism. And, this White House, because it’s reaching out to Sharpton, Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR and all these radical nutjobs and groups. Their policies...

Tonight on Hannity, Mark Levin unleashed on Obama saying that we need to have a national discussion about the anti-Semitism coming from his administration: Eric Holder said that this nation is full of cowards because we won’t have a discussion about race. Well I think this nation needs to have a discussion about what’s going on in this White House and this administration, about anti-Semitism. Because this White House is reaching out to Sharpton, the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, all these radical nut jobs and groups. Their policies which are — it’s not just Netanyahu. They’re willing to throw Israel over...

Tough day, sport — despite your colleagues’ best efforts: Tightness of exits in Israel suggests Bibi's shameful 11th hour demagoguery may have swayed enough votes to save him. But at what cost?— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) March 17, 2015 First Twitter response: “You mad bro?” Yup. Keep in mind that this lamenter of demagoguery is the same guy who ran a campaign that accused Mitt Romney of giving a woman cancer, blessing scurrilous charges of tax evasion, and darkly warning Ohio voters that Obama’s opponent wasn’t “one of us.” You’d think he’d respect a ruthless, win-at-all-costs (successful) strategy. Instead, he’s...

For half a century, memories of the Holocaust inoculated the Continent against overt anti-Semitism. That period has ended—the recent fatal attacks in Paris and Copenhagen are merely the latest in a mounting tide. Today, right-wing fascist strains of Jew-hatred are merging with a new threat from radicalized Islamists, confronting Europe with a crisis, and its Jews with an agonizing choice.

Actor Michael Douglas is speaking out about an ugly confrontation with a jerk who gave his 14-year-old son “his first taste of anti-Semitism.” The two-time Oscar winner revealed the incident happened last year when he and wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, took their two young children on a family vacation to Europe. “During our stay at a hotel, our son Dylan went to the swimming pool. A short time later he came running back to the room, upset. A man at the pool had started hurling insults at him,” Douglas wrote in an op-ed piece in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. The 71-year-old...

Philadelphia’s transit system has been ordered to accept provocative ads that include a 1941 photograph of Adolf Hitler with a former Arab leader after a federal judge ruled in favour of a pro-Israel group’s free-speech lawsuit. The proposed bus ads carry a tagline saying: “Jew Hatred: It’s in the Quran”. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority believes the ads violate “minimal civility standards” and will consider an appeal. The Philadelphia Inquirer first reported on Wednesday’s ruling by US district judge Mitchell Goldberg. The ad in question features a photograph of a 1941 meeting between Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, described...

Op-Ed Michael Douglas finds Judaism and faces anti-Semitism By MICHAEL DOUGLAS Last summer our family went to Southern Europe on holiday. During our stay at a hotel, our son Dylan went to the swimming pool. A short time later he came running back to the room, upset. A man at the pool had started hurling insults at him. My first instinct was to ask, “Were you misbehaving?” “No,” Dylan told me through his tears. I stared at him. And suddenly I had an awful realization of what might have caused the man's outrage: Dylan was wearing a Star of David.

<p>Jews in the Baltics fear a series of disturbing events in the three-nation region of Eastern Europe may be signaling a revival of the Holocaust-era hatred that once nearly wiped out their numbers.</p> <p>Across the countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Jewish leaders say their communities are feeling increasingly uncomfortable as anti-Semitism once again appears to be on the rise. An Estonian museum exhibition mocking the Holocaust, a stage musical celebrating the life of a notorious Latvian Nazi mass murderer and the repatriation of the remains of a Lithuanian leader long linked to Nazis have all contributed to a climate of hate that has Jews on edge.</p>

Germany has rejected a definition of anti-Semitism that labels the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) as anti-Semitic. Responding to a legislative questionnaire released Thursday by leading Green Party MP Volker Beck, the Merkel administration wrote that “there does not exist a general academic definition” of anti-Semitism. Beck, who heads the German- Israel parliamentary group in the Bundestag, sharply criticized the Merkel administration: “Here the federal government has cowered,” he said. “There is no doubt of the anti-Semitic motivation within the spectrum of the BDS campaign. BDS aims essentially against Jewish Israelis and is therefore anti-Semitic. Whoever aggressively boycotts Israeli...

Hungarian Jewish leaders are criticizing a new Holocaust museum under construction in Budapest for omitting the culpability of Hungarians in the attempted genocide of the Jews. The museum in Budapest, called House of Fates, is nearly complete, but the planned exhibition focuses only on the last period of the Holocaust in Hungary, starting in 1944, when the ghettoization and deportation of over 500,000 Hungarian Jews was already complete. It fails to deal with the earlier persecution against Hungarian Jews, starting with the passage of anti-Jewish laws in the 1920s, local Jewish community leaders and historians complained. Community leaders said they...