Free Republic

On the surface, the two candidates are as different as can be. Netanyahu is warring with President Obama. Herzog seems to want to be President Obama: The Labor Party leader is campaigning on an Israeli version of “hope and change.” Herzog’s billboards promise Israeli parents an extra teacher in each kindergarten classroom. Netanyahu warns about “the people who want to kill us.” He is fixated on the Iranian mullahs, who he says pose an existential threat to the Jewish state and places beyond. Netanyahu is prepared to risk the ire of the White House and Democrats to make his case...

Arab governments are privately expressing their concern to Washington about the emerging terms of a potential deal aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program, according to Arab and U.S. officials involved in the deliberations. The direction of U.S. diplomacy with Tehran has added fuel to fears in some Arab states of a nuclear-arms race in the region, as well as reviving talk about possibly extending a U.S. nuclear umbrella to Middle East allies to counter any Iranian threat. The major Sunni states, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, have said that a final agreement could allow Shiite-dominated...

US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz was headed to Geneva Saturday to join talks with Iranian officials as efforts for an historic nuclear deal stepped up a gear. It was the first time that Moniz, who is himself a nuclear physicist, had joined the negotiations, although US energy officials have been involved in the intensive technical talks under way ahead of new meetings between the countries' top diplomats on Sunday and Monday. "At the request of Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz will travel to Geneva on Saturday to join Secretary Kerry in continued negotiations with Iran...

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...

A recent CNN poll found that four out of five Democratic voters oppose the Israeli Prime Minister's planned March 3 tirade to Congress against diplomacy. Thursday morning, twenty-three House Democrats did something about it. They sent a letter calling on House Speaker John Boehner to postpone Netanyahu's scheduled March 3 address. The signers were: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC); Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN); Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), top Democrat on the House Financial Services committee; Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR); Rep. André Carson (D-IN); Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), top Democrat on Judiciary; Rep. Danny...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday that a UN report critical of Iran’s evasiveness over its nuclear program was further proof that the international community should reconsider the direction of its negotiations with Tehran. “The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) report again demonstrates that Iran refuses to come clean to the international community about its preparations for producing nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said. World powers should not be “wooing Iran for its agreement” to a deal that would enable it to continue uranium enrichment, he said. The IAEA report stated that Tehran is being evasive and ambiguous in its dealings with...

Perhaps the most vivid and disturbing evidence that the Iraqi government simply does not share America’s core values emerged on Feb. 6. In a grainy video posted on YouTube, a three-minute horror show plays out on the front lines somewhere in Iraq. Iraqi military officers and presumably Shiite militiamen — dressed in black, skull-adorned “Sons of Anarchy” shirts — crowd an ambulance emblazoned with the Iraqi state seal. Inside, a blindfolded and hog-tied man in military fatigues pleads for mercy as the Iraqi vigilantes beat him over the head, taunting him with expletives. “We will f— your sisters,” they shout....

A nuclear deal with Iran does not yet exist, and therefore Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cannot know what is in it, US State Department Jen Psaki said on Thursday. "We've seen this movie before," Psaki said of skepticism from leadership in Israel over the nuclear talks. Earlier this week Netanyahu said that the current proposal to Iran would endanger Israel. "It would enable Iran to breakout to its first nuclear device within an unacceptably short time," Netanyahu told a gathering of American Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. Netanyahu also said he knows the contents of a framework proposal, offered to Iran...

If Netanyahu’s speech is a success, Obama’s foreign policy will be indefensible. When Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner announced last month that he had invited Netanyahu to address the joint houses of Congress on the threat emanating from Iran’s nuclear program and from radical Islam, he unintentionally transformed the Israeli elections from a local affair to a contest between Obama and Netanyahu. Obama’s response to Netanyahu’s speech has been astounding. His ad hominem attacks against Netanyahu, his open moves to coerce Democratic lawmakers to boycott Netanyahu’s speech, and the administration’s aggressive attempts to damage Israel’s reputation in...

The National Iranian American Council took out a full-page advertisement in The New York Times slamming the planned speech to Congress by Israel’s prime minister. “Will Congress side with our president or a foreign leader?” reads the ad in Thursday’s edition. “President Obama is on the verge of a diplomatic victory that will prevent war and prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. But Congressional hawks are bringing Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to Capitol Hill to push for new sanctions that could kill the talks and start a war.” In the ad, a figure identified as House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner fills...

A significant majority of Americans — some 77% of those polled — see the “development of nuclear weapons by Iran” as a “critical threat”; another 16% see it as “important but not critical”, according to new numbers from Gallup. With US-Iran talks reportedly set to resume Friday, the poll, which asks Americans to assess a variety of threats to U.S. interests as “critical”, “important but not critical”, or “not important” — will likely take on a new and ominous significance. The poll placed the question of Iranian nukes near the top of the list of threats Gallup asked about, behind...

The Obama administration’s new excuse to explain why Vice-President Joe Biden will be “out of the country” when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addresses Congress next month is that he has to attend a Panama government inauguration – that occurred last July. The vice president of the United States normally attends joint sessions of Congress, but National Security Council Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan stated last month, “As a matter of long-standing practice and principle, we do not see heads of state or candidates in close proximity to their elections…. The President has been clear about his opposition to Congress passing new legislation...

Congressional Democrats are demanding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancel or delay next month’s address to Congress, but a new survey by a Republican pollster says Americans want the show to go on. The poll — commissioned by McLaughlin & Associates, a pollster that worked for former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) — found that 59 percent of Americans support Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and only 23 percent oppose, according to results obtained by POLITICO. McLaughlin & Associates CEO John McLaughlin has also advised Netanyahu during his reelection campaign. Many Democrats have publicly bashed the planned speech for...

Perhaps nothing illuminates more starkly the transformation underway in Iraq than the billboard depicting the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini erected recently on the edge of Baghdad’s Firdaus Square. The portrait obscures the view of the plinth where a giant statue of Saddam Hussein once stood, until U.S. Marines pulled it down in 2003. The 2003 event was a profoundly symbolic moment that seemed to capture the swift triumph of American troops over Hussein’s crumbling army. It also signaled the start of Iraq’s steady drift into the orbit of Iranian influence, a trend that has accelerated dramatically since the...

In an unusually harsh attack by an American politician on an Israeli prime minister, former Vermont governor and Democratic chairman Howard Dean lambasted Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, describing him as “a disaster” whose decision to address Congress in March was “a stupid thing to do that has harmed U.S.-Israeli relations greatly.” “I don’t trust Netanyahu. I think he’s not served Israel well,” Dean added. In an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, the outspoken Dean, who was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, said, “It’s outrageous what’s going on. Imagine Obama going to Israel two weeks before...

The White House announced earlier this month that foreign travel would keep Vice President Joe Biden from attending a speech to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But only on Wednesday did the administration finally announced where he would be: Latin America. During a March trip to Uruguay and Guatemala, Mr. Biden will attend the inauguration of incoming Uruguayan President Tabaré Vázquez and will host meetings with Latin American leaders, the White House said this week. Mr. Netanyahu will address a joint session of Congress next month, where he is expected to oppose the multinational diplomatic effort with Iran...

The White House is accusing Israel of "cherry-picking" information that distorts the U.S. position in nuclear talks with Iran. “There's no question that some of the things that the Israelis have said in characterizing our negotiating position have not been accurate. There's no question about that,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during a press briefing on Wednesday. "We've also been very clear about the fact that the United States is not going to be in a position of negotiating this agreement in public, particularly when we see that there is a continued practice of cherry-picking specific pieces of...

To protect Obama, CNN commissioned a poll that can only be described as a whopping lie of omission crafted in pursuit of a specific anti-Netanyahu narrative — a poll that asks only if Boehner’s protocol violation was bad form. The Israel Project (TIP, a non-partisan pro-Israel group) got to the heart of the matter with a bigger sample size (1563 respondents compared to CNN’s 1027) and honest questions. Here is the statement only 25% agreed with: Some people say Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is in the middle of an election at home, and it is inappropriate for the U.S. to...

Israel would be in a better position to improve an impending nuclear deal between Iran and the West if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not harmed relations with the US, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. "We think that there are too many centrifuges still there, and this is not harsh enough or strong enough toward the Iranians," Lapid said in an interview for the JPost Election Arena. "If things were as they used to be in the relationship between Israel and the United States, we would be able to makes some impact and change...

It is painful that members of the Obama Administration, a number of Congressional Democrats, and left-wing political activists are showing such disrespect for the political leader of an allied country, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and disrespect for Israel, by refusing to attend the speech he plans to deliver before the joint session of Congress on March 3, 2015. Netanyahu might well ask, as did the biblical Job, “Why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy?” Opponents of the speech have manufactured a political crisis by injecting partisanship and division, and inflamed a crucial and controversial issue that...