Free Republic

The vast majority of Israelis believe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should publicly accept responsibility for the staggering failures that led to Hamas’s devastating onslaught on October 7, according to an opinion poll by the Maariv newspaper published Friday. Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet head Ronen Bar have already taken such responsibility, as have Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Eighty percent of Israelis said Netanyahu, who has not made any public statements accepting responsibility, should follow suit, including 69% of those who voted for the premier’s Likud party in...

JERUSALEM—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will easily win a snap election set for April 9, according to an opinion poll on Dec. 25, the first to be published since the ballot was announced. Netanyahu announced the early election on Dec. 24, appealing directly to voters for a fresh political mandate that could help him weather possible charges in corruption investigations. An election had not been due until November 2019. The survey, published in Israel’s Maariv newspaper, showed Netanyahu’s Likud party winning 30 of parliament’s 120 seats, the same number it took in the last election in 2015, and a governing...

JERUSALEM (AP) -- A senior Israeli diplomat in Washington has met with a Pentagon analyst being investigated by the FBI on suspicion he passed classified information to Israel, Israeli officials confirmed Monday. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meetings were well within the norm of diplomacy and that no laws were broken. Israel has flatly denied it has a spy at the Pentagon. The Israeli diplomat was identified as Naor Gilon, head of the political department at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and a specialist on Iran's nuclear weapons program. U.S. officials say the FBI investigation focuses...

Our Newspapers Fail Us Editorial - Israel News Agency There is no public relations or public affairs without a carrier. The most established carrier is called a newspaper. And in Israel the only newspapers which enjoy abundant readership and wealth are the Hebrew dailies – Yediot, Maariv and Haaertz. As for the English newspapers here in Israel – one is a mere translation of the Hebrew edition and the other is fifty percent wire service copy. Yes – there are some brilliant writers on these papers but their voices become deluded when you have a lack of proper leadership integrated...

Translation by me: tens of reporters left in dismay from the press conference the deputy prime minister of Iraq Tariq Aziz convened this night. The massive leave started after Aziz refused to answer a question posed by a Maariv reporter during the press conference being held at the foreign reporters building in Rome. the question which caused the criticism was if Iraq will find it right to attack Israel in every way possible if it is attacked by the US, and what will be the Iraqi response towards Arab countries like Qatar, Baharian and Kuwait, who are assisting the...

Touching off hoots and boos, a top Iraqi official snubbed an Israeli journalist Friday, refusing to answer the correspondent's question about whether Baghdad might attack Israel in a case of a U.S. military strike on Iraq. Correspondent Menachem Gantz, based in Rome for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, asked Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz at a news conference in the Italian capital: "Are you considering any kind of attack as a possibility against Israel in case of an American attack?" Aziz, invited by the Foreign Press Association to give the news conference, responded: "When I came to this press conference...