Free Republic

After staying mum on Israeli issues in the run-up to the election, the White House on Wednesday broke its silence -- answering Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's victory with fresh criticism and making clear that a new rift has opened between U.S. and Israeli leaders, this time over Palestinian statehood. In its first public response to Netanyahu's election triumph, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said President Obama still believes in a two-state solution. This was after Netanyahu, shortly before the vote, reversed his stance and stated he would not allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Earnest acknowledged Wednesday that...

Krauthammer’s Take: ‘It’s Clear that Obama Loathes Netanyahu March 18, 2015 President Obama’s approach to Iran and the Middle East was firmly rejected in Israel’s election on Tuesday, in which prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu won reelection, said Charles Krauthammer. “This was an election between Bibi and Obama — that was on the ballot,” he said on Wednesday’s Special Report. “He did everything he could to unseat him, but he failed.”

<p>Ugh. Our petulant man-child Muslim president and his Israel-hating administration are now threatening that they just might agree to a UN Security Council resolution that would call for Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and push them into negotiations to create a palestinian state.</p>

16 March 2015 Israel Election: An End Or New Era For Netanyahu? By Kevin Connolly Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking a fourth term, but the outcome is too close to call Israel election: Will outcome revive peace process? The coming week promises to be one of the most eventful and most unpredictable in the long and bumpy political life of Benjamin Netanyahu. The man revered by his supporters as a global statesman and sniffily dismissed by one Israeli newspaper as "former furniture salesman" will know by the end of it if he is to remain prime minister of Israel. He triggered...

Anyone who still believes Obama is not an antisemite is either antisemitic himself or has eaten an overabundance of mushrooms. “US fails to renew emergency oil supply pact with Israel,“ Globes.co.il, March 16, 2015 The agreement guaranteeing Israel’s oil supplies in wartime was first signed in 1975. The US has not renewed a historic agreement under which it guaranteed a supply of oil to Israel in emergencies, that is, instances in which Israel might be cut off from its regular commercial sources of oil because of war or closure of sea lanes. The agreement expired in November 2014, and since...

Washington (CNN)Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruled out the creation of a Palestinian state Monday, setting off another potential showdown with the Obama administration should the Israeli leader prevail at the ballot box the following day. In the campaign's waning hours, an embattled Netanyahu tried to make the case that he deserved a third term in office because he best can handle threats to Israel and that a Palestinian state won't be formed because of the danger it would pose. "Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving...

The next 22 months until President Barack Obama leaves office promise to be the most challenging period in the history of US-Israel relations. Now unfettered by electoral concerns, over the past week Obama exposed his ill-intentions toward Israel in two different ways. First, the Justice Department leaked its intention to indict Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez on corruption charges. Menendez is the ranking Democratic member, and the former chairman, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also the most outspoken Democratic critic of Obama’s policy of appeasing the Iranian regime. As former US federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote this week...

There is about to be a mistake. The only country in the region of which all the other countries are envious -- for opportunity, equal justice under law, freedom to speak without the 2 a.m. knock on the door -- has an election this week. Its citizens are tired of war -- right on schedule for its enemies' plans to destroy it. The Israelis are meant to be tired of war; that is why it is called "a war of attrition." Many Israelis seem to be counting on some deeply wished-for love from the current U.S. Administration. What they may...

Democrats who opposed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin NetanyahuÂ’s speech before a joint session of Congress earlier this month wanted to have it both ways. Many claimed that NetanyahuÂ’s speech was a grave miscalculation; it politicized AmericaÂ’s alliance with Israel, and would expose the prime minister as something less than impartial when it came to domestic American politics. This, they said, would reflect poorly on him as a politician and expose his inability to navigate the complexities of American politics. Simultaneously, some on the American left claimed that NetanyahuÂ’s speech would have the effect of boosting his stature at home...

A major campaign rally for the right wing is planned for Sunday evening in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square. The “United for the Land of Israel” rally is being organized by Nachala, an organization run by former Kedumim mayor Daniella Weiss and United Headquarters for the Land of Israel. Like everything else to date in the run up to the Israeli elections, it too is fraught with internal conflict. Right wing leaders are opposed to the rally and Weiss has been trying for several weeks to convince them to attend the event. Many of the leaders on the right actually wanted...

Four days before elections, most surveys have Netanyahu’s party 3-4 seats behind Herzog’s On the last weekend before Tuesday’s general election, Israeli media published the final polls for the current election cycle before a four-day moratorium on surveys. The Zionist Union kept its lead over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party in those polls, with most giving Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni’s joint list a 3-4 seat edge over its competitor. A Maariv poll had Zionist Union with 25 and Likud with 21. Yesh Atid was tied with the Joint (Arab) List for 13, with Jewish Home trailing at 11....

US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II on the sidelines of economic talks in Egypt on Friday, US officials said. The talks are likely to focus on the economic crisis facing the Palestinian Authority and could be a four-way meeting which would also include Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a State Department official said. "We continue to be concerned about the PA," the official told reporters travelling with Kerry on his plane to the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "It’s really part of the continuous, ongoing conversation we’re...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells Israel Hayom that his Iran speech was "well worth" the cost and "served to shore up support for Israel's stance" • "The days when Jews remained passive while others called for their extermination are over," he says. After speaking at Congress and facing off with U.S. President Barack Obama, 11 days before facing an election at home, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells Israel Hayom that "a prime minister in Israel must be able to stand up even to our closest ally and tell the truth. Otherwise, history will not be kind to us." Netanyahu stresses...

After speaking to Congress on March 3 despite the objections of the Obama administration, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “a prime minister in Israel must be able to stand up even to our closest ally and tell the truth.” In an interview published Friday by Israel Hayom, whose English-language content is distributed exclusively by JNS.org, Netanyahu said his speech about the Iranian nuclear threat was “well worth the cost of confrontation” with President Barack Obama. The White House had opposed the speech on the grounds that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) did not consult Obama about inviting Netanyahu.

In a shocking op-ed by the editor-in-chief of the fiercely anti-Israel paper, al-Arabiya, Faisal Abbas admits that Netanyahu is right, Iran must be dealt with. Obama is out-radicalizing the radicals. “Al-Arabiya Editor Demands Obama Listen to Netanyahu,” Israel National News, March 3, 2015 Al-Arabiya’s English edition editor-in-chief Faisal J. Abbas wrote a surprising op-ed on Tuesday, calling on US President Barack Obama to listen to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu after the latter addressed Congress on the dangers of an Iran nuclear deal being formulated. Abbas, whose paper is openly anti-Israel and Saudi-owned, began by scornfully conceding “it is extremely rare...

In an interview on the PBS television ‘Charlie Rose’ program, President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to accept the invitation of House Speaker John Boehner to address Congress on the issue of Iran’s looming nuclear threat had “injected a degree of partisanship, which is not only unfortunate, I think it’s destructive of the fabric of the [U.S./Israeli] relationship.” Nothing can further from the truth: it’s Obama’s partisanship that has produced a crisis in relations between the White House and Jerusalem, not Netanyahu’s – and the record shows it. Obama doesn’t...

Those who do not confront evil resent those who do. There is no question about whether President Obama — along with Secretary of State John Kerry and the editorial pages of many newspapers — has a particular dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But there is another question: Why? And the answer is due to an important rule of life that too few people are aware of: Those who do not confront evil resent those who do. Take the case at hand. The prime minister of Israel is at the forefront of the greatest battle against evil in our...

Israel will fight Iran alone, if it must. That is the striking message Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered to a joint session of Congress, garnering thunderous applause and numerous standing ovations. The historic speech rebukes the appeasement foreign policy of President Obama. It recalls the battle of Chamberlain versus Churchill in the 1930s, with the appeaser quickly being overtaken by world events. In a similar vein, in the blink of an eye, leadership of the Free World passed out of Obama’s hands and into the capable and commanding grip of Netanyahu. The speech was delivered following a weekend banner...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-Is0PL7jZg

....pushing back against those saying that there was no tactical alternative in his speech, Netanyahu said that he did indeed present a practical alternative that would extend Iran's break out time by adding new restrictions. He also said that he presented a case for not lifting sanctions until the Iranians stop its hostile actions against neighboring countries and stop threatening to annihilate Israel. Netanyahu said that the responses he heard from both Republicans and Democrats were encouraging and that his impression was that they both understand why this is a bad deal. On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama on Tuesday...