The Times of Israel is leading Sunday evening with a profile of Amos Yadlin, the Israeli left’s choice for defense minister if the Zionist Union wins Tuesday’s election and is able to form a coalition government. Though Yadlin was a pilot during the mission to destroy Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, and allegedly helped destroy Syria’s reactor in 2007, he suffers under some of the left’s more destructive policy delusions.
I have been warning for months that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might lose the March 17 election. In November 2014, before elections were called, I noted that Netanyahu had been elected on a promise to oppose Barack Obama, and now that Obama’s lame-duck term had begun, Israeli voters might feel secure enough to look elsewhere for leadership. What they–and indeed many Americans–failed to see was how much damage Obama still intended to cause.
Israelis head to the polls on Tuesday, Mar. 17 to elect a new parliament, a new Knesset. There are a total of 120 seats up for grabs, which will be divided proportionally among all parties that manage to pass the minimum threshold of 3.25%. The resulting government will be formed after the ceremonial President of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, chooses a candidate for prime minister to assemble a coalition (61 seats or more). Here are five other important facts to know about Israel’s election.
So the mainstream media have returned to Ferguson, Missouri to document the violence they helped foment. No one said “hands up, don’t shoot” when Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown in self-defense last summer. But two police officers have now been shot in cold blood and nearly killed at a “peaceful” demonstration incited by President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and serial race arsonist Al Sharpton. It is a familiar pattern–not just in America but the Middle East.
Attorneys from the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), representing a whistleblower against Planned Parenthood in California, have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to allow their lawsuit against the organization to go ahead. The suit, in which former chief financial officer of the Los Angeles Planned Parenthood Victor Gonzalez claims that the organization defrauded the federal government of over $200 million by overcharging for medical services, has struggled to survive.
When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and 46 other Republican Senators wrote their controversial letter to the leaders of Iran, informing them that a deal with President Barack Obama would have no lasting force unless it was ratified by the Senate under the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, Breitbart News predicted that the gesture would set up “checkmate,” forcing Obama to admit that he had no intention of consulting Congress, and solidifying congressional opposition to the deal.
Two police officers in Ferguson, MO were shot Wednesday evening at a protest against alleged racism in the department and the city itself. It was not enough that the chief of police had just resigned. It was not enough that a local judge had quit. It was not enough that the Department of Justice had exonerated former officer Darren Wilson. No–the mob, told by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder that Ferguson was still guilty of racism, wanted “justice.”
The last pre-election polls in Israel show that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains the overwhelming favorite to lead the country, but show his party slipping to second place, losing ground to its center-left, Obama-backed rival. Bibi’s Likud Party will gain seats, but the rival Zionist Union–an alliance between Isaac Herzog’s Labor Party and Tzipi Livni’s Hatnua Party–could also gain enough to win the Mar. 17 election. Netanyahu says there is a “real danger” he could lose.
Democrats and the mainstream media have used the words “traitor” and “treason” to describe a letter to Iranian leaders, drafted by freshman Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and signed by 47 Republican Senators, that warns any nuclear deal President Barack Obama signs may be voided by a future administration or Congress if it is not ratified by the Senate. Since they have brought the “t-words” into the debate, it is worth examining the case against Obama himself, which is far more damning.
Democrats are pushing back against the letter, circulated by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and signed by 47 Senators in all, that warns the Iranian regime that any deal it signs with President Barack Obama could be voided by the next president if it is not ratified by the Senate under the U.S. Constitution. They have enlisted Vice President Joe Biden and even retired Sen. Richard Lugar to disparage the effort. In so doing, they have proved Cotton’s point–and checkmated the administration.
J Street, a left-wing organization that was founded by liberal Jews to counter traditional pro-Israel advocacy in Congress, has crossed the line into hate group status with its invitation to Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat to address its conference later this month.
Forty-seven U.S. Senators have released an open letter to the Iranian government warning that any nuclear deal signed by President Barack Obama could be revoked by a subsequent U.S. president unless it is ratified by the Senate. The letter, while addressed to the “Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” is really a warning to Obama not to bypass Congress.
On Sunday morning’s edition of Meet the Press, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called on Hillary Clinton to “come out” with the truth about her emails after it emerged last week that she had used a private email address for all of her correspondence as Secretary of State, against department policy.
The Clintons’ exploitative ties to Haiti apparently continue. Haitians get the rubble–and Rodham, evidently, gets the gold.
A new bipartisan bill to end vaccine exemptions for personal belief has found a powerful opponent: the chiropractors’ lobby.
Gallipoli was a failure that haunted Churchill as much as supporting the Iraq War haunts many politicians today. Yet he was right about Hitler when others hid from the truth. Churchill, like Netanyahu and unlike Barack Obama, worried more about victory than pride.
Conservatives, long used to the media protecting the Clintons at all costs, are puzzled by the fact that journalists seem to be pouncing on the latest scandal involving Hillary Clinton’s offsite email server. As Clinton scandals go, this hardly seems the worst. It seems that federal laws may have been broken–but they may not have been. (The Wall Street Journal concluded, bizarrely, that the private email system “was legal while she served as the nation’s top diplomat.”) Why the sudden interest?
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, sat down with NBC News this week for an exclusive interview. NBC’s headline for the interview is: “Iran Foreign Minister: We Believe We Are ‘Very Close’ to Nuke Deal.” But the Times of Israel noted a buried lede–“Zarif: The Netanyahu regime ‘should be annihilated’.” While the American editors focused on boosting prospects for President Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic initiative, their Israeli counterparts focused on the threat that remains.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned home Wednesday to positive reviews of his speech in Congress the day before. If it had been his intention to use the event to boost his campaign, however, he made little impact, enjoying a modest bump in the polls, at best. In one poll, the speech received rave reviews, with 44% of respondents saying it boosted their opinion of him, versus 12% who said it hurt their image of him. However, his Likud party was still in second place.
It does not matter whether they attended the speech, boycotted the speech, or read the transcript of the speech. Democrats, surprised by how convincing Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday turned out to be, have simply decided to lie about it. Netanyahu said “we should give up on any diplomatic path,” according to Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA). He failed to provide “viable alternatives,” according to President Barack Obama. None of that is true, as the transcript shows.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday was so successful that many of his critics conceded that he had defied their expectations. Some, however, took issue with the fact that he invoked
Following his stirring address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will return home, having made his point about the dangers of the Iran deal currently on the table. The question is: what next for Congress? President Barack Obama has vowed to veto any new sanctions–and may have sown enough division in his party to prevent an override. Yet there is another bill in the works that, after Tuesday, Obama may find he cannot refuse.
How successful was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday? Judging from the changed reactions of his media critics, almost all of whom praised the speech, it was a complete triumph.
Speaker of the House John Boehner will present Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a bust of Winston Churchill when he arrives to address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, according to the Speaker’s office.
Israeli Prime Minister addresses Congress on Tuesday, March 3. His topic, as per Speaker of the House John Boehner, is to explain “the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life.”
While nearly 1 in 4 congressional Democrats had announced their intention to boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, one California Democrat said that he was “honored” to have been chosen to be among the legislators who escort Netanyahu into the House chamber.
President Barack Obama took a stab at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with Reuters on Monday, on the eve of Netanyahu’s controversial speech to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday morning. Obama said that Netanyahu “made all sorts of claims” about the interim nuclear deal with Iran that turned out to be untrue. Yet Obama mischaracterized Netanyahu’s remarks, and misrepresented Iranian compliance with the terms of the interim deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address Monday morning to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) seemed a curious addition to his visit, a kind of undercard bout before the main event. It turned out to be one of his best speeches ever, the perfect setup for his address to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday. The 34 Democrats who are boycotting the address are likely feeling that they made the wrong decisions. Here are 5 reasons why.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previewed his speech in Congress on Tuesday when he addressed the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Monday. “Reports of the demise of the Israeli-U.S. relations [are] not only premature–they’re just wrong. You’re here to tell the world that our alliance is stronger than ever,” he said, to applause. “Never has so much been written about a speech that hasn’t been given,” he joked.
UN Ambassador Samantha Power told the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Monday that the spat over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday would not affect relations between the two countries. The relationship, she says, “transcends politics, and always will.” She said that the partnership between the U.S. and Israel “should never be politicized,” even if there were debates about the best policy to deal with common threats.
The battle over pony rides at the Santa Monica Farmers Market is a classic study in how a tiny minority of activists can seize control of a city to destroy a business–and how a business owner, and the public, can fight back. The saga began last year, with a campaign by a radical animal rights activist to remove Tawni Angel’s pony rides and petting zoo from the market. In September 2014, the City Council voted in the dead of night to advise that the pony contract be dropped.
In most democracies, and especially small ones, politics ends at the water’s edge. Whatever criticism the opposition might have about the government, especially the leader, it refrains from doing so purely for the benefit of a foreign audience. Not so for the Israeli opposition, headed by Isaac Herzog of the Zionist Union, who has not only bashed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States as a purely political move, but has done so in a New York Times op-ed.
I’m fasting Monday and praying for Benjamin Netanyahu’s success in his speech to Congress on Tuesday. I don’t care for the pettiness of his American Jewish critics, who typify the establishment that remained silent during the Holocaust; nor the hysterics of his Israeli opponents, who prove by their behavior they are unfit to lead. I am hoping sense will prevail. I trust God and not the mainstream media, here and abroad, who have declared Netanyahu’s speech a disaster in advance.
The “progressive” movement sustains itself on the idea that it is standing up against abuses of power by the wealthy and well-connected, that it defends the rights of the most vulnerable, that it stops special interests from taking over the state. And yet the “progressive” administration of Barack Obama has done all that, and more. It has not just committed ordinary hypocrisy, selling out its principles or breaking its promises: worse, it has often fulfilled them, blind to the consequences.
There is a simple question that every critic of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday must answer: should he rather wait, as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did, and address Congress after suffering a crushing defeat? Or should Netanyahu hasten to warn America before disaster strikes, before a deal is done with Iran that cannot be undone?
Nobel laureate, Holocause survivor, Jewish leader and world literary figure Elie Wiesel will participate in a bipartisan dialogue on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech to a joint session of Congress.
And Esther said to Hathach, and she ordered him to [tell] Mordechai: “All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that any man or woman who comes to the king, into the inner court, who is not summoned, there is but one law for him, to be put to death, except the one to whom the king extends the golden scepter, that he may live, but I have not been summoned to come to the king these thirty days. And they told Esther’s words to Mordechai. And Mordechai ordered to reply to Esther, “Do not imagine to yourself that you will escape in the king’s house from among all the Jews.” (Esther 4:10-13)
President Barack Obama is sending National Security Advisor Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power–widely seen as among the most anti-Israel members of his administration–to address a prominent pro-Israel gathering next week. The move is described by the Associated Press as an effort to mend fences after the administration had withheld speakers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference. In reality, it is a further slap in the face.
President Barack Obama has done little to stop the terrorist militias of the so-called Islamic State from abducting and murdering Christians in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. As a junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, however, Obama was outspoken on the fate of minorities in Iraq. Obama wrote two letters to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, demanding to know what the Bush administration was doing to secure Assyrian Christians and other minorities in Iraq.
Many of the Democrats denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech next week to a special joint session of Congress as an intrusion into U.S. domestic politics leapt to their feet in 2010 when then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon, in a similar
