Pals.

None of that “frosty relationship” stuff for these guys this afternoon, at least not to the public eye; at their joint press conference kicking off President Obama’s three-day visit, he and Prime Minister Netanyahu were all kinds of friendly while Obama sought to reaffirm the United States’ unwavering support. Via NRO: On a more serious [...]

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Box checked.

As Joe Biden wings his way to Rome to celebrate the installation mass of new Roman Catholic pontiff Pope Francis at the Vatican, his boss will make a pilgrimage — of sorts — to Jerusalem. Despite his high-profile visit to Israel in 2007 as a candidate with little foreign-policy experience, Barack Obama never bothered to [...]

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Just in time?

Talk about timing.  With the first-ever visit to Israel by Barack Obama coming in just days, the Israelis have finally formed a government behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud Party didn’t win enough Knesset seats to easily create a coalition.  Now, with three parties backing him, Netanyahu can look forward to dealing with his [...]

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Election season.

Israelis are set to hit the polls for parliamentary elections on January 22nd, in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking a third term in office, and his prospects for reelection are looking fairly solid. His campaign is touting the rise of a nuclear Iran as priority numero uno, even over conflicts with the Palestinians, [...]

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Hmmm.

First, the US delegation decides to stick around for one of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speeches at the UN, and then the highest-ranking US diplomat at Turtle Bay takes a powder when Israel’s Prime Minister gets up to speak.  Instead, UN Ambassador Susan Rice chose to attend a luncheon in which she wasn’t even the highest-ranking American [...]

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Real talk.

Speaking in front of the United Nations in New York on Thursday afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister eschewed a lot of the normal platitudinous dithering that goes on in that august body and instead struck a more “peace through strength”-tone in laying out the Iranian nuclear situation. He got quite specific in defining the dangers that [...]

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Red lines.

Obama tried to influence Israeli voters by snubbing Netanyahu’s request for a meeting later this month, so here comes Bibi to return the favor. He’ll make his case on Iran directly to an American audience this morning on “Meet the Press.” I wonder if that’s been planned for weeks or if it was something hastily [...]

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Oh my.

First came the shouting match between Netanyahu and the U.S. ambassador. Then Martin Dempsey told an audience in London that he didn’t want to be “complicit” in an Israeli attack on Iran. The upcoming joint military exercise between the U.S. and Israel was then scaled back, and this murky report about the U.S. contacting Iran [...]

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Distance.

Rep. Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, says that his much-discussed meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem late last month did, in fact, devolve into an sharp confrontation between Netanyahu and the American ambassador to Israel, the former National Security Council official (and former Obama campaign Jewish [...]

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Friends.

Via the Washington Free Beacon and Jeff Dunetz, who zeroes in on four key phrases that didn’t make the cut this time. Compare for yourself, though: The Israel section starts on page 38 of the 2008 platform and page 63 of the 2012 platform. Key bit from the ’08 document: It is in the best [...]

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Trust.

U.S. intelligence analysts watching for indicators of Israeli military action recently reported that there are signs the Jewish state plans an attack against Iran in October. The Obama administration, meanwhile, is preparing to provide logistical support for a military strike but is pressing Israel to delay any action until the administration’s policy of sanctions have [...]

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Strength.

A top Mitt Romney foreign policy aide on Sunday said the GOP presidential candidate would back an Israeli military strike on Iran to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing that capability, the governor would respect that decision,” said Romney [...]

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Oof.

Yikes — this kind of puts a highly visible dent in Team Obama’s recently assertive arguments that Obama has been a perfect ally to Israel and that his and Mitt Romney’s policies and attitudes toward Israel are all but identical. As Jennifer Rubin writes, the Obama administration has one version of things: The worst-kept secret [...]

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Scholarship.

Via the Standard. He missed the day at school when they explained who ran the “Polish death camps,” but other than that, he’s rock solid. Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Obama and White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew met about 20 Conservative Jewish community leaders, thanking them for the work they do to improve communities around [...]

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Intrigue.

I know that Netanyahu frequently meets with visiting American pols, but most visiting American pols aren’t exceptionally strong contenders to land on the GOP ticket. Which raises the question: What’s more significant here, that Portman sought this meeting or that Bibi granted it knowing Portman’s status? Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, will meet with Israeli Prime [...]

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Ambiguity.

“In a high-stakes meeting at the White House, Obama stressed that there’s ‘still a window that allows for a diplomatic resolution’ to the Iranian nuclear threat and that the United States, together with other nations, would continue to ‘tighten pressure’ on the regime through stiffer sanctions in the coming months. “Even before their two-hour meeting [...]

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Needed.

Yes, the administration has an open mic problem — but it’s still really not surprising that President Barack Obama would disparage Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to French President Nicholas Sarkozy. He hasn’t exactly shown himself eager to do whatever possible to demonstrate his commitment to the U.S.’ continued friendship with Israel. The president’s gaffe [...]

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No surprise.

After President Barack Obama revealed the suspect status of his support for Israel — and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wowed crowds with a sternly-worded address to a special joint session of Congress — some speculated Jewish American support for Obama would wane. But a new Gallup poll out yesterday shows a large majority still [...]

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Shaming with kindness.

Both Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu made their cases to the American public and to Washington this week, and without doubt, the winner is the Israeli Prime Minister.  Not only did Congress respond so enthusiastically to Netanyahu’s speech that they interrupted him more often for standing ovations than they did for Obama in his last [...]

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Peace.

In case you missed the speech this morning, the Right Scoop has complete video and Netanyahu’s Facebook page has a transcript. I’m stealing the headline from Philip Klein, but only because his metaphor is so apt: Given the crowd’s enthusiasm, all that was missing here were glow sticks. David Frum makes a smart point. This [...]

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Negotiate much?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an international issue clarified in as little time as the 26 hours or so it took to get from “1967 lines” to “No way.”  And we have President Obama to thank for it. In all the discussion of how he was schooled and taken to the woodshed by Prime [...]

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"History will not give the Jewish people another chance."

I can’t believe we have to wait another five days for the inevitable O’Reilly “body language segment” on this tete-a-tete. Good lord. The One looked like he was trying to pass a kidney stone at one point. Worst photo op evah. Normally these Oval Office grip-and-grins begin with a few minutes of blah-blah from the [...]

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Surprise!

Was there a surprise in the speech? Bibi certainly seems to think so, but 1967 borders have been endorsed by prominent U.S. officials before — sort of: “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps,” the U.S. president said, referring to what are official known as [...]

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Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

As you may recall, a couple of months ago Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic was invited by the Cuban Communist regime to interview Fidel Castro. Surprisingly – as Goldberg himself noted - Castro said that Iran should stop slandering the Jews. The timing of the article coincided with the Jewish holidays, and also came at [...]

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