Free Republic

Kulanu party leader Moshe Kahlon told Prime Minister Netanyahu that he will not accept Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett serving as defense minister, following the resignation of current defense minister, Avigdor Liberman. On Wednesday, Bennett issued an ultimatum to the Prime Minister, saying his Jewish Home faction will quit the coalition if he is not appointed defense minister. If Bennett's ultimatum holds, Kahlon's veto likely signals that early elections are on the way. "Bennett doesn't have it coming to get the Defense Ministry portfolio. I'm opposed to it," Kahlon told Netanyahu. Bennett told confidants in response that he will not...

I’ve been writing about this for a while. It’s good to see it being said openly. Especially now that Obama tried to fake yet another diplomatic crisis because of another manufactured Israeli “insult”. […]As an example of such a crisis, (Michael) Oren cites the infamous diplomatic dustup during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel in March 2010, calling it a “fabricated crisis” intentionally created by the Obama administration regarding a routine approval announcement for construction inside an established neighborhood in Jerusalem.Obama manufactures these crises, these “insults” by Israel to make him seem like the victim so that when he...

Last year, Kulanu MK and former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren received heavy criticism in some circles for his book Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide. With the release of the book’s Hebrew edition, Oren spoke to Arutz Sheva, discussing in depth the tensions between Israel and the Obama administration and the push back he received for the English edition. The book, which created controversy for what some considered an unfair portrayal of President Barack Obama, elicited rare public condemnations from senior officials, including former US special envoy to the Middle Easy Martin Indyk. “When I wrote...

Oren served as ambassador to the US during the during the first four and a half years of Obama's presidency. He wrote the book Ally about the experience, which has just been published in Hebrew. s controversial interview last week in which he repeatedly criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proves that he has "selective memory" about the Israel-related events of his presidency, Kulanu MK Michael Oren said Sunday. Oren served as ambassador to the US during the first four and a half years of Obama's presidency. He wrote the book Ally about the experience, which has just been published in...

The Israeli ambassador to America, Michael Oren, has released a statement rebuking the chair of the Democratic National Party. Earlier today, Phil Klein reported: Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed on Monday that Israel’s ambassador to the United States has accused Republicans of being “dangerous” to Israel by criticizing President Obama’s record. The Florida congresswoman made the charge at a training session for Jewish Democrats held by the Obama campaign here at the Democratic National Convention, aimed at teaching Jewish Democrats how to convince their fellow Jews to vote for Obama. Much of the session, which featured a...

The efficacy and threat level of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel has heightened after Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Dr. Michael Oren stated Monday—and allegedly justifies a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria. Israel’s economic, political, and cultural status has already been damaged existentially across the globe, Oren warned, due to the constant campaigns for “Israel Apartheid Week” on college campuses and European divestment from the Jewish state. […] Hamas consciously declared victory in its PR campaign against Israel several weeks ago, after it encouraged ordinary Gazans to become human shields,...

US President Barack Obama’s radical worldview makes it impossible for him to empathize with Israel’s position, Israel’s former Ambassador to Washington said Monday. Former US envoy Michael Oren, who currently serves as a Member of Knesset for the Kulanu party, was speaking at the Yesha Conference in Jerusalem’s Lianardo Hotel, where community leaders and prominent activists from Judea and Samaria (Yesha) were gathered. Speaking in front of a staunchly nationalist audience, the centrist MK warned that the current American administration was gambling with Israel’s future—particularly vis-à-vis Iran. […] Oren’s upcoming book—Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide, set for release...

The best line President Obama delivered in his 2015 State of the Union Address was not one written for him by his speechwriters. When he said he would not be on the ballot again, Republicans who had just taken over both Houses of Congress stood and applauded. Good naturedly, but with a bit of sarcasm, Mr. Obama reminded his opponents that he won both times he was on the national ballot. He was the first Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to achieve back-to-back election victories. We need to acknowledge that he is a formidable political actor. He has defied the...

On Nov. 8, 2011, President Obama met with then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Cannes after what had been a particularly rough week for US-Israeli relations. Modal Trigger The week prior, the UN agency UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member state. Congress responded by cutting off UNESCO’s funding, a move the Obama administration direly opposed. Michael Oren, who served as Israel’s US ambassador from 2009 to 2013, said the president, having opposed Palestine’s admission to the agency, “thought he had done enough . . . and did not need to punish them further.” President Obama responded to Congress’ act by admonishing Israel for...

Former ambassador to the US Michael Oren, whose book on his experience in Washington is due out on Tuesday, continues to ruffle feathers by criticizing US President Barack Obama’s Mideast policies in op-ed pieces in the US press. In a piece Friday in Foreign Policy, Oren – who left Washington on October 1, 2013, and is now a Kulanu MK -- charged that Obama was naïve as a peacemaker, had blinders to terrorism, and that his abandonment by both his Muslim father and step-father had something to do with his desire to be accepted by their “co-religionists.” And in a...

US. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro phoned Prime Minister Netanyahu and asked him to issue a statement disavowing former Israeli Ambassador to Israel Michael Oren’s statements about President Obama. In MK Michael Oren’s new book, he accuses Obama of abandoning the two main principle of US-Israel relations: no public disagreements (“no daylight”) and no suprises in major policy changes. He also primarily lays the blame on Obama for the bad relationship with Israel. He says that while Netanyahu made mistakes, Obama purposely damaged US-Israel relations. The US State Department says Oren’s statements are, “absolutely inaccurate and false.” According to reports,...

The agreement, which was struck just two hours before the final deadline for Netanyahu to cobble together a ruling government, paves the way for a narrow, 61-seat coalition. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling Likud faction on Wednesday reached an agreement with the religious Zionist Bayit Yehudi on the formation of a rightist coalition, Israel Radio reported. The agreement, which was struck just two hours before the final deadline for Netanyahu to cobble together a ruling government, paves the way for a narrow, 61-seat coalition. By law, if Netanyahu failed to form a government by midnight on Wednesday, President Reuven Rivlin...

Despite winning the majority of incoming MKs' support to form the next government, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continues to face suspicions he will abandon them for the Left. Likud, Jewish Home, Shas, United Torah Judaism, Kulanu, and Yisrael Beytenu all recommended Netanyahu for the task - giving him a total of 67 MKs in his possible coalition. Still, MK Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) fears Netanyahu may take the President's mandate and instead of forming a narrow right-wing government, create a broad unity government. "We are opposed to a unity government. The nation made a definite choice," Shaked said during an...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a crowd of tens of thousands of people at a rally in support of right-wing parties at Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on Sunday. Netanyahu claimed that "a massive fortune" of foreign money had flowed into Israel from abroad from organizations dedicated to removing him from power. He said that, because of this, currently, the Right does not have enough votes to put together a strong governing coalition, but that closing the gap with the Zionist Union is achievable. "If we don't close the gap, there is a danger that a left-wing government will come into...

Poll fever continues ahead of March 17 elections, and while results have shown Likud and Labor neck and neck, the latest survey by Channel 10 gives Labor a full four mandate gap over Likud. According to the poll, conducted by the Dialog Institute under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs, Labor - which erased the word "Zionism" from its Arabic ad campaign - would get 24 mandates, while Likud would only receive 20. Coming in at third Jewish Home stays at 16 seats, followed by a joint Arab list that would receive 12 mandates. Such a joint list - formed...

While in most countries immigration moves the electorate to the left, in Israel immigration moved the country to the right. In the United States the left is counting on demographics to make it easier for them to win elections, but in Israel demographic shifts have made it easier for the right to win. But the biggest problem for the Israeli left is that it’s tethered to its own version of ObamaCare in the form of the Palestinian Authority which won’t make peace, won’t stop funding terrorism and won’t stop playing the victim. As with ObamaCare, the Israeli left teeters between...

Former Likud MK Moshe Kahlon will indeed be running for the Knesset – and on Wednesday evening, he introduced his new party to Israelis. The party's name will be “Kulanu,” meaning “all of us.” The name is reminiscent of the campaign phrase used by Ehud Barak in his campaign for the Prime Minister's position in 1999, when he said that he would be the leader of “kulam” - everyone. Kahlon did not announced the names of any of the candidates who would be running with him. However, he said, his slogan to the voters would be “Be like Kahlon” (“Tihyu...

During the 1990s, Welsh professor Tudor Parfitt, known around the world as the “British Indiana Jones,” discovered evidence that the Lemba tribe in central Zimbabwe and northern South Africa has Jewish roots. He identified a genetic element in the male chromosomes of the tribe that comes from the Kohanim, the Jewish priestly line. This year, Dr. Parfitt published his latest of 25 books, Black Jews in Africa and the Americas. He also joined the faculty of Florida International University (FIU) and led an expedition to Papua New Guinea to visit the Gogodala tribe, which like the Lemba claims to be...