Jewish groups have reacted furiously to a
letter to Congress by 15 leaders of Christian denominations asking for a review of whether some of the three billion dollars in annual United States aid to Israel is being used in violation of U.S. law and policies.
The Democratic National Convention erupted in controversy this week over the removal of a clause in the party platform stating that Jerusalem should remain Israel’s undivided capital and only grew worse when the wording was hastily re-inserted.
The ambitions of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran, as harboured by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, have been defeated by internal opposition, a growing number of observers have come to believe in the wake of dramatic opposing statements by prominent Israeli leaders, including President Shimon Peres.
Tensions rose Thursday between the Barack Obama administration and the Israeli government when a leading Israeli official claimed to have knowledge of U.S. intelligence that portrays Iran as a more immediate threat than Washington has been saying.
A resolution at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) to divest from three corporations which provide equipment used to maintain Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands failed by a mere two votes on Thursday.
At the third annual conference of J Street, the "pro-Israel, pro-peace" lobby group that is widely seen as a counterweight to the more right-wing American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israel-Palestine conflict took the focus back from the ongoing tension with Iran.
More than 10,000 U.S. citizens descended on Capitol Hill Tuesday under the direction of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading voice of the powerful Israel lobby here, to urge their congressional representatives to take a more aggressive stance towards Iran.
U.S. President Barack Obama Sunday made a clear statement against a rush to war - either by the U.S. or Israel - with Iran, while also emphasising that he would pursue that option if alternatives were unsuccessful in ensuring that Iran would not develop a nuclear weapon.
U.S. President Barack Obama Sunday made a clear statement against a rush to war - either by the U.S. or Israel - with Iran, while also emphasising that he would pursue that option if alternatives were unsuccessful in ensuring that Iran would not develop a nuclear weapon.
In his first public address since departing from the White House, Dennis Ross, former top Middle East aide to U.S. President Barack Obama, called for increased sanctions on Iran, a careful approach to new Arab regimes and a low-key approach to Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
A clear majority of Israeli Jews would support a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, even if it meant that Israel too would have to give up its stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Veteran U.S. diplomats and scholars who have worked for decades on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have grown increasingly pessimistic about the continued viability of the U.S.- sponsored "peace process" and the two-state solution that was presumed to be its goal.
With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to descend on Washington in less than two weeks, President Barack Obama faces some difficult decisions about how to restore the credibility of his promise to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without triggering a backlash in a Congress that is solidly pro-Israel.