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Remember how there was supposedly going to be “no daylight” between them in dealing with the flotilla aftermath? Turns out daylight has broken after just four days. Question: If you’re intent on pushing a policy as reckless as ending the blockade — and it is reckless, as we all know from Lebanon that neutral “peacekeepers” aren’t going to keep Iranian weapons out of Gaza — why on earth would you wait to do it in response to a provocation? You’re sending a crystal clear signal here to the Muslim Brotherhood scumbags responsible for the flotilla and their Turkish sponsors that,...

'It's those damned Jews." That's the muffled message I hear when, pretending to represent our national interest, voices call for the abandonment of Israel. We've heard it from agenda-driven scholars who write that our alliance with Israel is responsible for our problems in the Middle East. More worrisome still, I've begun to hear it from a minority of military officers, as well as from Washington types. This latest, and sadly lasting, bout of moral cancer can be dated back to 2006 and the publication of an article that had sought a home for years, "The Israeli Lobby And US Foreign...

Barack Obama has warned Israel he will pave the way for an independent Palestinian state if the peace process remains deadlocked until the autumn. The US president is proposing to hand control of the Middle East peace process to the international community unless there is a breakthrough in the next few months, Israeli officials have said. Mr Obama has formulated a secret plan with leading European allies to convene an international peace conference by the end of the year, according to Israel's Haaretz newspaper. The move would fulfil one of Israel's deepest fears by effectively stripping the Jewish state of...

Exclusive: Americans consider withholding veto protecting Israel at UN if building goes ahead at Ramat Shlomo The US has given private assurances to encourage the Palestinians to join indirect Middle East peace talks, including an offer to consider allowing UN security council condemnation of any significant new Israeli settlement activity, the Guardian has learned. The assurances were given verbally in a meeting a week ago between a senior US diplomat and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. Since then – and after months of US diplomacy – it appears Israeli and Palestinian leaders are close to starting indirect "proximity" talks, which...

Demanding a construction freeze in the capital reverses decades of U.S. policy Thanks to a deadlock engineered by the U.S. government, the Middle East peace process is stalled. President Obama began this stalemate last year when he called for a settlement freeze, and he escalates it now with a major change of American policy regarding Jerusalem. The president seeks to prohibit Israel from any construction in its capital, in particular in a Jewish suburb of East Jerusalem called Ramat Shlomo. This, despite the fact that all former administrations have unequivocally understood that the area in question would remain part of...

If safeguarding international security is the chief aim of US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, then at some point he can be expected to change course in the Middle East. For today, Obama faces the wreckage of every aspect of his Middle East policies. And largely as a consequence of his policies, the region moves ever closer to war. In Iraq, Obama’s pledge to withdraw all combat forces from the country by the summer has emboldened the various forces vying for control of the country to set it ablaze once more. In Afghanistan, Obama’s surge and leave policy has left...

(Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the Obama administration on Saturday to impose a solution to the Middle East conflict that would give his people an independent state. ...Abbas's appeal to Obama came amid widespread media reports that the U.S. president was considering floating a proposal that would set the contours of a final peace deal. Any such move would likely be opposed by Israel, which says only negotiations can secure a final settlement to the conflict. Obama has been sharply at odds with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, land...

American Neutrality Toward Israel Invites ViolenceWhen Israel is alone, its opportunistic enemies pile on.  American relations with our once-staunch ally Israel are at their lowest ebb in the last 50 years. The Obama administration seems as angry at the building of Jewish apartments in Jerusalem as it is intent on reaching out to Iran and Syria, Israel’s mortal enemies. President Obama himself, according to reports, has serially snubbed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A new narrative abounds in Washington that Israel’s intransigence with its Arab neighbors now even endangers U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. Obama is pushing Netanyahu’s...

In a meeting with students at West Virginia University, a young pilot asked the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Army, Mike Malen, to comment on rumors that if Israel decides to attack Iran, its fighters will need to cross Iraq's airspace to reach their targets. The U.S. military has described this airspace as ‘closed to flights’. If so, would American forces shoot down Israeli planes flying over Iraq? Malen's reply: "We have a strong exceptional relationship with Israel. I spent much time with my colleagues in Israel. And so we have a very clear understanding...

Former US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, clearly stated that he believes Iran will complete the construction of nuclear weapons while the Obama Administration looks the other way. During his interview on Fox News "Fox and Friends", Bolton said that he thinks the Obama Admin has a tolerance and contain policy that Iran is using to their advantage. A nukular Iran, he said, would be contained and tolerated by other countries in the region and that the sanctions are toothless. He also said that while the Dept of Defense likely has several contingency plans in place to handle Iran,...

Iran is the number-one terror-sponsoring nation in the world; it has been killing Americans for years. The country is led to by mad mullahs who see nuclear weapons as a ticket to paradise. Why would one key congressman spend the last year and a half trying to derail plans to stop Iran's nuclear program? Perhaps because he is doing so at the behest of Barack Obama. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has messianic dreams that view nuclear Armageddon as a means to bring about the return of Shia Islam's Hidden Imam and usher in a new age. For years, the Iranian...

United States administration officials have voiced harsh criticism over advertisements in favor of Israel's position on Jerusalem that appeared in the U.S. press with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's encouragement. The authors of the most recent such advertisements were president of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel. "All these advertisements are not a wise move," one senior American official told Haaretz. In the advertisement, Wiesel said that for him as a Jew, "Jerusalem is above politics," and that "it is mentioned more than 600 times in Scripture - and not a single time in...

Most observers, right or left, pro-Israel or anti-Israel, would agree that Israeli-American relations are the worst they have been in memory. Among the many indications is that only 9 percent of Jewish Israelis think President Barack Obama's administration is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, according to a Smith Research poll taken during the last week of March on behalf of The Jerusalem Post. Given how much Israelis love and admire (and emigrate to) America, this level of mistrust is all the more remarkable. Commentators on the left, of course, blame Israel. For them, this is a no-brainer; blaming Israel is as...

The Obama administration is reportedly signaling another major shift in policy towards one of its staunchest allies, Israel, and this shift could change the way it votes at the Security Council. The change would mean an end to the US' use of its veto power in the United Nations Security Council when certain anti-Israel resolutions are introduced for a vote.‪ Reports surfaced a couple of weeks ago, that a senior US diplomat met with Qatar's foreign minister in Paris. They discussed the possibility that the US was giving serious consideration to not using its veto if a vote on Israeli...

With the dividing lines between Hizbullah and the Lebanese Armed Forces not altogether clear, the United States has delivered weapons and ammunition to Israel's northern neighbor and thereby possibly to its enemy. The U.S. embassy in Lebanon announced last week that on April 2 it had delivered the first in a series of shipments of weapons and ammunition. The shipment included 1,000 M16A4 rifles, 10 missile launchers, 1,583 grenade launchers, and 538 sets of day/night binoculars and night-vision devices. It was stressed that the equipment would be supported with training provided by the U.S. government. Lebanese Defense Minister Elias Murr...

“Obama to Impose Terms on Israel” is the headline you didn’t read on David Ignatius’s column in the Washington Post today. The story ran under the title “Obama’s Mideast Plan,” which Ignatius describes as “proposing an American peace plan to resolve the Palestinian conflict.” But the substance is clear: It is a threat against Israel by the Obama administration and particularly by National Security Advisor James Jones. (The give-away is this line: “The fact that Obama is weighing the peace plan marks his growing confidence in Jones.” Now who do you think was Ignatius’s source for that gem?) Apparently Obama...

Protesting even home improvements to highest levels of Israeli government JERUSALEM – The Obama administration in recent weeks has stepped up its monitoring of Jewish construction projects in eastern Jerusalem and is protesting to the highest levels of the Israeli government even small building or improvement projects, WND has learned Obama is calling for Israel to halt all Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem for four months as a confidence-building gesture to start talks with the Palestinian Authority

Shortly after Vice President Joe Biden's Israel visit ended on March 11 in high dudgeon over the approval 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, US president Barack Obama ordered a consignment of Joint Direct Attack Munition- JDAM already on its way to Israel to be diverted to the US Air Force base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. This step, the pointer to a US arms embargo for preventing Israel attacking Iran's nuclear sites, is first revealed here by debkafile's military sources. US military sources describe the consignment as consisting of 387 JDAM kits for attachment to the...

In an unprecedented move, the U.S. has been conducting negotiations with Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, according to a senior PA negotiator and sources in the Israeli government. The U.S. has been calling for the resumption of indirect talks, with Obama administration officials publicly proposing to serve as a go-between to facilitate dialogue between Israel and the PA. Sources in both the PA and Israeli government told WND talks are underway on a number of issues, including future borders and security controls for a Palestinian state. A senior PA negotiator, speaking on condition of anonymity, said rather than...

The Obama administration is now denying U.S. visas to Israeli scientists who work at that nation’s Dimona nuclear reactor. This startling reversal of traditional policy was reported April 7, 2010, in the Israeli website/newspaper NRG/Maariv (link to the original Hebrew here and to an exclusive Pajamas Media translation here). This could be yet another flashpoint in the increasingly sensitive relations between the administration, the American Jewish community, and Israel. The revelation in Maariv came only a day before the arrival in New York of Tariq Ramadan — controversial grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al Banna — whose visa was...