Free Republic

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...

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.

No one could have imagined that within five years, Lebanon’s young PM would become a slave of his father’s murderers. No one, that is, aside from his father’s murderers. Lebanon is a sad and desperate place. And its disastrous fate is personified today by its prime minister. All who claim to love freedom, democracy, human rights and dignity should take note of Sa'ad Hariri’s fate. They should recognize that his predicament is a testament to their failure to stand up for the ideals they say they champion. All those who say they seek a Middle East that is friendly to...

AIM interviewed deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post Caroline Glick last week in a wide ranging discussion. We covered the current state of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, the impact that President Barack Obama has had on the situation, and the recent so-called Gaza “Freedom Flotilla.” In addition, she talked about how the situation is further complicated by Hamas’s control of Gaza, the increased militarization and lack of moderation by Fatah, and the recent hostilities at the Lebanese – Israeli border. Glick also talked about the nature of the pressure the U.S. puts on Israel, the ongoing demonization...

The repeated abdication of responsibility by the Obama administration from preventing nuclear non-proliferation leaves it on Israel's shoulders. So much for US President Barack Obama’s famed powers of persuasion. At the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference that opened this week, the Obama administration managed to lose control over the agenda before the conference even started. Obama administration officials said they intended to use the conference as a platform to mount international pressure on Iran to stop its illicit nuclear proliferation activities. But even before the conference began, with a little prodding from Egypt, the administration agreed that instead of...

Little mention is made of the radicalization of Israel’s Arabs. As the local and international press corps converged on Jerusalem’s Old City to cover the Arab riots at the Temple Mount two weeks ago, little mention was made of the fact that Jerusalem was not the only flashpoint. In Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israeli Arab rioters supported by far-left protesters stoned buses. Israeli Arabs firebombed motorists on Highway 443 and on the roads to Beersheba. In the North, cars were stoned. These little-reported attacks are the consequence of one of the most dangerous emerging threats to Israel’s national survival: the rapidly escalating...

US President Barack Obama is feeling the heat. His response to the current crisis threatening to sink his one-year-old presidency is telling for what it says about the future of both his domestic and foreign policies. Israel should take heed of his responses. Obama's Democratic Party, and indeed the US political establishment as a whole, received a jolt on Tuesday when Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts seat in the US Senate that had been held by the Democratic Kennedy dynasty since 1952. The question now on everyone's lips is whether Brown's stunning victory will cause Obama to change his...

Oh the shame of it all. Last month, 1,300 pro-Palestinian activists from the US and Europe came to the region in the name of peace and social justice to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza. Led by the self-declared feminist, antiwar group Code Pink, the demonstrators' plan was to enter Gaza from the Egyptian border at Rafah and deliver "humanitarian aid" to the Hamas terrorist organization. But it was not to be. Led by Code Pink founder and California Democratic fund-raiser Jodie Evans, the demonstrators were not welcomed by Egyptian authorities. Many were surrounded by riot police and...

Perhaps when the history of our times is written, ours will be called The Era of Narcissistic Catechisms. To understand why this is the case it is enough to consider the fortunes of two green movements. On the main stage of global affairs this week we have the much touted UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. Standing with 15,000 delegates representing green activism groups and politically correct scientists the world over are international celebrity leaders like Nobel Peace Prize laureates Barack Obama, Al Gore and Desmond Tutu and their fellow celebrities and Oscar and Grammy winners Al Gore, Leonardo Dicaprio,...

During a recent speaking tour in Canada, MK Nahman Shai (Kadima) shocked some of his hosts when he said that his primary goal in politics today is to bring down the Netanyahu government. Although indelicate, Shai's comment was not surprising. Kadima is in the opposition. And like all opposition parties in all parliamentary democracies, the primary goal of its members is to bring down the government so that they can take power. Given that this is the case, it is unsurprising that until this week, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni tried to blame Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for US President Barack...

If Zbigniew Brzezinski had his way, the US would go to war against Israel to defend Iran's nuclear installations. In an interview with the Daily Beast Web site last weekend, the man who served as former US president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser said, "They [IAF fighter jets] have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch? We have to be serious about denying them that right. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not." Brzezinski has long distinguished himself as...

US President Barack Obama consistently couches his demand that Israel prohibit Jewish people from constructing or expanding our homes and communities in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria in legal-sounding language. Obama has called settlements "illegitimate." And he has said that Israel "has obligations under the road map," while referring disparagingly to "settlements that, in past agreements, have been categorized as illegal." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell have repeatedly uttered similar statements. By characterizing its demand that Israel prohibit Jews from building homes in Israel's capital city and its heartland as a legal requirement, the...

Israel finds itself in unfamiliar territory today. The revolutionary atmosphere building in Iran presents Israel with a prospect it has rarely confronted: a safe bet. With the Obama administration refusing to back the anti-regime protesters, and the European Union similarly hemming and hawing, millions of Iranians who are on the streets, risking their lives to protest a stolen election and a tyrannical regime, have been cast adrift by those they thought would support them. To date, Israel has joined the US and Europe in rejecting the protesters. This should change. In refusing to stick their necks out - and so...

From this vantage point, two events this week appear to be ominous straws in the wind, warnings of a "man-caused" maelstrom that inexorably may plunge the Middle East into another, potentially cataclysmic war. The first is that Israel feels obliged to undertake an unprecedented, countrywide civil defense exercise this week. At one point, every man, woman and child in the Jewish state is supposed to seek shelter from a simulated attack of the kind Iran may shortly be able to execute against it. The second is President Obama's latest effort to reach out to the Muslim world, on Thursday from...

This column will show you why President Barack Obama’s two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a solution, but a formula for disaster. It will also suggest two approaches that make sense and might resolve that conflict. Ms. Glick identifies why peace has been so elusive despite endless peace plans: “The root cause of the Palestinian conflict is the same as the root cause of the larger Arab and Islamic world’s conflict with Israel: Simply put, they refuse to accept that Israel has a right to exist. Until they change their minds — the conflict cannot be solved, it...

OUR ENEMIES are right in choosing their targets. They are right because they know who we are. We are the children of Jerusalem, of Zion. Our physical and spiritual survival is dependent on our willingness to dedicate our lives in every generation to guarding both the physical and spiritual walls of this city. It is only by guarding Zion, that we guard its people. I am humbled and honored beyond words to have been chosen from among so many of my fellow Jews for this singular honor of being named a Guardian of Zion. For me, more than anything, what...

On June 7 Hizbullah will likely take over Lebanon and formally bring the oldest Arab democracy into the Iranian axis. Iran's stalking horse will not become the ruler of the largely pro-Western, non-Shi'ite majority country through a violent revolution. Lebanon will become yet another Iranian vassal state through ballots, not bullets. On June 7, Hizbullah and its allied parties are set to win a smashing popular victory in Lebanon's parliamentary elections. Hizbullah's projected victory in these elections is of course not an isolated event. It is part of an Islamist electoral sweep in democratic elections throughout the region. Indeed, Islamists...

Like it or not, the United States of America is no longer the world's policeman. This was the message of Barack Obama's presidential journey to Britain, France, the Czech Republic, Turkey and Iraq. Somewhere between apologizing for American history - both distant and recent; genuflecting before the unelected, bigoted king of Saudi Arabia; announcing that he will slash the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal, scrap much of America's missile defense programs and emasculate the US Navy; leaving Japan to face North Korea and China alone; telling the Czechs, Poles and their fellow Soviet colonies, "Don't worry, be happy," as he leaves them...

In the chanceries of Europe, the die has apparently been cast. The time has come to launch an all-out diplomatic war against Israel. That is, the time has come to begin to unravel EU acceptance of Israel's right to exist. Last Friday, in anticipation of the swearing in of the new Netanyahu government, EU foreign ministers met in Prague and discussed how they would stick it to the Jews. According to media reports, the assembled ministers and diplomats decided that they will freeze the process of upgrading EU relations with Israel until Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explicitly commits his government...