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On Monday Senators. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., invited Netanyahu to meet in a closed-door session with Democrats during his visit. Netanyahu declined the invitation on Tuesday and expressed regret about the politically fraught tone of his trip. “I regret that the invitation to address the special joint session of Congress has been perceived by some to be political or partisan,” Netanyahu wrote. “I can assure you that my sole intention in accepting it was to voice Israel’s grave concerns about a potential nuclear agreement with Iran that could threaten the survival of my country.” Netanyahu said to...

Israeli prime minister’s address cast by Obama supporters as rebuke to presidentTeam Barack started strong, but Team Bibi is showing it knows how to finish, as supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pick up steam against those urging a boycott of his speech next week before Congress. About 20 House and Senate Democrats announced early on that they would not attend the March 3 speech, which is being cast as a rebuke to President Obama, but since then only a handful have joined them as pro-Netanyahu advocates counter by hinting at political consequences for the no-shows.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, today made the following remarks at the start of the Cabinet meeting: "Today the Cabinet will be briefed on the security challenges developing around us, first and foremost Iran's attempt to increase its foothold on Israel's borders even as it works to arm itself with nuclear weapons. Alongside Iran's direct guidance of Hezbollah's actions in the north and Hamas' in the south, Iran is trying to also to develop a third front on the Golan Heights via the thousands of Hezbollah fighters who are in southern Syria and over which Iran holds direct command. The fact...

In what is becoming an increasingly nasty grudge match, the White House is mulling ways to undercut Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming trip to Washington and blunt his message that a potential nuclear deal with Iran is bad for Israel and the world. There are limits. Administration officials have discarded the idea of President Barack Obama himself giving an Iran-related address to rebut the two speeches Netanyahu is to deliver during his early March visit. But other options remain on the table. Among them: a presidential interview with a prominent journalist known for coverage of the rift between Obama...

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 final numbers are not yet in, but it seems clear that the White House-orchestrated campaign to boycott Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress is collapsing. Despite two weeks of intense anti-Netanyahu leaks, insults, and pressure, the White House has so far succeeded in persuading only a handful of Democratic members of Congress to stay away from the speech. A grand total of two Senators and twelve Representatives have publicly announced that they are boycotting Israel’s prime minister. Assuming that those figures change only marginally in the days ahead, it will mean that 98% of the Senate and 95%...

As Obama sees it, there are a bunch of crazy zealots out there who just wanna kill people. That’s it, that’s all. So when you think like Obama does, you inevitably get to a gem like this one: “It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you’ve got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.” This is a view of international affairs as a slasher movie. There’s no need to explain why Islamic State beheads and enslaves its captives, no need...

Excerpted from the Israeli prime minister’s remarks Monday in Jerusalem to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Why am I going to Washington? Because, as prime minister of Israel, it’s my obligation to do everything in my power to prevent the conclusion of a bad deal that could threaten the survival of the State of Israel. The current proposal to Iran would endanger Israel. It would enable Iran to build its first nuclear device within an unacceptably short time. And it would allow Iran to build an industrial capability to enrich uranium that could provide the fuel...

According to the Israeli version of YNET News, the State Department has issued a travel warning to Israel, specifically to Jerusalem. Below is the Google Translate version of the article: The US State Department issued a travel warning for Americans who travel to Israel, with an emphasis on visits to Jerusalem. “The security situation can change from day to day, depending on the state and regional peace. There is a danger of political tension and violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank will bring your injuries and even death American citizens,” reads the warning. American publication states that the security...

The head of Israel's election commission acted on Monday to limit any pre-election boost Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may get from a March 3 speech to the U.S. Congress in which he will warn of the threat from Iran's nuclear program. The speech has caused controversy in Israel and the United States, where the Democrats and the White House are angry that the Republican speaker, John Boehner, invited Netanyahu to speak at a sensitive time in the nuclear negotiations between Iran and six big powers including Washington, and only two weeks before Israel's closely fought March 17 election.

Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta is "afraid" what will happen when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks before a joint session of Congress next month. "I'm afraid what is going to happen here with what Netanyahu will do is to make this partisan divide between Democrats and Republicans and that makes it a very dangerous trap," Panetta said on CNN's "State of the Union." Netanyahu has said he plans to use his speech before Congress to criticize the administration's negotiations with Iran, which he claims are threatening Israel. Panetta said he hopes lawmakers are able to find another way...

Both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama have assured the Israeli and American public that Netanyahu's planned address to Congress will not harm the "unbreakable" US-Israel relationship - but a far-left NGO's new campaign Tuesday seeks to reignite sentiment against Netanyahu. The campaign, entitled, "I am a Jew, and Bibi does NOT [sic] speak for me," calls on American Jews to sign a petition against Netanyahu's Washington visit to Israel's Ambassador in the US, Ron Dermer. The language throughout the campaign is unabashedly hostile. "Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would be representing all Jews...

[snip] And that’s the way the story played out in the media, here and in Israel, until the New York Times appended the following correction a few days ago to a January 30 story on the controversy: “An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.” This correction has circulated in conservative and pro-Israel circles, but doesn’t seem to have led to any followup, or any investigations by those who initially reported the...

A national leader’s appearance before the US Congress is usually a source of pride and unity. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned trip to Washington — opposed by the White House and many Democrats — has Israel in uproar. The Israeli leader faces growing calls to cancel the visit as rivals accuse him of risking Israel’s relations with the United States in hopes of winning extra votes in next month’s Israeli parliamentary election. But Netanyahu has shown no signs of backing down, saying Sunday he would “do everything” to prevent US-led international negotiators from reaching a “bad and dangerous agreement”...

Israeli officials are considering amending the format of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned address to the U.S. Congress next month to try to calm some of the partisan furore the Iran-focused speech has already provoked. Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress about Iran's nuclear programme on March 3, just two weeks before an Israeli parliamentary election, following an invitation from John Boehner, Republican speaker of the house. The invitation has caused consternation in Israel and the United States, largely because it is viewed as Netanyahu, a hawk on Iran, working with the Republicans to thumb their...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Sunday he would continue to try to defeat an expected agreement between the US and Iran over the latter’s nuclear development program as Washington predicted a handshake on the matter in the coming weeks. “The [international] powers and Iran are racing forward with an agreement that will allow Iran to arm with nuclear weapons, something that will threaten the existence of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. Netanyahu declared that he was ready to go head to head with US Secretary of State John Kerry in order...

Joe Biden will skip Israeli Prime Minister’s Congressional speech in March. He is going to leave the country. Minority Leader Pelosi says Democrats will be busy and she hopes the event won’t take place. And now we know that the Obama administration told Black Caucus members to skip the speech and to publicly speak out against it. The Daily Mail reported: Two prominent black Democrats in the House of Representatives are vowing to skip Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress next month, a move that a White House insider says was put in motion by the Obama administration.

Insider says Obama administration 'sent a message' to black Democratic lawmakers that they should skip Netanyahu speech to Congress, as Biden says he'll be a no-show **SNIP** That disapproval apparently was orchestrated, or at least strongly encouraged, by the White House through comamunications with lawmakers connected to the Congressional Black Caucus. 'I'm not saying the president called anyone personally,' a current White House staffer told Daily Mail Online. 'But yeah, the White House sent a message to some at the CBC that they should suddenly be very upset about the speech.' The source said it was a 'back-channel' arrangement that...

The entire spat with the White House over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s invitation to speak to Congress was entirely manufactured by the White House. The truth about the incident, in which the White House complained that it was terribly wrong for Netanyahu to accept House Speaker John Boehner’s (R., Ohio) invitation without first notifying the administration, was made evident by a correction added to a New York Times article that greatly changed the timeline of events that effected the situation So the White House had actually already been informed that Netanyahu was invited to speak to Congress. The administration...

The Obama administration is going all out to see that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defeated, but the campaign of veiled threats and anonymous leaks is backfiring: Instead of sinking in the polls, Netanyahu is rising. When Netanyahu accepted House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to address a joint meeting of Congress in support of new sanctions on Iran, the Obama administration began a full-scale press offensive with a clear message: Netanyahu was endangering Israel by playing politics with the country’s relationship with the United States. Secretary of State John F. Kerry warned (through an anonymous aide) that “playing politics...