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PM will leave Israel Sunday at around noon, and be in Washington for less than 48 hours before flying back Tuesday afternoon. Netanyahu’s public schedule this time will be very sparse, with just three events – a Monday morning speech to AIPAC, Tuesday morning’s address to a joint session of Congress, and following that speech, a meeting with bipartisan leadership of both the Senate and the House. This meeting was initiated by Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Senate Minority leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada). He will fly back to Israel shortly after delivering that meeting. While the speech to...

On the morning of Feb. 26, 1993, a massive truck bomb ripped a hole almost 100 feet across the B-2 level of the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center's North Tower. The blast wave was so powerful that it penetrated five stories of the reinforced concrete building. In addition to causing structural damage, the explosion destroyed or heavily damaged hundreds of vehicles parked in the garage. That such a powerful explosion killed only six people is nothing short of a miracle, for the attackers had a goal much more grandiose. They wanted to topple the North Tower onto the...

A top Texas law enforcement agency says border security organizations have apprehended several members of known Islamist terrorist organizations crossing the southern border in recent years, and while a surge of officers to the border has slowed the flow of drugs and undocumented immigrants, it’s costing the state tens of millions of dollars. In a report to Texas elected officials, the state Department of Public Safety says border security agencies have arrested several Somali immigrants crossing the southern border who are known members of al-Shabab, the terrorist group that launched a deadly attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya,...

Another anti-Semitic cab driver has been unearthed in the Big Apple, the New York Daily News reported Tuesday, after one cabbie told a 51 year-old Jewish woman that "all Jews must die." On Sunday morning, Jewish news columnist Baila Sebrow hailed a cab from Manhattan's Carlton Hotel - but when she entered the cab, she was instantly asked whether she was Jewish. After answering in the affirmative, Sebrow was told that "all Jews must die," and the driver then began driving "really fast" - so much so that she was afraid he would total the car, she stated. Sebrow, terrified,...

There’s an old political saying that if your opponent is committing suicide, get out of the way. Yet professor Sean Elias requires a response, so hateful was his odious retort in The Aspen Times to my column, “Why coexist with a mortal Iranian threat?” Evidence that society’s oldest prejudice endures after a post-Nazi dormancy, Elias’ letter to the editor reflects the bigotry that’s inciting lethal anti-Jewishness in Europe and existential threats to Israel, the only nation-state of the Jewish people and the sole democracy in the Middle East’s radicalized swamp. No other nation is surrounded by as much hostility or...

President Barack Obama is sending National Security Advisor Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power–widely seen as among the most anti-Israel members of his administration–to address a prominent pro-Israel gathering next week. The move is described by the Associated Press as an effort to mend fences after the administration had withheld speakers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference. In reality, it is a further slap in the face. Rice caused an uproar earlier this week when she told interviewer Charlie Rose that the forthcoming speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a special joint session...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with the Democratic and Republican Senate leaders during his trip to Washington, a senior Israeli official said Thursday. The closed-door meeting will be held amid escalating tensions between the two parties and a crisis in the ties between the White House and the Prime Minister's Office over Netanyahu's upcoming Congress speech. The official's remarks were made shortly after AIPAC announced that President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power will address the organization's conference next week. According to the senior official, Netanyahu accepted the invitation extended by...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice and U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power will attend a meeting of the powerful pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC next week amid a time of strain between the United States and Israel. A White House spokeswoman confirmed Rice and Power would attend the American Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting.

First “OpsAlert@State.gov” email at 4:07 PM on September 11, 2012, reports, “… diplomatic mission is under attack … 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well … Stevens in the compound safe haven” Email at 6:06 PM September 11, 2012, states terrorist group, “Ansar al Sharia Claims Responsibility.” (Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that on February 11, 2015, it uncovered documents from the U.S. Department of State revealing that top aides for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, including her then-chief of staff Cheryl Mills, knew from the outset that the Benghazi mission compound was under...

Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells Israel Hayom that the American administration's negative focus on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming visit is an "unfortunate distraction" from the important issue -- the Iranian threat. Less than a week before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress, former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells Israel Hayom that the focus on Netanyahu's visit rather than on his message is an "unfortunate distraction" from the important issue -- the Iranian threat. "I find it stunning to see the comments out of the White House on this issue,"...

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on Thursday strongly challenged the assertion that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming speech to Congress about nuclear negotiations with Iran would be destructive to U.S.-Israeli relations. "The president's national security advisor says it's destructive for the prime minister of Israel to address the United States Congress. I couldn't disagree more," Boehner said at his weekly news conference. "The American people and both parties in Congress have always stood with Israel and nothing, and no one, could get in the way," Boehner said. Netanyahu is due to join Winston Churchill on March 3...

Featuring mostly young people in grungy outfits, looking terribly afflicted by Waiting for Change and pictured doing an awful lot of printing, painting and gluing of V15 campaign posters to the sound of a catchy soundtrack, the political campaign video for V15 has about as much depth as a Calvin Klein commercial. In a seductive tone the male voice over tells us that they (Bibi Netanyahu) are trying to scare us (the voters) but in reality, they are afraid of us. The reason, we are told, that they are afraid of us, is that we are the Change and if...

Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to cancel his planned speech to Congress on March 3, saying it will cause "strategic damage" to Israel's ties with the United States. "I call on Netanyahu again: Stop. Enough, Bibi, enough. You aren't going. Don't go. You will cause strategic damage to Israel's standing and to the relationship with the United States," Herzog said at a press conference, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. Herzog also condemned Netanyahu's decision not to meet with Senate Democrats when he goes to Washington next week, saying the prime minister is...

Matthews said, “Let me finish tonight with this crapstorm that has Netanyahu has started. All the Prime Minister had to do to avoid all this fighting with Washington was to speak out. That’s what he could have done, speak out the second he heard that the invitation for him to address the US Congress was issued without the knowledge of the American President. All he had to do was say ‘I will only come if this invitation is bipartisan, and certainly only if the President of the United States has approved it.’ All he had to do was that just...

http://abcnews.go.com/US/pedestrians-shot-killed-texas-shooting-attacks/story?id=29241155 Police in Texas are searching for a gunman believed to have randomly attacked five people in the past week, including one who later died. The attacks happened in Houston and nearby Missouri City, Texas, and involved pedestrians walking alone, police said.

The senator behind the Assault Weapons Ban bill and a House Republican have teamed up for new gun-control legislation — to ban terrorists from buying guns. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2015 in the upper chamber with co-sponsor Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

Secretary of State John Kerry testified on Capitol Hill yesterday, and going into the hearing, it was widely expected that he’d tout the importance of international nuclear talks with Iran. He did exactly that, though he also went a little further in challenging a critic of those talks. Secretary of State John Kerry reminded Americans on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who is expected to denounce a potential nuclear deal with Iran during an address to Congress next week, also visited Washington in late 2002 to lobby for the invasion of Iraq. Apparently referring to testimony on...

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Incidents in Kirkuk, where bodies of Islamic State (ISIS) fighters were dragged through the streets, have shocked many in Iraqi Kurdistan. The incidents happened after ISIS attacked oil fields and installations in and around Kirkuk on Friday, making use dense fog that hampered air strikes by the US-led coalition. In surprise attacks on three fronts, dozens of Peshmerga were killed, among them two Kurdish generals. The situation in the oil-rich city, which has a mixed population under a chosen Kurdish governor, became so dire that armed neighborhood guards joined police and the Kurdish Asayish security forces,...

So much for the jobs program. The ISIS terrorist who became known as “Jihadi John” for his British accent in videos depicting the brutal beheading of Americans James Foley and Steven Sotloff has been identified today by the Washington Post as Mohammed Emwazi, based on information from intelligence sources. Emwazi’s life was hardly Dickensian: The world knows him as “Jihadi John,” the masked man with a British accent who has beheaded several hostages held by the Islamic State and who taunts audiences in videos circulated widely online.But his real name, according to friends and others familiar with his case,...

ISIS militant ‘Jihadi John’ unmasked as middle-class Brit By Yaron Steinbuch February 26, 2015 | 7:16am The infamous masked ISIS madman seen in gruesome videos beheading Western hostages was identified by media outlets Thursday as Mohammed Emwazi — a middle-class Briton with a degree in computer programming. The BBC reported that the Kuwaiti-born Emwazi is in his mid-20s and from West London. British authorities chose not to identify him earlier for operational reasons. “I have no doubt that Mohammed is Jihadi John,” one of Emwazi’s close friends told the Washington Post. “He was like a brother to me. . . . I...