Remembering Margaret Thatcher
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pauses to honor Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s Iron Lady, and fierce friend of Israel … “A woman of principle, of determination, of conviction, of strength, a woman of greatness.”
Comments (5) »Tuesday, April 9th, 2013 at 12:30 PM | Stand For Israel
Obama in Jerusalem
President Obama and Israeli PM Netanyahu at the Israel Museum with director James Snyder (Photo: ASHERNET)
Elliott Abrams, writing at The Weekly Standard, examines the speech delivered yesterday by President Obama – arguably the most significant address of his ongoing visit to Israel. In addition to the President saying, in Hebrew, atem lo lavad (“you are not alone”), the President made some of his strongest statements yet on Iran and the peace process:
Comments (30) »His remarks moved his administration toward the pre-Obama consensus views of the Clinton and Bush administrations, indeed at several points echoing Bush’s 2008 speech to the Knesset. But he presented a view of the chances for peace with the Palestinians that was far rosier than reality permits—or than he may really believe.
Friday, March 22nd, 2013 at 3:23 PM | Stand For Israel
When Barack Meets Bibi
David Makovsky, writing at the blog of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, lays out the challenges and priorities facing Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Obama as they prepare for the President’s upcoming visit to Israel including fixing their broken personal relationship, bridging their policy differences on Iran, and working together on missile defense.
Comments (26) »Some of Obama’s critics say he is traveling to the Jewish State for the first time in his presidency simply to check a box that has remained empty since he last visited as a candidate in 2008. Obama passed Israel by in the White House, even after he made a landmark speech in Cairo calling for a new relationship with the Muslim world months after the start of his first term. But there is nothing perfunctory about the trip or its goals — which involve the very stability of the world’s most volatile region and the very future of America’s best friend in that part of the world.
Tuesday, March 19th, 2013 at 2:41 PM | Stand For Israel
Netanyahu’s Message to AIPAC
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the AIPAC 2013 Policy Conference via satellite. Although he couldn’t be attended the conference in person, his message, especially regarding Iran, was received loud and clear:
Comments (4) »Iran is running out the clock. It has used negotiations to buy time to press ahead with its nuclear program … We cannot allow Iran to cross the red line. We have to stop its nuclear enrichment program before it’s too late … Sanctions alone will not stop Iran. Sanctions must be coupled with a clear and credible military threat if diplomacy and sanctions fail.
Thursday, March 7th, 2013 at 9:21 AM | Stand For Israel
Israel’s Elections: What Just Happened?
Photo: Ashernet
David Horovitz, Editor of The Times of Israel, lists 10 takeaways from this week’s Israeli elections. In short, Israelis voted for changes in domestic policies by moving from right to center. They voted for, essentially, the same security policies and to reelect Prime Minister Netanyahu – despite the fact that he’s not very personally popular.
Comments (49) »Trust the Israeli electorate to produce a surprising and acutely complicated electoral result, at the end of an exemplary, empowering exercise in democracy. Here are some quickfire pointers through the initial post-vote fog.
Friday, January 25th, 2013 at 9:18 AM | Stand For Israel
Why Netanyahu Failed and Lapid Surprised
Photo: Wikipedia/ Lapid
Veteran analyst Aluf Benn of the Israeli daily, Haaretz, breaks down the two biggest headlines from yesterday’s Israeli elections: the disappointing showing by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud-Beiteinu party and the surprising success of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. Benn says that Netanyahu, with no serious challenger, was disengaged from the election while Lapid picked up disaffected Labor and Kadima voters.
Comments (20) »The reasons for the early election – the crisis over drafting the ultra-Orthodox into the army and the difficulty in passing the 2013 budget – came through in the voting results. The public enthusiastically supported the candidates who promised “an equal division of the burden,” namely, Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid and Habayit Hayehudi’s Naftali Bennett. Labor, headed by Shelly Yacimovich, did not do as well as expected, mainly because she ran a poor campaign and flip-flopped over whether she would agree to join a Likud-led government.
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013 at 9:33 AM | Stand For Israel
Netanyahu’s Only Real Opponent
Jonathan Tobin, writing at Commentary, says that Prime Minister Netanyahu has only one real opponent – Israeli President Shimon Peres, who isn’t even on the ballot. Tobin rightly points out that, while Peres is a giant of Israeli history, the last few decades have shown him to be wrong a lot more often than he is right.
But as much as he deserves as much credit as any person for Israel’s survival and growth, he seems to be one of the few Israelis who haven’t noticed that his Oslo brainchild and the “New Middle East” fantasy that he promoted in the early 1990s at the height of peace process euphoria was a tragic flop that led to much loss of life.
Photos: Reuters, FIDF
Friday, January 11th, 2013 at 9:41 AM | Stand For Israel
Netanyahu Won’t Get Credit for the Freeze
Photo: Amos Ben Gershom, GPO
Jonathan Tobin, writing at Commentary, spreads around a good deal of criticism in this piece analyzing reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to a request from Sec. of State John Kerry that Israel suspend what the U.S. calls “settlement building” – but what is, in fact, building in Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
Comments (27) »