Free Republic

Hollywood A-lister Richard Gere, who portrayed King David in the eponymously titled 1985 film and is perhaps best remembered for his lead roles in An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, is set to land in Israel later on Tuesday. But while the actor’s past visits to the Jewish state received warm welcomes, Gere, whose expertise and qualifications justifying his telling Israel what to do consist of his being a movie actor, may be greeted by a far chillier reception, following political comments made on the eve of his trip. Gere’s visit, planned ostensibly for the premiere...

Wiith three days left in his presidency, Barack Obama made his final appointments to administration positions, including adding 10 members to the Holocaust Memorial Council. Most notable on that list is Ben Rhodes, a long-time Obama aide and speechwriter who managed the White House messaging on selling the Iran deal and explaining the US decision to abstain on a United Nations Security Council resolution last month that condemned Israeli settlements as illegal. Rhodes, whose official title is deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, was a source of controversy after a New York Times Magazine profile portrayed him as bragging...

President Donald Trump said he would support the peace agreement Israel and Palestinians "like the best" in a joint press conference during which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu railed against Palestinian efforts to reach a deal. "I'm looking at two state and one state. And I like the one that both parties like," Trump said when asked about a peace agreement. Trump's meeting with Netanyahu on Wednesday was an initial test of Trump's campaign pledge to go further than President Obama in strengthening the relationship with Israel. By the end of Obama's tenure in office, his relationship with Netanyahu was...

e warned Israel on Thursday - in a surprising statement - to cease settlement announcements that are "unilateral" and "undermining" of President Donald Trump's effort to forge Middle East peace, a senior administration official told The Jerusalem Post. For the first time, the administration confirmed that Trump is committed to a comprehensive two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict negotiated between the parties. The official told the Post that the White House was not consulted on Israel's unprecedented announcement of 5,500 new settlement housing units over the course of his first two weeks in office. "As President Trump has made...

A trade school in Canada which banned Israeli applicants due to Israel’s alleged “illegal settlement activity” rescinded the ban on Tuesday following an intervention by B’nai Brith Canada and members of the Canadian Jewish community. Stav Daron, an Israeli engineering student and amateur carpenter, had hoped to take a course at the Island School of Building Arts (ISBA), located on Gabriola Island in the province of British Columbia. However, when he tried to confirm his registration in January, he was told via email that, “Due to the conflict and illegal settlement activity in the region, we are not accepting applications...

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Secretary-General Saeb Erekat on Wednesday said he was “shocked” by the White House’s silence on Israel’s construction in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, and called on President Donald Trump’s administration to clarify its policy. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman announced the approval of 2,500 housing units in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, in order to accommodate the housing needs of the residents and to return their daily routine to normal. The announcement followed the approval earlier this week of 566 new housing units in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Ramat...

Israel said Tuesday it approved 2,500 new settler homes in the West Bank, signaling a major ramp-up of construction just days after the swearing-in of U.S. President Donald Trump, whose election has emboldened the settlement movement. Trump is widely expected to be more sympathetic to Israel’s settlement policies than the fiercely critical Obama administration, and has also vowed to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to contested Jerusalem. Israel’s nationalist government has welcomed the prospective change in policy, but it also risks igniting Palestinian or even regional unrest. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement that he and...

President Barack Obama will not allow any further United Nations measures critical of Israel to pass during the remainder of his term, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes promised on Wednesday. When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if secretary of state John Kerry had indicated in his speech earlier Wednesday that the US would veto any other potential UN resolution that may come forward during the rest of Obama’s presidency, Rhodes said “yes.” Since the anti-settlements resolution passed in the Security Council last Friday, Israel has expressed concern that another measure may come up before the international body for a...

… A spokesman for the British Prime Minister issued a statement criticizing Kerry’s focus on the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem. “We do not… believe that the way to negotiate peace is by focusing on only one issue, in this case the construction of settlements, when clearly the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is so deeply complex.” The spokesman also criticized Kerry’s description of the current government in Israel as “the most right-wing government” in Israeli history. “And we do not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically-elected government of an...

On Dec. 21, amid his morning workout, an afternoon round of golf and a family dinner with friends, President Obama interrupted his Hawaii vacation to consult by phone with his top national security team in Washington. Egypt had introduced a resolution at the U.N. Security Council condemning Israeli settlements as illegal, and a vote was scheduled for the next day. The idea had been circulating at the council for months, but the abrupt timing was a surprise. Obama was open to abstaining, he said on the call, provided the measure was “balanced” in its censure of terrorism and Palestinian violence...

On the same day as the U.N. Security Council passed a controversial resolution condemning Israel, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on Friday approved a budget that includes $138,700 to fund the compilation of a first-ever U.N. blacklist of private companies doing business in territories disputed between Israel and the Palestinians. Defined in U.N. documents as a “database,” the blacklist will cover companies of any nationality that do business in Israeli “settlements” located in areas claimed by the Palestinians, including Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter. The move, which was mandated by the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) last March, is expected to benefit...

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., made the comments Monday in an interview with MSNBC when asked to react to accusations that the Israeli government has proof that the Obama administration helped influence the U.N. Security Council's vote to condemn Israeli settlements. . . . Israel is now "running their own war against us and our policies" because they are angry that Obama has pushed back against telling them to stop with settlements, McDermott said.

Netanyahu: "Israel has national pride. We do not turn the other cheek" NEW YORK - With President Barack Obama's direction, last Friday the United States departed from its long-held position of vetoing a United Nations resolution that condemned Israel's settlements. The action outraged lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Prime Minister Netanyahu strongly condemned the United Nations resolution and expressed disappointment that the United States abandoned its previous support. Monday he said "Israel has national pride. We do not turn the other cheek." He suggested over the weekend that Israel may consider pulling out of the U.N. U.S. Senator...

The Swedish government has welcomed Friday’s UN resolution calling for Israel to end illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, with Foreign Minister Margot Wallström calling the decision “very positive”. […] In a statement, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the resolution “shameful”. Sweden is scheduled to join the security council for two years starting in January 2017, and will chair the council during that month. …

The United States could have killed a key United Nations resolution that condemned Israel for its West Bank settlements by voting against it rather than abstaining, former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Friday night, but he thinks President Barack Obama took the action to "box the incoming Trump administration in." "This was a stab in the back against the Israelis," Bolton told Fox News' "Hannity" show Friday night. "It was entirely predictable. I would say this for people in the pro-Israel community in the United States who defended Obama's Middle East policy over these last eight years: You should have...

Hannity, Fox News, December 23 2016

A "shameful" abstention by the U.S. in a United Nations Security Council vote Friday allowed passage of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. The resolution was put forward by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal after Egypt withdrew it Thursday under pressure from Israel and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. It was adopted with 14 votes in favor, to a round of applause, after U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power abstained. It is the first resolution the Security Council has adopted on Israel and the Palestinians in nearly eight years. Reaction from U.S. Republicans and Jewish leaders around...

President-elect Donald Trump Friday slammed the United Nations Security Council's vote to condemn Israel for its settlements in the West Bank, pledging that "things will be different" after his inauguration next month. . . . Trump's tweet marked an unprecedented intervention by a president-elect in the diplomatic affairs of a sitting commander-in-chief — sparking widespread accusations that he was trying to undermine Obama's position.

An Israeli official is accusing President Barack Obama of a “shameful move against Israel at the U.N.” after learning the White House did not intend to veto a Security Council resolution condemning settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The official said the “U.S. Administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti-Israeli resolution behind Israel's back.” …

Egyptian officials scrapped a plan to proceed with a United Nations Security Council vote condemning the construction of Israeli settlements, following pushback from Israeli officials and President-elect Trump. "Egypt requested the vote's delay to permit them to conduct an additional meeting of the Arab League's foreign ministers to work on the resolution's wording," Haaretz reported, citing Western diplomats. But the vote might be postponed "indefinitely," according to the report. Israeli settlement construction drew condemnation from the State Department earlier this year, in addition to the rebukes of mo