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Benjamin Netanyahu Tag

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began the fifth day of his six-day India tour with a 'power breakfast' with a select group of Indian business leaders and CEOs. Later he joined Prime Minister Nerendra Modi at the India-Israel Business Summit hosted at the iconic Taj Hotel, one the sites hit by the 2008 Mumbai terror attack. Later in the day, he accompanied 11-year-old Moshe Holtzberg at Mumbai's Nariman House and Chabad Center. Moshe's father Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and mother Rivka were killed by Islamic terrorists at the Nariman House in the 2008 terror attacks. During his July visit, Prime Minister Modi personally invited Moshe to visit India.

Despite the recent diplomatic rift over India's vote against Israel in the UN General Assembly, the visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi got off to a promising start with both country's singing nine bilateral agreements -- ranging from transfer of agriculture technology to strategic defense cooperation.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to arrive in New Delhi on Sunday on a week-long visit, making him the second Israeli head of the government to visit India since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's 2003 visit. He will be leading a large business delegation and sign a series of bilateral agreements ranging from agriculture to cyber security. The visiting Israeli leader will spend a day in Prime Minister Modi's home state of Gujarat. This is being regarded as a rare distinction. So far, Prime Minister Modi accompanied Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to his state, where he served as the Chief Minister between 2001 and 2014. Prime Minister Netanyahu is "going to get a grand welcome," Gujarat state's present Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said.

As I noted in Morning Insurrection last week, I will be spending 18 days touring Central Europe and the Balkans. During our stop in Budapest, Hungary, motorcades are rolling down our street continuously and Israeli flags are flying high. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in town, and he is now making news with a rather stark assessment about his country's relationship with the European Union.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a blistering attack against the European Union during a closed-session meeting Wednesday morning in the Hungarian capital of Budapest, telling the premiers of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia that the EU's behavior toward Israel is crazy.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Israel yesterday for a 3-day tour of the Jewish State, the first ever by an Indian Premier. Following his red carpet welcome at the Ben Gurion Airport, Modi engaged in some serious bilateral diplomacy with the Israeli government. Both countries signed a series of agreements in the fields of agriculture, water, and space exploration. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accompanied Modi to the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, located on the slopes of the Mount of Remembrance near Jerusale, where the Indian leader laid a wreath in the Hall of Remembrance in memory of over six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. Both leaders made an impromptu stop at the grave of Theodor Herzl, the founding father of modern Zionism. The visit has attracted enormous media and public interest in both the countries, with #ModiInIsrael became the leading hashtag on Twitter in both Israel and India.

President Donald Trump finished his trip to Israel by meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem and the Israel Museum. During his first day, Trump "pledged to work toward Israeli-Palestinain peace," but admitted it's the "toughest deal of all." However, he assured Netanyahu "that the U.S. wants Israel to have peace."

President Donald Trump has arrived in Israel, which he will visit for two days. In fact, his flight to Israel from Saudi Arabia is the first non-stop flight between the two countries that have no diplomatic ties. We will publish updates on Trump's visit, a truly historic one since Israel remains our most important ally in the Middle East. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and his wife Nechama and Prime Minister Netanyahu and his wife Sara greeted Trump and First Lady Melania Trump as the two descended from Air Force One.

Last week Gen. (ret.) Michael Herzog (brother of Israel's opposition leader Isaac Herzog) wrote a remarkable article (.pdf) in The American Interest. Herzog, who has been involved in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since 1993 didn't write his article to place blame (though he does) for the failure of the 2013-2014 talks overseen by then-Secretary of State John Kerry but "it is my sincere hope that this analysis will inform a meaningful policy debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." But if you Google Herzog's name for the past week, precisely one news organization covered the article: The Times of Israel. Some blogs such as The Tower and Yaacov Lozowick have written about it too. One would think that an insider's view of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians would draw a lot of attention, but it didn't. Presumably that is because Herzog didn't blame Bibi first.

The press conference is now over. Video below. Quick Takes: Much warmer relationship than the tense Obama-Bibi appearances, where they could hardly contain their disdain for each other. Substantively, Trump did exactly what any good mediator would do -- not try to impose a solution on the parties. His point was that whatever form a peace deal takes that is acceptable to the parties, it's acceptable to him.

Isreali Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the U.S. this week, and will meet President Trump. An important question is what is the status of the American popular opinion towards Israel. There is a misconception that American political support for Israel is a result of the "Israel Lobby" and "Israel Firsters." Those are terms frequently thrown around by regressive leftists and anti-Israel activists, a not too subtle play on the traditional antisemitic claim that Jews are disloyal to their home countries. Polling consistently shows, however, that Americans overwhelmingly support Israel, and that support has increased over the past decade, as we reported last year, Gallup: Americans still overwhelmingly support Israel. The "Israel Lobby" actually is the American people, and political support reflects popular opinion.

In a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, January 15, 2017, Secretary of State John Kerry assured the prime minister that there would be no further United Nations Security Council action taken against Israel in the wake the Paris peace conference. That conference brought 70+ nations together to discuss terms of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, without either party being present. United Nations Security Council resolution 2334, passed in late December 2016, when the United States abstained and failed to protect Israel from a resolution that stated that the Israeli presence in all lands captured in 1967, including parts of Jerusalem, constituted a flagrant violation of international law. The immediate effects of the resolution was to encourage boycotts of Israel and increase Palestinian violence, mostly rock throwing, against Israel.

Probably the one columnist I have critiqued more than any other in my blogging career is Thomas Friedman of The New York Times. Friedman, one-time NY Times Jerusalem bureau chief, is considered The Times' go-to expert on the Middle East, globalization and environmental issues. However, when reading Friedman's columns, it's easy to see that rather than being an expert on any of these topics, he holds certain beliefs and uses all of his observations to support his deeply held beliefs. He often conveys his convictions using superficial metaphors that sound clever, but are meaningless or misleading.

We've covered the back and forth today, from John Kerry's angry policy speech putting most of the blame on Israel for failure to reach an agreement on the final status of the dispute, to Bibi Netanyahu's equally blistering rebuttal. The rallying around Israel and Netanyahu by politicians on both sides of the aisle is a reflection of both ideological support for Israel and the fact that Israel remains hugely popular among the American public. The maligned "Israel Lobby" consists of a substantial majority of Americans who not only support Israel, but support Israel over the Palestinians. The American people are the Israel Lobby. But that can't explain the reaction against Obama's U.N. move.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responds to John Kerry's speech earlier today. Perhaps the biggest bombshell was the repeated accusation that the U.S. was behind the resolution.