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SPITE TOWARD BIBI “HARDENED” OBAMA’S RESOLVE TO DO IRAN NUKE DEAL NYT: “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] objections to a nuclear deal with Iran, and his decision to firmly ally himself with Mr. Obama’s Republican opponents in expressing his ire over the Iran talks, may well have hardened the president’s decision to push for an agreement, one Obama adviser said Wednesday.” [Watch Fox: Netanyahu will be interviewed by Megyn Kelly, airing on “The Kelly File” tonight at 9 p.m. ET] White House steps up attacks - Fox News: “ In its first public response to Netanyahu's election triumph, White House...

Zionist Union co-leader Tzipi Livni said Thursday she was very concerned with the election results, which currently show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party leading with 30 seats while her faction trails with 24 mandates. "The results here are not just a victory for Netanyahu, they are actually a victory for hate and fear," she told Army Radio in reference to the premier's last-minute bid to garner votes by warning that the right-wing faced danger from the large turnout of Israeli Arab pollster.

WASHINGTON — President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had a poisonous relationship long before Mr. Netanyahu swept to victory on Tuesday night in elections watched minute-by-minute at the White House. But now that Mr. Netanyahu has won after aggressively campaigning against a Palestinian state and Mr. Obama’s potential nuclear deal with Iran, the question is whether the president and prime minister can ever repair their relationship — and whether Mr. Obama will even try. On Wednesday, part of the answer seemed to be that the president would not make the effort. In strikingly strong criticism, the White...

Are the Israeli people sick? According to Haaretz Columnist Gideon Levy, who was unsurprisingly not pleased with the results of Tuesday’s elections in Israel, the answer is “yes.” In an opinion column he published shortly after the results were announced, Levy called for the replacement of the Israeli people for re-electing Benjamin Netanyahu. Levy wrote that, “the first conclusion that comes to my mind two minutes after the release of the election results is particularly depressing: We have to replace the people. [What's necessary] is not more elections to change the leadership of the State, but rather a general election...

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) told The Algemeiner today that The New York Times has an anti-Netanyahu obsession. The media watchdog made the comments in response to a strongly worded editorial in The Times decrying Prime Minister Netanyahu’s election victory on Tuesday. “Anyone who wasn’t already aware of The New York Times mindset just has to read today’s paper on Israel’s elections to realize how pervasive is the anti-Netanyahu obsession at that newspaper,” said Senior Media Analyst Ricki Hollander of CAMERA. CAMERA also accused the paper of being anti-Israel. Hollander said that the newspaper...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's victory in the Israeli election will not hamper US efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, the State Department said Wednesday. The Israeli leader opposes any accommodation with Tehran and came to Washington during the campaign to address US lawmakers and denounce the agreement under negotiation as a "bad deal." "We've been long familiar with the views of the prime minister on Iran. We don't think that his win has impacted the Iran negotiations, or will," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. US Secretary of State John Kerry is in Lausanne for talks this week...

Among the most disappointed with the results of Tuesday's elections are the activists of the V15 group – the organization that may or may not have been funded by American and European interests, but whose aim was to remove Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from office. “A confusing night turned into a painful morning,” the group said in a statement. “It was painful not because we lost, but because we have no faith in the winners.” V15 – Victory in 2015, a project of the One Voice group – was accused of being operated and funded by anti-right groups abroad, which...

The White House said Wednesday it still believes a two-state solution is the best way to find peace in the Middle East, after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state. This comes after a comment by the White House, saying it will evaluate its approach to Mideast peace process. President Barack Obama believes a two-state solution is "the best way to resolve the situation," according to White House spokesman Josh Earnest, who added that Obama had not yet called to congratulate Netanyahu on his election victory. The White House also said it was "deeply...

When the 20th Knesset is sworn in on March 31, there will be quite a few quantitative changes in the legislature's makeup, according to Wednesday's results. The official election results will come on Thursday, after all the votes by soldiers and others who vote away from their hometown are counted, so some of these numbers are subject to changes, though they're likely to be minor. The 71.8 percent voter turnout is a 16-year peak, the highest since 1999, when it was 78.7%, according to research by the Israel Democracy Institute, and the number of parties that passed the 3.25% electoral...

The latest pre-election surveys had predicted that Zionist Union would outperform Likud, likely based on voters’ prioritization of socioeconomic issues. Likud’s apparent victory, however, might affirm that Israeli voters still place a high priority on security. Following Netanyahu’s much-debated March 3 speech to the U.S. Congress about Iran, an Israel Hayom-New Wave Research Institute poll revealed that 41 percents of Israelis would place their trust in Netanyahu to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, far more than the 6 percent of respondents who chose Herzog. (Fifteen percent said they trust U.S. President Barack Obama the most with the Iranian nuclear...

There’s two things that are clear. The Israeli public does not want a leftwing government, and the Israeli public does not like how Israel’s leftwing media tried to manipulate the elections. The suspiciously timed “investigations” against Netanyahu fueled by the constantly repeated reports of those investigations only helped Netanyahu in the polls, until the media finally realized they needed to back off the reporting because it was backfiring. And then there was V15′s campaign. The Israeli people aren’t stupid. They saw the media manipulation. They understood about the foreign funding, and they hit back. The news media’s outright lying about...

DUBAI- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu owes his election win to Israeli security fears, notably about Iran's growing regional influence, said an official of a Gulf Arab government wary of Tehran's progress towards a nuclear deal with world powers. "With Iran emerging again, it was highly expected that Netanyahu would win," said the Gulf Arab official, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. "He's a man who believes strongly in protecting his people, and this is what Israel wants now." The Gulf Arab states, led by dominant Gulf Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia, see Shi'ite Iran...

All day long CNN has been relentlessly beating the drum and practically celebrating the forgone conclusion that sitting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was about to lose today’s elections. Every move Netanyahu made over the past few weeks that outraged Obama and his media allies was framed by CNN today as a blunder — from the speech he made before Congress to sounding the alarm today about Israeli Leftists busing Arabs to the polls. CNN was quite obviously setting up a Narrative to explain and gloat over what polls said was almost certain to be a Netanyahu defeat. A funny...

Polls scheduled to close 10pm local time / 4pm EDT. Turnout as of 9am was 7.4%, at 10am was 13.7%, and at 12pm was 26.5%. Exit polls will be released when polls close in less than 8 hours. For live coverage in English, click on link below:

Any person with eyes can see the deep feeling of disappointment that has prevailed within the Zionist Union since Saturday evening. That is when Isaac Herzog, the Zionist Union's candidate for prime minister for the first half of the next government's term, lost his cool in a brief televised confrontation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I wonder what would have happened if Herzog or Zionist Union No. 2 Tzipi Livni had taken part in a more in-depth debate with Netanyahu. Not even their best friends in the media, who are fully mobilized on their behalf, could have saved them. Before...

Accusing Livni and Herzog as being liars for calling off rotation deal at the last minute, Netanyahu says the pair are running scared. Joining his fellow Likud MKs in disparaging Tzipi Livni's announcement that she was giving up her rotation agreement with Zionist Union co-chair Yitzhak Herzog, was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu himself. Right-wing politicians, a number of them from the Likud, took no time in expressing their ire at the announcement, particularly the fact it took place the night before elections. Netanyahu was similarly accusatory, telling Channel Two that Livni and Herzog are in a panic over the narrowing...

LAUSANNE, Switzerland - Iranian diplomats twice confronted their American counterparts about an open letter from Republican senators who warned that any nuclear deal could expire the day President Barack Obama leaves office, a senior U.S. official said Monday. The official, noting the administration's warnings when the letter first surfaced, said the GOP intervention was a new issue in the tense negotiations facing an end-of-month deadline for a framework agreement. The letter came up in nuclear talks Sunday between senior U.S. and Iranian negotiators, the official said, and the Iranians raised it again in discussions Monday led by Secretary of State...

"The historic announcement of Livni and Herzog marks new lows in terms of broken promises," MK Yariv Levin (Likud) stated Monday night. "If, until today, we had grown accustomed to the Left breaking its promises after elections, now these promises are being broken even before the polls open." "Whoever can't handle the stress of the night before elections is not able to handle the day-to-day stresses of premiership," he added. "Now it is absolutely clear that there is only one suitable candidate for Prime Minister - Binyamin Netanyahu - and that only one party fulfills its promises: Likud." "Livni's misstep...

VOIGHT: I love Israel. I want to see Israel survive and not be overtaken by the madmen of this world. President Obama does not love Israel. His whole agenda is to control Israel, and this way, he can be friends with all of Israel’s enemies. He doesn't want Bibi Netanyahu to win this election. America has not been the same since his presidency. I beg everyone, all of you, to understand the truth. Those like Isaac Herzog (Netanyahu's challenger) who believe that dealmaking is the solution to what Israel faces are as wrong as Neville Chamberlain believing he made a...

Organizers of the nationalist rally in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square estimated that 100,000 people are attending it. Economics Minister Naftali Bennett played the guitar and sang “Jerusalem of Gold” to the vast crowd, urging it to sing along, in protest of the decision by the Elections Committee not to allow artists to perform at the rally. He told the crowd that the elections can be about security, and also about the price of living, because the Left does not have a monopoly on social issues. “There is no need to divide the Land of Israel to lower the price of...