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Vice President Joe Biden will not be attending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before a joint session of Congress next month, news agencies reported. A statement released by aides to Biden, who is usually in his seat whenever a foreign leader addresses the legislature by dint of his position as president of the Senate, indicated that the vice president will be traveling abroad during the speech. "We are not ready to announce details of his trip yet, and normally our office wouldn't announce this early, but the planning process has been underway for a while," an official in the vice...

Joe Biden won’t be there to welcome Benjamin Netanyahu to a joint session of Congress — or even shake his hand. The vice president will miss only his second address by a foreign leader to a joint session of Congress next month, when he’ll be out of the country while Netanyahu makes what’s become an increasingly controversial speech warning against the Iran nuclear deal. The vice president’s office on Friday confirmed the plans to skip the March 3 speech. “We are not ready to announce details of his trip yet, and normally our office wouldn’t announce this early, but the...

The decision of the Obama White House to pick a public fight with Israel over its interior ministry’s fairly routine announcement of progress towards approval of the construction (some years from now) of apartments in northeast Jerusalem has by now been subjected to sharp and justified criticism for its disproportionality; its bad faith in reneging on signed agreements with Israel; its mean-spirited spitefulness; its dogged attachment to the exploded assumption that “settlements” are the cause of Arab intransigence; its desire to keep intact the possibility of an apartheid state of Palestine that would not accommodate a single Jew; and its...

Funny, President Obama was supposed to be against an arrogant foreign policy. Remember his speech in Strasbourg last spring? There had been instances, he told the European students, “where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” Those days are over, he assured them. Leave aside the question of whether this characterization of past American arrogance was justified. President Obama now has a year of foreign policy under his belt, and in that time he has managed to snub the British prime minister, alienate the president of France, insult the nation of Honduras when it successfully defended its young...

Phew. We can breathe easier now that the Obama administration has taken a tough-as-scimitars line with Israel, whose existentially threatening architectural blueprints for new housing, the administration says, pose a dire threat to U.S. troops and interests. Or, as Vice President Joseph Biden put it, referring to a new housing project in Jerusalem, as reported by Yedioth Ahronoth: "This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan." In other words, maybe it's not the Muslim-made IED planted in the roads of Helmand Province...

"Israel is one of our closest allies and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that's not going to go away," said President Barack Obama to Fox News Wednesday, March 17, after denying any crisis in the relationship. debkafile's Washington sources note that denial makes a lot of sense for the president because it lets him off the hook for dealing with it. However, in Jerusalem, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu called his inner cabinet into its second session on the crisis that same night. The seven ministers were asked to review the situation after President Obama and secretary...

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night by arriving 90 minutes late to a scheduled dinner. Mr Biden's late arrival was in response to Israel announcing 1,600 new homes will be built in disputed east Jerusalem during his visit to the region. He sharply rebuked the Israeli step - which came just after the Palestinians agreed to a new round of indirect peace talks under U.S. mediation after a 14-month lapse.

Joe Biden’s Soft Anti-Semitism 2010 March 10 tags: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Joe Biden, News, Politics by Ben Shapiro If you’re Israel, there’s nothing like being lectured on your domestic policy by a man who thinks that the United States and France kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon.  Joe Biden is probably the least-informed man in American politics when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict.  That may be because he, like President Obama, want to portray some sort of moral equality between the violent and murderous Palestinian Arabs (yes, their population is largely violent and murderous, not just their leadership) and the...

At Tel Aviv University, US vice president stresses American commitment to Israel's security, says Washington determined to prevent nuclear Iran; accepts PM's stance on R. Shlomo plan. US Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday delivered a warm speech at Tel Aviv University on Thursday afternoon, stressing the importance of US-Israel friendship and Washington's commitment to the security of the Jewish state. "US President Barack Obama and myself know that the US has no better friend in the community of nations than Israel," Biden said at the start of his speech. He went on to share some memories from his first...

Israel apologized for embarrassing Vice President Joe Biden by announcing it had approved 1,600 new homes in disputed east Jerusalem while the vice president was engaged in talks with Palestinian leaders. But Biden's blast at Israel's plan will only make the Obama team more unpopular in Jerusalem. Reihan Salam on America's waning influence abroad. Among Israelis, opinions of the Obama administration are decidedly mixed. Last year, many latched onto poll numbers that suggested that President Obama only had the support of 4 percent of Israelis. Yet those shockingly low numbers were misleading. Another survey, sponsored by the New America Foundation,...

In the midst of a high-profile visit by Vice President Joe Biden, Israel on Tuesday unveiled plans for new housing in disputed Jerusalem, a surprise step that embarrassed and angered the highest-ranking Obama administration official yet to visit the country. Biden, who had come to promote new peace talks and to smooth the Obama administration's strained relations with a longtime ally, instead denounced Israel's plans to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem as a threat to the search for peace. "I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East...

Israel's decision to approve 1,600 new homes in an ultra-Orthodox East Jerusalem neighborhood is undermining Middle East peace talks, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in Jerusalem on Tuesday. Earlier Tuesday, the Interior Ministry approved the building of 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, with a ministry official saying the plan will expand the ultra-Orthodox East Jerusalem neighborhood to the east and to the south. "I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem," Biden said.