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My good friend Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in New York City for the past several days desperately struggling to defend his country against the weight of the world. Yesterday when he took the podium at the United Nations, the sense of hatred could be felt in the room. There were cheers and applause and a warm welcome for PA President Abbas when he spoke…not for the leader of Israel. So many nations have disguised their anti-Semitism behind a hatred of Israel. The enemies of the Jewish state want nothing less than the utter destruction of Israel, and they...

I haven’t always been the biggest fan of Benjamin Netanyahu. He seemed something of a careerist with the capacity to talk out of both sides of his mouth. In other words, a politician. But who could decry anyone with the guts to stand in the belly of the United Nations — as he did last Friday — and define that paleo-corrupt institution precisely as it is — a “house of many lies”? Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress back in May was also widely applauded by a friendly audience. But this address — before a body that welcomes...

Thousands of Palestinians cheering and waving flags gave President Mahmoud Abbas a hero's welcome in the West Bank Sunday, as he told them triumphantly a "Palestinian Spring" had been born following his historic speech to the U.N. last week. Abbas' popularity has skyrocketed since he asked the U.N. on Friday to recognize Palestinian independence, defying appeals from Israel and the United States to return to peace talks. His request has pushed the region into uncharted waters, and left the international community scrambling over how to respond. Thousands of people crowded Abbas' West Bank headquarters in the city of Ramallah to...

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has handed over a historic request to UN chief Ban Ki-moon asking the United Nations to admit the state of Palestine as a full member. The Palestinian leader won huge applause and a standing ovation on Friday from some of the assembly as he entered the hall before beginning his speech. Abbas said he was ready to return to the negotiations, saying he did not want to isolate or delegitimize Israel. "Here I declare that the Palestine Liberation Organization is ready to return immediately to the negotiating table on the basis of the adopted terms of...

Senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath slammed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's calls for an immediate resumption of negotiations as insincere. "He talks about making painful concessions, but he has not made a single concession on the ground," Shaath said in a Saturday interview with Channel 2, adding that twenty years of negotiations with Israel has led the Western-backed Palestinian Authority nowhere. Shaath stated that the United Nations bid did not contradict negotiations and asserted that the PA would enter negotiations if Netanyahu agrees to ban all Jewish construction in Israel's disputed Samaria and Judea regions. "Netanyahu must say 'peace is more...

BEIRUT: Palestinian refugees will not become citizens of a new Palestinian state, according to Palestine’s ambassador to Lebanon. > The ambassador unequivocally says that Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state, an issue that has been much discussed. “They are Palestinians, that’s their identity,” he says. “But … they are not automatically citizens.” This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where Abdullah says Palestinians reside. Abdullah said that “even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian]...

write to draw attention to Israel Prime Minister (Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech) at the United Nations today. As As Daniel Patrick Moynihan demonstrated once upon a time, there is something especially thrilling about the truth being told in this particular forum (a “theater of the absurd,” in Netanyahu’s reckoning). It happens rarely, but it happened today. Attention should be paid: Ladies and gentlemen, in Israel our hope for peace never wanes.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas strongly suggested Saturday that he would reject a peacemaking blueprint put forward by international mediators, saying he would not agree to any proposal that disregarded Palestinian conditions for the resumption of peace talks. Abbas, who returned to the West Bank on Saturday after submitting a statehood bid at the United Nations a day earlier, told reporters accompanying him that he was still studying the proposal by the peacemaking Quartet — the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia. But he appeared to tip his hand by saying "we will not deal with...

On Monday, Jeff Daube, Director of Israel Affairs for ZOA, approached me and told me about an LA Jewish Journal article about the gun Obama reputedly put to Netanyahu's head. Knesset visitor blasts Obama and Netanyahu advises that MK Eldad accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of buckling under intense pressure from President Barack Obama, who wants to prevent any Israeli retaliation against the Palestinian Authority in its bid to win recognition as a state from the United Nations.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered the following remarks to U.N. this afternoon, focusing primarily on the Palestinians' statehood bid: PRIME MIN. NETANYAHU: Thank you, Mr. President. Ladies and gentlemen, Israel has extended its hand in peace from the moment it was established 63 years ago. On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I extend that hand again today. I extend it to the people of Egypt and Jordan, with renewed friendship for neighbors with whom we have made peace. I extend it to the people of Turkey, with respect and good will. I extend it to the people...

WASHINGTON — When the Obama administration wanted to be certain that Congress would not block $50 million in new aid to the Palestinian Authority last month, it turned to a singularly influential lobbyist: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. At the request of the American Embassy and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Netanyahu urged dozens of members of Congress visiting Israel last month not to object to the aid, according to Congressional and diplomatic officials. Mr. Netanyahu’s intervention with Congress underscored an extraordinary intersection of American diplomacy and domestic politics, the result of an ever-tightening relationship between the Israeli...

anyone watching??? pointing out the utter incompetence of the UN and its never ending disdain for Israel...

I just found this link to watch live what is going on at the UN right now: UN Webcast

There is something surreal about the coverage of developments this week at the UN. The general tenor is akin to the showdown at the O.K. Corral. Either the Palestinians win recognition of statehood, or they don't. If they do, they win. If they don't, Israel wins. The problem with this message is that even if the Palestinians don't receive UN membership they still win. There is no scenario in which Israel wins at the UN. The reason is simple. The UN is profoundly hostile to Israel. It has a large, permanent, automatic majority of members that always supports harming Israel....

A last-ditch American effort to head off a Palestinian bid for membership in the United Nations faltered. President Obama tried to qualify his own call, just a year ago, for a Palestinian state. And President Nicolas Sarkozy of France stepped forcefully into the void, with a proposal that pointedly repudiated Mr. Obama’s approach. The extraordinary tableau Wednesday at the United Nations underscored a stark new reality: the United States is facing the prospect of having to share, or even cede, its decades-long role as the architect of Middle East peacemaking. Even before Mr. Obama walked up to the General Assembly...

The Palestinian Authority (“P.A.”) is proceeding full steam ahead to create “facts on the ground” in the Middle East by working the Manhattan corridors of the United Nations. This is neither the first time, nor undoubtedly the last, that Palestinian leaders have succumbed to the delusion that Middle Eastern reality can be changed by irrelevant U.N. activity. The tactical ploys and counter-ploys are now flying around the U.N. compound. In the midst of all of the conflicting news reports we will see and hear, keep in mind one thing: this is more Broadway theater than a serious effort to achieve...

NEW YORK—The Mideast Quartet on Tuesday continued its efforts to find a means to find a way to renew Israel-Palestinian peace talks and avoid “unilateral” moves ahead of a possible diplomatic showdown over the Palestinian statehood bid. A European diplomat told The Mideast Update by email on Tuesday morning that “discussions are continuing,” and another meeting for Quartet envoys had been set for Tuesday afternoon. Another European diplomat

The world -- or at least the large part of it that hates Israel and wishes it would go away -- moves a step nearer that goal this week when the United Nations votes on whether to recognize a Palestinian state. The vote violates the Declaration of Principles signed by the PLO in 1993, which committed the terrorist group and precursor to the Palestinian Authority to direct negotiations with Israel over a future state. This violation is further evidence the Palestinian side cannot be trusted to live up to signed agreements and promises. Caroline Glick, whose column appears in these...

Poland will not participate in a shameful vote over so-called Palestinian state at the United Nations on Thursday, September 22nd. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk clearly stated that Polish government will not send its representative to that meeting.

Islam's greatest invention..."Palestine"