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Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Party got its best numbers not in Jerusalem, where it only won a quarter of the vote, or Sderot, the city under siege where it still got less than half, or Maaleh Adumim, a city of some 40,000 known as a “settlement” because it is located in ’67 Israel where it also took less than half. Its best numbers appear to have come from Arab-al-Naim, a Bedouin settlement, where it scored three-quarters of the vote.The residents were uninterested in any of the accusations of racism being aimed at Netanyahu by the media. Instead they were interested in...

Despite winning the majority of incoming MKs' support to form the next government, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continues to face suspicions he will abandon them for the Left. Likud, Jewish Home, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Kulanu, and Yisrael Beytenu all recommended Netanyahu for the task - giving him a total of 67 MKs in his possible coalition. Still, MK Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) fears Netanyahu may take the President's mandate and instead of forming a narrow right-wing government, create a broad unity government. "We are opposed to a unity government. The nation made a definite choice," Shaked said during an...

Don’t just rely on Benjamin Netanyahu’s passionate advice to Congress on his way to reelection that Iran is our arch enemy. Now we have the counsel of retired general David Petraeus, who gave a remarkable interview this week to the Washington Post. Petraeus agrees with Netanyahu: Iran, not ISIS, is the real enemy. His message: “I would argue that the foremost threat to Iraq’s long-term stability and the broader regional equilibrium is not the Islamic State; rather, it is Shiite militias, many backed by — and some guided by — Iran.” The general adds, “Longer-term, Iranian-backed Shia militia could emerge...

Yisrael Beytenu has recommended Binyamin Netanyahu to form the next government, in a meeting with President Reuven Rivlin Monday at the Presidential Residence. He now has 67 MKs in his possible coalition. Interior Minister Gilad Erdan (Likud) ... [said] "I sincerely hope that the partners from the Right will compromise and make it possible to form a government quickly,” he told Kol Yisrael radio. “The negotiation needs to be carried out to its conclusion, and I hope [the right wing parties] do not cause the prime minister to opt for unity, by leaving him no other choice.”

Kulanu representatives on Monday met with President Reuven Rivlin, recommending that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be tasked with forming the next coalition. The nomination gave Netanyahu an absolute majority of 61 votes in his favor and prompted Rivlin to announce that the prime minister would be tasked with forming the next government. Netanyahu later added an endorsement from Yisrael Beytenu giving him a total of 67 nominations. Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon told President Rivlin that his party was neither Left nor Right, but socially-oriented with a central focus on the human being. "We nominate Netanyahu and the broader the base...

Over the weekend on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” conservative commentator Ann Coulter weighed in on the growing rift in U.S.-Israeli relations, particularly as it pertains to President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is coming off an electoral victory.

WASHINGTON — CNN anchor Jake Tapper said the relationship between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is deteriorating and the respect the two leaders have for each other knows bounds. “I spent the first four years of Obama as the White House correspondent for ABC News and it was just fascinating to watch the relationship deteriorate from the very beginning when — I’m sure I’m going to mess up the chronology here — but there was a Biden trip to Israel and he landed and immediately new settlements were announced. There was Netanyahu not being permitted to come...

Obama's role during the Israeli elections was larger than reported, according to a pollster for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party. "What was not well reported in the American media is that President Obama and his allies were playing in the election to defeat Prime Minister Netanyahu," John McLaughlin, a Republican strategist, said in an interview on John Catsimatidis's "The Cats Roundtable" radio show broadcast Sunday on AM 970 in New York. "There was money moving that included taxpayer U.S. dollars, through non-profit organizations. And there were various liberal groups in the United States that were raising millions to...

Weekly Standard senior editor Lee Smith has a series of satirical tweets called 'If it weren't for Bibi,' which shows how ridiculous it is for the White House to blame Prime Minister Netanyahu for all its problems Lee Smith @LeeSmithTWS Follow You see, it's all because Bibi said something in the middle of the 2015 campaign that the WH moved to partner with Iran starting in 2009. 9:09 AM - 22 Mar 2015 Lee Smith @LeeSmithTWS Follow If it weren't for Bibi, Obama would've backed Syrian rebels to take down regime when Assad started shooting unarmed oppo in the streets...

Stunned by defeat and still licking its considerable wounds in the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upset landslide re-election, the radical left, anti-Zionist Haaretz has published a lengthy article on the group most responsible for Netanyahu’s win: the young. It is a striking piece. Haaretz summed it up this way: Israel’s youth voted in overwhelming numbers for Netanyahu because of “security, security, security – and distrust of Arabs [that is, Muslims], the left and media.” In the United States of America, this very group delivered a fraud, a liar and America-hater into the Oval Office, not once but...

‘The president has his priorities so screwed up that it’s unbelievable,’ senator says... “The least of your problems are what Bibi Netanyahu said in a political campaign,” McCain said Sunday. “I think the president maybe shouldn’t like it, but thousands are being slaughtered by ISIS. The Iranians have taken over the major capitols of Lebanon, Syria, Beirut and Baghdad. It pales in significance to the situation which continues to erode throughout the Middle East, and it puts America at risk. … The president has his priorities so screwed up that it’s unbelievable...Either that or he’s delusional. I’m not sure which,”...

The Obama administration showed no signs of mending fences with Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, last night as preparations began in Jerusalem for talks to form of a new coalition government. Despite calls by Reuven Rivlin, Israel’s president, to begin a “healing process” following last week’s bitterly divisive election, Mr Obama has refused to allow Mr Netanyahu to take back comments apparently ruling out a Palestinian state while he was in power. "We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn't happen during his prime ministership,” Mr Obama said in an interview, reiterating that his administration...

There’s more than a passing similarity between Obama’s race baiting and his Netanyahu baiting: lies, agitprop, media complicity, shady financing, and prejudice -- in one case against whites, in the other against Jews. Jack Cashill, who often graces these pages, explains this week how the president has been ginning up racial animosity with the help of his friends and funders, describing techniques which I see Obama also using against Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel. Begin with some big lies and a media willing to “dismiss as racist anyone who challenged anything about Obama.” The war against the tea party was...

President Obama’s hostility towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is creating a backlash in congress among Democrats, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) told The Washington Post in an interview published on Friday. This backlash is beginning to damage the President’s agenda with respect to Iran and Israel, according to Graham. The deteriorating relationship also elicited a strong response this morning from Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a close Graham ally. “It’s been unnerving seeing the president show his open hostility,” Graham told The Washington Post. “It’s immature and over the top and has made people suspicious…He makes it hard for Democrats to...

White House spokesman Josh Earnest echoed the sentiment in last Thursday’s White House briefing that the Prime Minister’s words could bring punishment. “Words matter,” he said. There could be “consequences” for Netanyahu’s statements. “Everybody who’s in a position to speak on behalf of their government understands that that’s the case, and particularly when we’re talking about a matter as serious as this one.” So let’s get this straight. When foreign leaders speak, it matters. What they say is consequential. Bibi’s going to have to pay for his remarks. But I have one question. Why doesn’t any of this apply to...

President eager to see the appointment of a new government as quickly as possible; Netanyahu has 51 recommendations to Herzog's 24. President Reuven Rivlin began his consultations with representatives of the various parties on Sunday morning in an effort to form a governing coalition as quickly as possible. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the clear front-runner to form the next coalition, garnering on Sunday 51 recommendations versus Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog's 24 nominations. After having met with and heard the recommendations of Likud, Zionist Union, The Joint (Arab) List, Bayit Yehudi, Shas and United Torah Judaism on Sunday, Rivlin...

WASHINGTON — President Obama said he has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Israeli leader’s remarks in the closing days of his re-election campaign had upended the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and ran counter to the very nature of Israeli democracy, an unusually forceful and public condemnation of the top official of a vital United States ally. In his first public comments on the matter since Mr. Netanyahu’s victory in Tuesday’s elections, Mr. Obama said the prime minister’s pre-election statement that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch had all but foreclosed the chance for negotiations to resolve...

The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu looms so large over Israeli politics is a mystery to Israel’s friends and foes alike. If you believe what the media tell you, Netanyahu is routinely on the wrong side of history, refusing to make peace with the Palestinians, all too ready to go to war with Hamas, dangerously sparring with the U.S. president, doubting the Arab Spring when it was being hailed as the dawn of democracy and freedom in the Middle East, and threatening Iran when so many were convinced that negotiations were the way to put an end to its nuclear ambitions....

President Barack Obama said he takes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “at his word” for saying that an independent Palestinian state will never coexist with Israel as long as he is in office, yet another sign of the strained relations between longtime allies. […] Obama, who placed a congratulatory telephone call to Netanyahu on Thursday, said he indicated to the prime minister that the U.S. remains committed to a two-state solution as the only way to keep Israel secure. …

Well, it’s pretty clear now: Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be a major figure in Israeli history — not because he’s heading to become the longest-serving Israeli prime minister, but because he’s heading to be the most impactful. Having won the Israeli elections — in part by declaring that he will never permit a two state-solution between Israelis and Palestinians — it means Netanyahu will be the fatherr of the one-state solution. And the one-state solution means that Israel will become, in time, either a non-Jewish democracy or Jewish non-democracy. The biggest losers in all of this, besides all the...