Free Republic

Barbara Boxer, a top Jewish U.S. senator and the sponsor of major pro-Israel legislation, blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for lashing out at President Obama on Iran. “I write to you as one of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress to express my deep disappointment over your remarks that call into question our country’s support for Israel and commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” Boxer (D-Calif.) said in a letter sent Wednesday in a rare instance of a pro-Israel lawmaker making public an unhappiness with an Israeli leader. “Your remarks are utterly contrary to the extraordinary United States-Israel...

CNN's Candy Crowley: What we know is, of course, Iran is allowed under agreements, international agreements, to go ahead and do what it's doing because there are legitimate peaceful purposes for enriching this uranium -- Benjamin Netanyahu: You think so? You think so, Candy? That's like -- let me. It's not legitimate. This is a country that talks about, denies the Holocaust, promises to wipe out Israel, is engaged in terror throughout the world. It's like Timothy McVeigh walking into a shop in Oklahoma City and saying, 'I would like to tend my garden. I'd like to buy some fertilizer.'...

While the Israeli political scene is no stranger to strident criticisms directed at senior government officials and their policies, the recent attacks on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak over their policies toward Iran are a dangerous luxury. Numerous retired security officials who do not lack a private voice or influence within a small nation. including former Shin Bet head, Yuval Diskin, ex- Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, and Former IDF Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, have launched broadsides against the current Israeli government’s dire assessments of the Iranian threat and the best ways of dealing with...

The two young men had woefully little in common: one was a wealthy Mormon from Michigan, the other a middle-class Jew from Israel. But in 1976, the lives of Mitt Romney and Benjamin Netanyahu intersected, briefly but indelibly, in the 16th-floor offices of the Boston Consulting Group, where both had been recruited as corporate advisers. At the most formative time of their careers, they sized each other up during the firm’s weekly brainstorming sessions, absorbing the same profoundly analytical view of the world. That shared experience decades ago led to a warm friendship, little known to outsiders, that is now...

<p>The full 36 minutes are here, oh man I wish he were our leader, a mans man, and he basically said, Iran, we're going to kick the @#$# out you very soon, it was awesome and he used very good logic during the speech.</p>

While on his way to Washington Benjamin Netanyahu stopped in Ottawa to confer with his patriot in arms, Stephen Harper. Following their morning meetings, of which we know little, the two held a very brief 'press conference' that simply highlighted the double standards under which the two operate, especially Netanyahu. Harper began with a brief statement in French and English. The French comments included advice directed towards Assad in Syria, that he should "cesse tue leur proper citoyens" - he should stop killing his own citizens. He ended his French statements hoping for a solution for Israel that would be...

... From Facebook to the Arab League in four days. This trail illustrates how prone senior opinion-shapers in the Arab world are to believe the most implausible stories about Israel. Did they truly think that Mr. Netanyahu, intransigent as he may be on the peace process, would post such blatantly racist comments on a public website? The answer appears to be yes. Just as Egyptian officials in Sinai believed that Mossad sent a shark to attack tourists in Sharm-el-Sheikh in 2010, or that Israel is responsible for violence between Egyptian Muslims and Christians, as Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Yehia El-Gamal...

Palestinian leader says PA to proceed with UN bid in September because President Obama endorsed Palestinian state; 'I’m going to the UN in order to demand our legitimate rights and secure full membership,' he says. Dramatic speech in Ramallah: The Palestinian Authority will be seeking full United Nations membership in its statehood bid later this month, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas said Friday. "I’m going to the UN in order to demand our legitimate rights and secure full membership for the state of Palestine," the Palestinian president said in Ramallah. "We hope to secure full membership." "We are going to the...

Lessons of the Past, Failures of the Present By Ari Bussel When there is an accelerated progression of events, a responsible party is expected to be ready for anything that may come next. Let us take the case of the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt, as an example. Israel and Egypt have maintained a peace for the last thirty-two years. Some may have described it as a cold peace, but it allowed Israel to redeploy its assets with a concentration on the northern front with Syria and Lebanon. There was no need to maintain a deterrent protective force of several...

Israeli Prime Minister addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on May 23, 2011.

"We can only make peace with the Palestinians if they are prepared to make peace with the Jewish state," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told AIPAC on Monday night. "It must leave Israel with security and therefore Israel can not return to the indefensible 1967 lines." Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.

Israeli Prime Minister denounced Hamas' presence in a landmark reconciliation pact with Fatah as a "great victory for terrorism." In Cairo on Wednesday, rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas proclaimed a landmark reconciliation deal aimed at ending their bitter four-year rift that has left them divided between separate governments in the territories envisioned for a future Palestinian

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was said to no longer be capable of functioning in his position. Diplomatic sources said Mubarak's condition has rapidly declined over the last month and his schedule was severely restricted. They said Mubarak was avoiding meetings with most non-Arab leaders to prevent leaks of his true condition. "He is a walking corpse," a senior Arab diplomat who recently attended a meeting with Mubarak said In July, the sources said, Mubarak underwent a lengthy examination at a French military hospital outside Paris. They said the examination took place amid alarm by presidential aides and close relatives over...

Former US Secretary of State who served under Ronald Reagan joins list of senior security officials calling for Pollard's release. Former US secretary of state George Shultz has joined a long list of former senior American and Israeli security officials calling upon US President Barack Obama to release Jonathan Pollard. In a letter obtained by The Jerusalem Post Tuesday night, Shultz wrote that he was impressed that the people who are best informed about the classified material Pollard passed to Israel now favor his release. He cited former CIA director James Woolsey, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dennis...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is expected to fire the Labor Ministers in the government: Braverman, Herzog and Ben-Eliezer.

JERUSALEM – Israel's leader on Sunday dismissed a call from a key government partner to share the holy city of Jerusalem with the Palestinians, a reminder of the obstacles facing already troubled peacemaking efforts. Conflicting claims to east Jerusalem lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The dispute over the area, home to sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, has derailed past peace talks and spilled into violence. Palestinians claim the sector as the capital of their future state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's reaffirmation of his intention to hold on to east Jerusalem drew criticism from the...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is playing with fire. And Israel is getting burned. Over the past week, it has been widely reported that the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government are conducting secret negotiations regarding future Israeli land surrenders to the Palestinians in the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem. According to the reports, the Obama administration has presented Netanyahu with a plan whereby Israel will cede its rights to eastern Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians and then lease the areas from the Palestinians for a limited period. The reports on the length of the lease vary. Some claim...

JERUSALEM — Two photographs adorn the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike — in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies — than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist. One photograph is of Theodor Herzl, born 150 years ago. Dismayed by the eruption of anti-Semitism in France during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century, Herzl became Zionism's founding father. Long before the Holocaust, he concluded that Jews could find safety only in a national...

War drums are beating in the Middle East. In a short time, the United States has increased the number of its carrier strike groups opposite Iran to three, and reports are raining down of a tightening ring of American and Israeli concentrations all around the Islamic Republic. On the diplomatic front, the Israelis are unusually concerned about their international image (for example, making concessions in Gaza) while their top officials - including Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself - are shuttling between Jerusalem and Washington. Everybody in the region is restless. Turkey is making spectacular diplomatic...

US [Alleged] President Barack Obama made clear in a recent letter to the Palestinians that he views Israel as the obstacle to peace and will approach further peace efforts from that point of view, according to senior Palestinian Authority officials. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat confirmed for the Bethlehem-based Ma'an news agency that such a letter was sent, and that in it Obama "clarified the US stance on the peace process and Israel's intransigence on the issue of settlements." Erekat said that the letter contained several assurances to the Palestinians, but refused to go into detail. A day earlier, London...