Free Republic

Today President Obama gave a speech at American University, urging acceptance of his nuclear deal with Iran. It was the usual exercise in deception and demagoguery, and he skated up to the edge of accusing opponents of the deal–a majority of Americans, apparently–of treason. After some initial reminiscence about the Cold War, Obama leaped right into misrepresenting the agreement’s terms: After two years of negotiations, we have achieved a detailed arrangement that permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The “prohibition” consists of a pious declaration by Iran which it can repudiate at any time. The agreement contains no...

It turns out that American citizens “are not allowed” to criticize Israel. Or so says Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago and former chief of staff to President Barack Obama. Emanuel was asked his view of the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace in an interview appearing in the April 21 issue of The New Republic. He ventured to say that while Israel “has a security concern involving geography, geography does not have the same value it did in 1967.” Emanuel’s strategic notions are highly debatable. Without the territories captured 47 years ago, during the Six-Day War, Israel would be nine miles...

President Obama took sharp aim at critics of the Iran nuclear deal on Wednesday, saying many of those who backed the U.S. invasion of Iraq now want to reject the accord and put the Middle East on the likely path toward another war. Obama also sketched out further setbacks he claimed would be set in motion by a snub from Congress: undercutting America’s standing in global diplomacy, leaving Washington isolated and putting ally Israel in greater peril. “Now more than ever we need clear thinking in our foreign policy,” Obama told an audience at American University — the same venue...

President Barack Obama is using anti-Jewish language to sell the Iran deal. Some critics made that claim a week ago, when Obama complained about “the money” and “the lobbyists” on the other side of the debate over the Iran nuclear deal. This week, Obama proved it. On Thursday, Obama led a conference call with left-wing activists in which he repeatedly railed against his political opponents by using the old canard of rich Jews using their money to exert control. Accusing critics of the deal of being “opposed to any deal with Iran”–i.e. of advocating war–Obama railed against “well-financed” lobbyists, as...

  Dual Loyalty and the “Israel Lobby”Gabriel Schoenfeld In late August, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) hosted an event in Washington, D.C. entitled “The Israel Lobby and the U.S. Response to the War in Lebanon.” It featured two political scientists, John J. Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Stephen M. Walt, a professor at Harvard and former academic dean of the university’s Kennedy School of Government. Back in March, the two men, both of whom are identified with the “realist” school in foreign policy, had stirred an intense controversy with an article in the London Review...

No, its authors are not closet anti-Semites. But they twisted facts and cherry-picked history. Molly Ivins' defense of John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt's controversial essay, "The Israel Lobby," is nearly as distorting of their argument as their argument is of the causes and consequences of U.S. support for Israel. If, as she suggests, these two distinguished professors had limited themselves to the claim that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) attempts to influence U.S. foreign policy, and at times does so quite successfully, or that we need a debate about whether unqualified support for Israel hurts American interests, there...