Free Republic

Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday he felt betrayed by President Joe Biden after learning that he is willing to withhold offensive weapons to Israel and accused the president of reneging on the deal they made to pass aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan last month. Johnson also said he hoped that Biden’s threat to cut off American weapons, made in a CNN interview, was “a senior moment.”

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Exploiting Israel to score a political victory.Biden’s speech on the brutal Hamas atrocities was a good speech, not in that he delivered it well or especially convincingly (let’s not even rehash the invented Golda Meir story) but it appeared to have been written by someone who cared enough to inject it with moral outrage and certainty. It would have been a better speech for someone else.But rhetoric is relatively cheap in politics. More significant than the moral outrage are the actual policy statements. As many noted, there’s no mention of Iran. That’s not surprising as the administration’s position is not...

As part of a 10-year U.S.-Israel security aid agreement, the Israeli government has signed a letter promising to give back any additional money that Congress appropriates, effectively preventing Congress from giving Israel any more money than President Obama wants it to have. The White House will sign today a new 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Israel that would increase U.S.-Israel security aid from $3.1 billion a year to $3.3 billion, starting in 2018. The deal would also include, for the first time, $500 million of annual missile defense funding, bringing the annual total to $3.8 billion. But Congress, in...

President Obama has proposed granting Israel the largest package of military aid ever provided by the United States to another nation, but he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remain deeply at odds over a figure for the assistance despite months of negotiations. American officials have balked as their Israeli counterparts insisted on more generous terms for a new 10-year military aid package that could top $40 billion. The divide, which could have broad national security implications for both the United States and Israel, is exacerbated by the pent-up animosity between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, which has been stoked by...

For the first time since a massive earthquake struck Turkey's east, Ankara has asked Israel for aid on Tuesday, after rejecting several offers by top Israeli officials in the last two days. On Monday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rejected an aid offer by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a phone conversation between the two leaders, representing the second such rejection since a 7.2 magnitude quake struck Turkey. On Sunday, despite the frantic search and rescue efforts, Turkey turned down Israel's offer, as well as similar offers from several other countries. Ankara issued a statement saying that the extent...