Free Republic

US vice president hosts Jewish leaders, political rivals for Rosh Hashana toast, says 'Israel is America's closest, dearest, most morally-based friend' WASHINGTON – At an annual event held at the US Vice President's residence in honor of the Jewish New Year, US Vice President Joe Biden said that "Israel is America's closest, dearest, and most morally-based friend". Biden added that there is no alternative to America's commitment to Israel. Among the guests present at the event were Biden's political rivals from the Republican Party, such as House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor, as well as leaders of the American Jewish...

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One when asked about Israel's decision to build new houses in East Jerusalem: “The administration and the United States government is deeply disappointed by that announcement. We have maintained all along that each side in the dispute, the Palestinians and the Israelis, should take steps that bring them closer to direct negotiations to resolve the issues that stand in the way of Palestinian statehood and a secure Jewish state of Israel. When either side takes unilateral action that makes it harder to achieve that, we make our views known,

Defense Minister Ehud Barak says the PA should not object to Israeli construction in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem because Israel will just hand over anything in areas ceded during talks, anyways. "There's a reality on the ground and natural population growth. People need to build kindergartens," Barak said, noting another construction freeze is not possible. "But why should the Palestinians care? If a building is constructed on land that will be transferred to them under a peace agreement, they will get the building, hence the issue if of no significance," Barak argued.

Obama's move away from an important ally is now almost complete: The U.S. has informed Arab governments that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity," a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal. The move by the Obama administration appears calculated to avoid having to cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security council by joining others in the council in sending a strong message to Israel to stop its continued construction...

The U.S. informed Arab governments Friday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity," a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal. But the Palestinian's rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesdy of Arab representativs and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution Friday, according officials familar with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospects that the Obama adminstration may cast...

It was always going to be a struggle for the U.S. to dissuade its Arab allies from going ahead with a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. But last week's "people power" rebellion in Tunisia has made Washington's effort to lobby against the plan more difficult. Tunisia has given the autocratic leaders of countries such as Egypt and Jordan more reason to fear their own people. For those regimes, symbolically challenging unconditional U.S. support for Israel is a low-cost gesture that will play well on restive streets. Going ahead with the resolution, which was discussed on Wednesday at the...

Sarah Palin... COOPER: Has she been unfairly painted here? COOPER: Dana, I want to play for you.. what she said about the whole blood libel thing... COOPER: I mean, she -- she seems unwilling to -- to apologize or back off about -- of anything... DANA LOESCH... We have a Tea Party organizer that received a death threat because of all -- you want to talk about rhetoric -- because of all of the things that are being said about conservatives and being said about Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin.... BELCHER: Dana, I just can't -- I can't let her...

Palestinian representatives at the UN have prepared a draft resolution that will seek to declare that Israeli settlements are "illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of peace." The issue of the legality of Israel's settlements policy has long been a central issue on the agenda of the international community. It is claimed that settlements are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians (1949). But both the text of that convention, and the post-World War II circumstances under which it was drafted, clearly indicate that it was never intended to refer to...

American policy regarding the Arab/Israel conflict has not changed since the Armistice Agreement in 1949. American policy sought to to achieve a holy balance in the Israeli-Arab conflict. ”This policy had its origins in the tripartite U.S.-British-French declaration in 1950, against arms sales to either side. The Soviets exploited this policy to sell arms to the Arabs, and the French looked after their own interests when they supplied weapons to Israel, but the Americans preserved an outward appearance of egalitarianism.” So reported Haaretz in 2007 based on then recently released documents. “Washington's support for the existence, independence and territorial integrity...

"The right of the Jewish people to their homeland is with G-d", declared Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor and FOX News Channel TV host, as he delivered an impassioned address at the 28th annual Bet El dinner, held Sunday evening, December 5th at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Manhattan. ... "Mike Huckabee is the best friend that Israel has today and I say that without hyperbole. He is the only candidate who did not espouse a two state solution as a means of achieving peace in the region. ..."

(Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday abandoned its effort to persuade Israel to freeze construction of Jewish settlements, officials said, dealing a blow to efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

No doubt PM Netanyahu would have rather spent the last 18 months in hell than to have spent it participating in the peace process under brutal pressure by the Obama administration. Come to think of it, it must have been hell. Keep in mind that Netanyahu was voted into office on a platform which denied the two-state solution. The Obama administration succeeded in forcing a dramatic change in that policy. Or did it? On June 14/09 Netanyahu delivered a speech at Bar Ilan University in which he appeared to accept a two state solution with these words, “In my vision...

The Settlement movement warned Tuesday of a harsh reaction and painful "price tag" style retaliation if authorities proceed in the plan to seal a synagogue which was illegally built in the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Shomron. The settlers are enraged that while legal action is taken against their prayer house, no action is being taken again an illegally built mosque in the Burin, an adjacent Palestinian village. Elements in the far Right warned that should the synagogue be sealed, they will stage protests, burn tires, set Palestinian farmland on fire and block roads. Knesset Member Michael Ben Ari (National...

Americans for Peace now releases app which provides a "comprehensive settlements database, integrated with high-tech mapping technologies." Americans for Peace Now has released a new interactive mapping application for Apple iPhone and iPad devices which will provide a real-time view of events on the ground in the West Bank, according to a press release by the organization. The free application called "Facts on the Ground: The APN Map Project" is available through iTunes or the internet. The application "provides detail and context for the debate on Israeli settlements in the West Bank," APN said in the press release. Any user...

As Jennifer noted yesterday in her comments on Giora Eiland’s Ynet op-ed, Palestinian unwillingness to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is the make-or-break issue of the peace process. She’s also correct that the Obama administration shows no signs of recognizing this fact. But two recent developments make this blindness particularly puzzling. First, the critical importance of recognition is not an obscure point that an honest broker could easily overlook; it has by now become glaringly

Is President Obama good for the Jews? For more and more Jewish-Americans, the answer is no. In a Pew Research Center report issued on Thursday and entitled “Growing Number of Americans Say Obama Is a Muslim” (tragic in its own right), there was another bit of bad news for Obama: the number of Jews who identify as Republican or as independents who lean Republican has increased by more than half since the year he was elected. At 33 percent it now stands at the highest level since the data have been kept. In 2008, the ratio of Democratic Jews to...

In seeking to constrain Israeli settlement activity, the U.S. is essentially trying to obtain additional Israeli concessions that were not formally required according to Israel's legal obligations under the Oslo Accords. The U.S. and Israel have already negotiated specific guidelines for settlement activity so that it will not diminish the territory of a future Palestinian entity. Given the fact that the amount of territory taken up by the built-up areas of all the settlements in the West Bank is 1.7% of the territory, the marginal increase in territory that might be affected by natural growth is infinitesimal. It might be...

Some 60 members of right-wing youth movement arrive in West Bank town of Birzeit at dawn in bid to establish Jewish community in area. Some 60 right-wing activists from the "Youth for the Land of Israel" movement arrived early Wednesday at deserted buildings near the West Bank town of Birzeit in the Ramallah area. The teens announced their intention to establish a Jewish community named "Beer Zayit" in the area in response to a Palestinian plan to build a new city called Rawabi, which the settlers said would weaken the Jewish holding in the Binyamin region. 'A settlement in practice'...

For a head of state to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama last Tuesday night. Senior commentators even went as far to say that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”. To be quite frank, Netanyahu's unyielding coalition should take substantial blame for the political impasse with the White House attitude....

Benjamin Netanyahu was left to stew in a White House meeting room for over an hour after President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of tense talks to have supper with his family, it emerged on Thursday. The snub marked a fresh low in US-Israeli relations and appeared designed to show Mr Netanyahu how low his stock had fallen in Washington after he refused to back down in a row over Jewish construction in east Jerusalem. The Israeli prime minister arrived at the White House on Tuesday evening brimming with confidence that the worst of the crisis in his country's relationship...

Last night Barack Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. It was very obvious that there was no easing of tensions between the two allies. Neither leader said as much, but after the two-hour face-to-face meeting between the two leaders in the Oval Office there was no smiling hand-shake photo op, no statement. Netanuahu was lead out the same way he was lead in very quietly. The news blackout about the meeting is unusual. Such high-level meetings are generally followed by pubic handshakes, and often by joint statements. Obama met with Netanyahu for about an hour and a half,...

Israel will defy American pressure to halt the construction of controversial Jewish housing in Arab east Jerusalem, when President Obama meets Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, in the White House today. Fresh from his historic victory to reform American healthcare, the US leader is to be confronted, within hours, with a foreign policy crisis. This time Mr Obama must resolve the worst breakdown in relations in decades between America and its closest regional ally, Israel, and try to get the Arab-Israeli peace process moving again. But any hopes of a compromise were dashed yesterday when Nir Barkat, the Mayor of...

The focus on settlements or the “occupation” has now taken a back seat to the focus on Jerusalem itself. It is understood by all that so goes Jerusalem, so goes the peace process. Daniel Pipes in his well known 2001 article, The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem, asks The city being of such evidently minor religious importance (to Islam), why does it now loom so large for Muslims, to the point that a Muslim Zionism seems to be in the making across the Muslim world? Why do Palestinian demonstrators take to the streets shouting “We will sacrifice our blood and souls...

Barack Obama has achieved the impossible. He has managed to bring together secular Israelis and ultra-Orthodox Jews in a heated campaign against him. His administration's determination to use an Israeli housing construction project in Northern Jerusalem as the pretext for a diplomatic crisis, has set him on a collision course not just with Israelis of all stripes but even with American Jews who are growing increasingly apprehensive of just where this President intends to lead them. Did he anticipate this? No one can know for sure. But his determination to face down Benjamin Netanyahu and force him to cancel the...

Inner cabinet meets after Israel reportedly pressured to respond to Washington demands. While Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu convened his six senior ministers on Wednesday night to discuss the crisis with Washington, US President Barack Obama on Wednesday said the US-Israeli relationship is not in crisis over the approval of an east Jerusalem building plan during US vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel,. Obama told Fox News Channel that the new housing units "weren't helpful" in carving out a peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but that Washington remains a committed ally for Israel. The expansion of Ramat Shlomo was a...

JERUSALEM — Israeli officials said Monday that the U.S. is pressing Israel to scrap a contentious east Jerusalem building project whose approval has touched off the most serious diplomatic feud with Washington in years. Competing Israeli and Palestinian claims to east Jerusalem were feeding tensions in the holy city, where Arabs and Jews maintain an uneasy coexistence and sometimes clash. Police were out in large numbers in the volatile Old City in expectation of renewed clashes. Top U.S. officials have lined up in recent days to condemn the Israeli plan to build 1,600 apartments in east Jerusalem, the sector of...

Israel has extended a lockdown on the occupied West Bank and restricted access to the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem as tensions soared over its latest settlement plans. Defence Minister Ehud Barak has extended until Tuesday at midnight the lockdown on the West Bank, which was due to end on Saturday night, because of a continued risk of attacks, an armed forces spokesman said. Israel sealed off the West Bank on Friday after the announcement that it planned to build new homes for Jewish settlers in mainly Arab east Jerusalem sparked a row with Washington and fuelled anger in...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will not enter indirect peace talks with Israel as planned, Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said overnight Wednesday, due to the approval of plans to build 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo in east Jerusalem. “The Palestinian president has decided that he does not intend to enter negotiations at this stage,” Moussa said at a press conference in Cairo. A senior PA official in Ramallah had said Wednesday that the PA would resume talks with Israel in the coming days, despite the threats and strong condemnations coming from Ramallah. The official’s comments came after visiting...

In my article Can Israel be both democratic and Jewish. I wrote that one value must trump the other. "When these values are opposed to each other, one must trump the other. So the first question is which one trumps the other. If the legislation does so provide then that’s the end of it until new legislation says otherwise. In the absence of any such provision, the Courts would favour democracy because for them that is the most important value. The Knesset must so determine if it wants the highest value to be a Jewish state even if it violates...

The conviction that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal is now so commonly accepted, it hardly seems as though the matter is even open for discussion. But it is. Decades of argument about the issue have obscured the complex legal question about which a supposedly overwhelming verdict of guilty has been rendered against settlement policy. There can be no doubt that this avalanche of negative opinion has been deeply influenced by the settlements’ unpopularity around the world and even within Israel itself. Yet, while one may debate the wisdom of Israeli settlements, the idea that they are imprudent...

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli authorities could soon use special commando units, unmanned spy planes and cellphone-jamming equipment to enforce a moratorium on new settlement construction in the West Bank, military officials said Sunday, deepening a showdown between the government and Jewish settlers. Enraged settlers leaders vowed to resist the plan, prompting Defense Minister Ehud Barak to warn that settlers would face the full wrath of the military if they continue to flout the 10-month construction slowdown. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the settlement slowdown last month in an attempt to restart peace talks with the Palestinians. But the Palestinians...

Israel, A Nation Lost by Ari Bussel A prospective juror who is a priori prejudiced will, as a matter of course, be dismissed from serving on a jury pool. Many use this knowledge to be excused from jury service. Israel finds herself in the most peculiar position of always being found guilty before deliberations even begin. The World, itself Judge and Jury, stands and applauds: the harsher the treatment, the stronger the clapping. Israel’s Prime Minister decided to freeze all construction within Jewish settlements for ten months. This created an uproar, first because of the manner which it was done...

JERUSALEM -- Israel last year revoked the Jerusalem residency of more than 4,500 Palestinians, far more than in any other year since Israel took full control of the city in 1967, according to government figures obtained under the country's freedom of information act by a local human rights group. In what an official for the group on Wednesday called a "frightening" escalation in the enforcement of Jerusalem residency laws, the Interior Ministry said that a sweep of its files last spring turned up thousands of names of Palestinian Jerusalemites who had left the country for longer than the allowed seven...

Saturday, November 28, 2009 Finally, Israel Gets It! By Joseph Farah For more than five years, I have been conspicuously alone in pointing out the racist, anti-Jewish nature of policies that require the evacuation of Israelis from Gaza, Judea and Samaria and, more lately, the halts on building and repairing homes and businesses owned by Jews in Jerusalem. Finally, someone in Israel has figured this out and called the policies advocated by Barack Obama and the international elite what they are. "Israeli law does not discriminate between Jews, Muslims and Christians or between eastern and western Jerusalem," said Jerusalem Mayor...

US President Barack Obama is an extremely intelligent man surrounded by equally intelligent advisers, many of whom have years of experience dealing with the Middle East. His continued misreading and misunderstanding of the Israeli public is, therefore, somewhat baffling. This misread was evident again in the past few days by the US objection to the Jerusalem Municipal Planning Committee's approval of a plan to build some 900 new units in Gilo - not in a far-flung settlement overlooking Nablus, nor even in one of the settlement blocs like Gush Etzion, nor even a Jewish complex in one of the Arab...

With his typical left-wing arrogance, Tom Friedman of the New York Times says that Obama should drop his peace efforts and call a pox on both the Israeli and Palestinian houses because neither side is willing to negotiate. Friedman assumes that President Obama is an idiot who did not understand that peace is unattainable. I suggest a different scenario. President Obama has a lifetime's worth of anti-Israel sentiments, a cause for great suspicion for Jewish voters during the early part of the campaign. Before the economy collapsed, the Jewish vote was moving away from Obama. In the end it was...

President Obama's Middle East policy is in ruins. While the US continues to press Israel for a settlement freeze (and a freeze on Jerusalem) his strategy is falling apart piece by piece. He has turned the Israeli populace against him and strengthened the hand of Prime Minister Netanyahu. At the same time he has eroded his own support among American Jews and other US friends of Israel. Which is why he has pressured political hacks such as Congressman Steve Israel to lend their names to the Anti-Israel Group, J-Street. The Arab League nations answered no to the Presidents request for...

By Ted Belman Hillary Clinton recently said, "And the Obama Administration's position on settlements is clear, unequivocal. It has not changed. And as the President has said on many occasions, the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." That may well be his position but it has not always been the position of the US and its presidents. In 1995, The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine and Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies co-hosted a June 2 symposium on "Settlements and Peace: The Problem of Jewish Colonization in Palestine." Geoffrey Aronson of the Foundation...

It was just two days ago that the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a statement that seemed to indicate that the US Government was throwing in the towel on its unreasonable demands regarding Israeli Settlements. Clinton praised Netanyahu, saying that "what the Prime Minister has offered... a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he has just described, no new starts, for example, is unprecedented in the context of prior to negotiations." She also said that Israel's freezing construction "has never been a precondition [for negotiations], it has always been an issue within the negotiations." Today Clinton seemed to...

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday night rejected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's demand that Israel freeze all settlement activity as a precondition to negotiations. Stopping construction in the settlements "has never been a precondition, it has always been an in issue within the negotiations," Clinton said at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. In a strong show of support for Israel, she said she approved of Netanyahu's decision to issue a moratorium on new construction permits. "What the prime minister has offered... a restraint on the policy of settlements, which he...

Mohammed Dahlan, the former Fatah leader in Gaza and a senior PA legislator, told Israeli Radio listeners Sunday that a Jewish presence in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria is equivalent to Arab terrorist suicide bombings. "What is the difference between blowing up a bus in Tel Aviv and taking over Palestinian land?" he asked rhetorically. Dahlan also warned Israel that violent riots in the capital will continue as long as Jews visit the Temple Mount, which was re-opened to Jews on Sunday.

If you listen to President Obama and much of the world, Jewish settlers who live on the West Bank of the Jordan Creek (River) are the most evil people in the world (if you have ever seen the Jordan River you would call it a creek too). The world community over-reacts to fake Arab claims of ill treatment with-in the Pre-1967 borders of Israel. The fact is Arabs are allowed to live anywhere in Israel, but God-forbid a Jew decides to live on land that was once the property of the diminutive King of Jordan, and somehow that is evil....

(IsraelNN.com) Security forces on Friday destroyed the first hareidi-religious outpost in Samaria, Givat Sefer, just hours before the Sabbath. The site of the budding community is located next to the hareidi-religious city of Kiryat Sefer.

Yesterday Pres Obama addressed the UNGA on the subject of the conflict between Arabs and Jews conflict and had this to say; ...I will also continue to seek a just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world. What is noteworthy here, is that he referred to "Palestine" like it was a state already. Is that not pre-judging the outcome? He also wants there to be peace with the "Arab world" which means more pressure on Israel to cave to the demands of Syria. Palestinians have strengthened their efforts on security. Israelis have facilitated greater freedom of movement...

In declaring that it is time for Middle East peace "without preconditions," President Obama used his speech to the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday to fire a warning at Israel that "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." Obama's stark declaration, which drew applause, was coupled with a call for Palestinians to end their "incitement of Israel." But it was the use of the U.N. forum to carry the settlement message to Israel that drew the most enthusiastic response on the floor -- and incredulous reaction outside its walls. Obama just put Israel "on the chopping block," said...

There was only one reason that yesterday was the first meeting between Netanyahu and Abba since the Israeli Election, President Obama's screw-up. What the President and his advisers perceived as a minor concession, a settlement freeze, was not perceived by Israel as a minor one. This was a major error by Obama. And when he added Jerusalem to his demands it just compounded the situation. His insistence for a freeze and the constant public berating of the Jewish State has turned the Israeli population against Obama, and increased the support of Prime Minister Netanyahu even with the Israeli left, no...

Ahead of the Obama administration's first U.S.-Palestinian-Israeli summit, Israel has agreed to a partial freeze of settlement construction for six to nine months but still wants to build more than 2,500 new housing units, said Israeli officials... The private Israeli position, which was described by these three individuals on the condition that they not be named, is at odds with the public stance Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken... What the Israelis are offering is still shy of Mr. Obama's demands. The two Israeli officials and the Israel specialist said Mr. Netanyahu wants to move forward with 2,500 to 3,000...

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel defied U.S. pressure to halt construction in its West Bank settlements Sunday, with key leaders speaking out in support of the contentious enclaves and preparing to sign orders to allow building of hundreds of new housing units there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are expected to approve orders for about 500 new apartments Monday, said Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been finalized.

be his friend in return for a freeze on building for Jews in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, according to Politco.com editor Ben Smith. The relationship between the two leaders has been termed as chilly even before they met in Washington earlier this year. "Netanyahu’s at a pivotal moment,” a senior U.S. official told Smith. “Depending on what he decides, he could wind up with a very strong relationship with President Obama and potentially become a historic figure in Israel." Ron Dermer, spokesman for the Prime Minister, declined to comment on the report.

President Obama's Middle East policy is in ruins. While the US continues to press Israel for a settlement freeze (and now a freeze on Jerusalem) his strategy is falling apart piece by piece. He has turned the Israeli populace against him and strengthened the hand of Prime Minister Netanyahu. At the same time he has eroded his own support among American Jews and other US friends of Israel. The Arab League nations answered no to the Presidents request for a peace gesture and the President of the Palestinian Authority uses Obama's settlement pressure as his "out" from re-entering negotiations. What...