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In an article appearing in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, White House speechwriter Ben Rhodes (@rhodes44) admits what Israel supporters claimed all along: He lied to Congress in order to sell the nuclear sellout to Iran. Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new...

Vice President Joe Biden’s jabs at Israel’s prime minister during a speech Monday evening at a gathering for a left-wing Israel lobbying group amount to “payback from the White House,” retired Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. In an address delivered at J Street’s annual convention in Washington DC, Biden singled out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for criticism, expressing his “overwhelming frustration” with the Israeli leader’s policies. “I firmly believe that the actions that Israel’s government has taken over the past several years — the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts,...

The United States does not consider the Golan Heights to be a part of Israel, State Department spokesperson John Kirby stressed on Monday, a day after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed the Golan Heights "will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty." "The U.S. position on the issue is unchanged," Kirby told reporters during a daily briefing at the State Department in Washington, according to Haaretz. "This position was maintained by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Those territories are not part of Israel and the status of those territories should be determined through negotiations. The current situation in Syria does not allow...

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday his country will never withdraw from the Golan Heights and the strategic plateau bordering Syria will forever stay in Israeli hands. In a ceremonial Cabinet meeting in the Golan marking the one-year anniversary of his current government's formation, Netanyahu said he doubts Syria will ever return to what it was before the devastating civil war that has gripped it for more than five years. He said he would not oppose diplomatic efforts to stabilize Syria as long as they didn't come at the expense of Israel's security. Netanyahu added that, regardless,...

There were a few things Donald Trump made clear when he met Thursday with a select group of Jewish reporters, almost all of them Orthodox, at his corporate offices in Manhattan. Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was the one who initiated Wednesday's one-on-one powwow with Trump to mend fences, not him. He's a great friend of Israel. He has many Orthodox Jewish friends, including his chief lawyer, Jason D. Greenblatt. And he considers himself a very loyal boss. But in a 20-minute question-and-answer session that touched on religious liberty in the workplace, US foreign policy in the Middle East and...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu intends to go ahead with the appointment of Ran Baratz as head of the country’s public diplomacy strategy, which was put on hold after harsh comments Baratz made on Facebook against President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and President Reuven Rivlin came to light. Channel 2 News reported on Thursday that Netanyahu had sent a letter to the Civil Service Commission, asking that it review Baratz’s appointment, and the Civil Service Commissioner said in response that there is a difficulty in approving Baratz’s appointment, which may not meet certain requirements. But the Prime Minister’s...

In broadcast to AIPAC in Washington DC, Netanyahu states 'terror has no grievances, it's not like we could offer them Brussels.' Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delivered a speech in a live broadcast to the AIPAC conference in Washington DC on Tuesday. Responding to the horrific attacks in Brussels earlier in the day, Netanyahu said, "terrorists have no resolvable grievances, it's not as if we could offer them Brussels, or Istanbul, or the West Bank. That won't resolve their grievances." "Their basic demand is that we simply should disappear," he said, emphasizing "that won't happen." Elaborating on Israel's technological breakthroughs, Netanyahu...

Americans sensed there was still a bit of tension between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the latter leader cancelled their planned meeting this month. The Obama administration claimed to be blindsided by the announcement, but Israel’s government insists they warned the White House last week. Sources reveal that the prime minister decided to forgo the meeting because he was frustrated over a delay in defense aid. Yet, others say he simply didn’t want to visit during the peak of the U.S. presidential campaign. The bad blood between Obama and Netanyahu dates back a few years ago...

Politico reports: The White House chided Israel on Tuesday for the way it canceled a meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying it would have been “good manners” for Israeli officials to tell the White House directly.

Relations between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu haven’t been spectacular (to put it mildly) and recent developments seem to hint that they’re not getting any better. There was supposed to be a meeting in Washington later this month, but now it appears to be off the table. (Yahoo News) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declined an offer to meet President Barack Obama at the White House later this month and canceled his trip to Washington, the White House said on Monday, citing Israeli news reports.Netanyahu’s decision to nix his U.S. visit marked the latest episode...

Just about a year ago, the Obama administration, furious with Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, let everyone who would listen know that it deemed the Prime Minister's address to a joint session of Congress two weeks before the Israeli elections to be 'electioneering.' In the summer of 2012, the administration went out of its way to accuse Netanyahu of interfering in the US election by hosting Republican nominee Mitt Romney three and a half months before that election took place. Now, the shoe is on the other foot. With the media paying less and less attention to Obama, he wants a...

A “surprised” White House bristled Monday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly canceled a trip to Washington. The U.S. insisted that President Barack Obama had offered a meeting but was turned down. Netanyahu had been expected to visit later in March on a trip coinciding with a major pro-Israel group’s annual summit. The White House said Israel had proposed two dates for a meeting between the leaders and the U.S. had offered to meet on one of those days. …

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has decided to cancel his upcoming visit to the US, where he was supposed to speak at the AIPAC conference, as well as possibly meet with President Obama in the White House. Netanyahu will instead address the conference by satellite on March 20. Among the reasons that Netanyahu cancelled his visit, was that it coincided with US President Obama’s visit to Cuba, and therefore the two would have been unable to meet during his time in the US. The AIPAC conference is from March 20 to 22, and Obama is to be in Cuba from March...

<p>The United States reacted with surprise on Monday to news that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu canceled his annual trip to Washington.</p>

President Obama foregoes meeting with Netanyahu in favor of flight to Cuba for first US presidential trip since 1920s. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has canceled his annual trip to the United States after President Barack Obama declined to schedule a meeting with him. Netanyahu had planned a visit to the US coinciding with the annual AIPAC summit planned for March 20 through 22. Netanyahu has made attending AIPAC’s annual conference a tradition, missing the event only twice. Officials around the Prime Minister pointed out that the trip would take place in the middle of a heated presidential primary season, and...

An interview with Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman In this fascinating and revealing interview, Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman discusses his six-year tenure as deputy for foreign policy and international affairs at the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. He addresses Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians, Israeli preparations for an attack on Iran, US clandestine surveillance, and Israeli ties with Arab countries. Dr. Lerman joined the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in October 2015. Read the full article....

"There is a lot of pain in this room, but there is also a lot of power," said Chantal Belzberg, director of the NGO OneFamily, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a private meeting at the Knesset, amid several victims of terrorism. "They represent a cross-section of Israeli society...however, this group has one thing in common - one thing that bonds them together, now and forever," she said. That commonality, Belzberg told Netanyahu, is that each of them has a loved one who was brutally murdered by...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says staffers for U.S. Vice President Joe Biden are arriving in Israel ahead of a possible Biden visit. [...] Biden's last visit to Israel sparked a diplomatic spat with Washington in 2010, when Israel announced settlement construction plans during Biden's visit. ...

Pentagon documents released on Tuesday indicate that the 2017 budget requests of the US Defense Department include a total of $145.8 million for Israeli missile defense programs, a sharp drop in financial support amid a standoff over American military aid. The aid, meant for Israel's missile interceptor programs including the short-range Iron Dome, medium-range David's Sling and Arrow ballistic missile interceptor, includes far lower figures than those recorded the year before in 2016, reports Reuters. A total of $103.8 million for Israeli cooperative programs was listed in the 2017 budget request, in a serious cut from $267.7 million in 2016....

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu toured on Tuesday the route of the fence being built along Israel's eastern border with Jordan. Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and Southern District commander Eyal Zamir also participated in the tour along the route of the anticipated 30-kilometer fence. So far, five kilometers of the border fence have been erected. [...] The Prime Minister expressed his opinion that all of Israel should be surrounded by some sort of border fence. "At the end, in the State of Israel, as I see it, there will be a fence that spans it...