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United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday that the Obama administration's decision to ramp up pressure on Israel over construction of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem was bringing results. In an interview with BBC television, Clinton was asked whether escalating the tone with Israel had paid off. She said: "I think we're going to see the resumption of the negotiation track and that means that it is paying off because that's our goal." Advertisement Over the past two weeks Israel has sought to cool American ire over plans for 1,600 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish...

Obama himself claims that he has launched a political war against Israel in the interest of promoting peace. But this claim, too, does not stand up to scrutiny. On Friday, Obama ordered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to present Netanyahu with a four-part ultimatum. First, Israel must cancel the approval of the housing units in Ramat Shlomo. Second, Israel must prohibit all construction for Jews in Jerusalem neighborhoods built since 1967. Third, Israel must make a gesture to the Palestinians to show them we want peace. The US suggests releasing hundreds of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons. Fourth, Israel must...

Remember, last June, when President Obama told reporters that it was “not productive” for the U.S. to be “meddling” in the affairs of a certain Middle Eastern country? Obama’s diplomatic deference inaugurated six months of silence after Iran’s sham elections. By the time the White House got around to “strongly condemn[ing]” the bloody crackdown against protestors, the nascent “green revolution” was in retreat, and Iran’s maniacal president – Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- was bragging about how close he was to developing nuclear weapons. Obama is showing he has far fewer reservations about meddling in the domestic affairs of another Middle Eastern...

It took awhile, 14 months to be exact, but both the ADL and AIPAC have issued very solid statements condemning the President's new verbal war on Israel, and asking for the Administration to curtail the public berating of its supposed ally, and work with Israel in a more diplomatic fashion on both the peace process and Iran. What is disgraceful is that so far, exactly one elected Democrat in Congress has done the same: Congresswoman Shelley Berkley of Nevada. Sadly, Democrats seem to care far more about passing health care legislation this week, than protecting the US-Israel relationship from Obama's...

An ill-timed municipal housing announcement in Jerusalem has mutated into one of the most serious conflicts between the United States and Israel in two decades, leaving a politically embarrassed Israeli government scrambling to respond to a tough list of demands by the Obama administration. The Obama administration has put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a difficult political spot at home by insisting that the Israeli government halt a plan to build housing units in East Jerusalem. The administration also wants Mr. Netanyahu to commit to substantive negotiations with the Palestinians, after more than a year in which the peace process...

Recent hostile outbursts by the US gov't must be viewed in the context that the US-Israel relationship has been on a downward spiral since Obama. The bureaucratic fashla [blunder] of our dysfunctional government to forestall the announcement of a new housing project in Jerusalem during the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden provided a pretext for the Obama administration to launch one of the harshest condemnations ever leveled against us by a US government. But while the timing of the announcement was appalling, it involved no breach of undertaking. In fact, the Obama administration had previously publicly praised the...

Major riots in Wadi Joz; 15 arrested, 2 cops hurt as protesters clash with police. Dozens of masked Palestinians were hurling rocks at Israeli police and burning tires in the east Jerusalem neighborhoods Wadi Joz, Issawiya and Abu Tor on Tuesday. More than one hundred policemen, some of them on horseback, were trying to disperse the crowd at Wadi Joz, where some two hundred Arabs were throwing rocks at security forces. Stun grenades, tear gas and other measures were being used against the rioters. Twenty five Palestinians have been arrested so far on suspicion of stone-throwing and disruptions. In addition,...

Obama’s Israel Crisis  by P. David Hornik   Israel Apartheid Week hadn’t yet run its course when Israel came in for a barrage of hostile characterizations also from the Obama administration. In the same brief time span there was also Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—“The Zionist regime is the most hated regime in the world…. with Allah’s help, this regime will be annihilated.” All this came hard on the heels of a wave of international outrage, and violent attacks by Palestinians, over Israel adding shrines in Hebron and Bethlehem to a list of national heritage sites.If it seems like a lot...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration's fierce denunciation of Israel last week has ignited a firestorm in Congress and among powerful pro-Israel interest groups who say the criticism of America's top Mideast ally was misplaced. Since the controversy erupted, a bipartisan parade of influential lawmakers and interest groups has taken aim at the administration's decision to publicly condemn Israel for its announcement of new Jewish housing in east Jerusalem while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting on Tuesday and then openly vent bitter frustration on Friday. With diplomats from both countries referring to the situation as a crisis, the outpouring...

The Obama administration's calculated decision to escalate its open attacks against Israel over a routine decision by the Jerusalem Planning and Building Board to approve 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo neighborhood presents Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with an unenviable task. He has to either relinquish Israel's sovereignty over its capital by capitulating in the face of the unprecedented American assault, or he can tell Obama and Clinton and their cohorts to go to hell. It is depressing, and let's face it, a bit scary that the US, which has refused to raise a finger against Iran's nuclear program or...

Senate Republicans pressed Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday afternoon over political appointees who'd previously defended suspects in terrorism cases. All seven members of the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote Holder, asking for more details about political appointees within the Department of Justice, who, Republicans say, may have conflicts of interest in the government's prosecution in terrorism cases. The GOP senators wrote Holder to complain that a response to an original request for information on those Justice Department personnel was "at best nonresponsive and, at worst, intentionally evasive." "It appears the Department has chosen to go another direction and refuse to...

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is rightly unhappy that the Justice Department won't divulge the names of the nine Justice Department lawyers who directly represented suspected-terrorist detainees, or their cases. Grassley identified two himself, Neal Katyal (an aside: Katyal is a very impressive guy and very charming and level-headed) and Jennifer Daskal. Well, we've identified two more of them: Deputy AG counsel Eric Columbus and Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Jonathan Cedarbaum. (With reference to: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/25/identifying-the-gitmo-nine/)

The Obama administration bluntly urged the Congress Thursday to steer clear of directing where terrorism suspects should be prosecuted, pushing back against efforts to require military rather than civilian trials. A bipartisan group of senators has offered legislation aimed at forcing the administration to prosecute terrorism suspects, like the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in special military commission trials instead of traditional criminal courts. Attorney General Eric Holder ordered Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators to be tried in a criminal court in Manhattan. But concerns by some lawmakers about security costs and granting full...

A radical Muslim group that was an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme to raise money for Hamas has an extensive relationship with the Obama administration, WND has learned. Last week, President Obama's top adviser on counter-terrorism, John Brennan, came under fire for controversial remarks he made in a speech to Muslim law students at New York University. The event was sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA. ISNA is known for its enforcement of Saudi-style Islam in mosques throughout the U.S. It was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in its case against the...

President Obama's new Muslim envoy Rashad Hussain admitted Friday to once defending a man who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid a terrorist group -- an admission that contradicts earlier claims from the White House that the quotes had been mistakenly attributed to Hussain.

The President has steadfastly refused to criticize the Iranian regime over its human rights violations and its brutal crackdown on anti-government protesters. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the Obama administration actually tried to prevent the Broadcasting Board of Governors from protesting Iran's censorship policies: The Iranian government's blanket censorship of satellite and Internet communications last week was so effective, it led many to wonder: Why didn't the U.S. government do more to stop it? Despite strong statements from Foggy Bottom, the White House appears to be treading carefully. Three sources tell The Cable that the National Security...

Obama counter-terror chief John Brennan is drawing criticism for comments he made Saturday about the recidivism rate of detainees released from Guantanamo Bay. During a Q&A following remarks Brennan delivered at the Islamic Center of New York University, Brennan defended the administration's estimate that one in five foreign nationals released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay since its opening return to terrorist activities. "People sometimes use that figure, 20 percent, say 'Oh my goodness, one out of five detainees returned to some type of extremist activity,'" Brennan said. "You know, the American penal system, the recidivism rate is up to...

As he professes to want to reduce the dangerous budget deficit, Obama brings to mind the hapless engineers at Toyota who find that their vehicles accelerate whether or not the driver wants them to. It appears that no matter how hard Obama jams on the brakes with his new-found commitment to deficit reduction -- having already almost doubled the deficit in one year -- the level of red ink just seems inexorably to rise. Obviously, more fundamental change in the budget's engineering is needed. But, unfortunately, it is easier to recall a car than a president. Obama's announced intention to...

If President Obama has his way, Attorney General Eric Holder will soon be joined at the Justice Department by another terrorist rights advocate, Dawn Johnsen. Obama has nominated her to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Given her opposition to enhanced interrogation of terrorist suspects, she provides yet another example that the Obama administration still views Islamic terrorists as criminal defendants entitled to full constituional protections in civil trials, not as unlawful enemy combatants. As if we needed any more evidence! The New York Times, unsurprisingly, is upset about what its editorial today called ”an unreasonable delay” in...

Holder: I Made Decision To Charge Botched Bomber WASHINGTON (CBS) ― Attorney General Eric Holder said that he made the decision to charge the Christmas Day terror suspect in the U.S. civilian system. The Obama administration has come under recent attack by Republicans that the Nigerian man who attempted to blow up a Northwest airliner on U.S. soil on Christmas Day should have been tried as a terrorist instead of having the same rights as a U.S. citizen in court. Republicans have said the move to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court gives him the right to withhold information,...