Israel/Palestine

Our good friend Mark Levin went on a tear yesterday about Obama's Mid East policy speech in which he called for Israel to go back to pre-1967 borders, an arrangement that would be perilous for Israel's national security and very existence.

Republicans have responded with widespread opprobrium to President Obama's speech on the Middle East.  Mitt Romney epitomized GOP reaction in saying PBO had "thrown Israel under the bus." Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised, but at MSNBC, Obama  was actually criticized last night . . . for not being hard enough on Israel.  Cenk Uygur said "the president's speech was too much leaning…

Update below the break: Although Zakaria said he would be "surprised" if any Israelis objected to Obama's "quite even-handed" call for pre-1967 borders between Israel and Palestine, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed clear disapproval of the idea Thursday. CNN's Fareed Zakaria appeared three times on Newsroom Thursday to preview and evaluate President Obama's speech on the…

 On CBS’s Sunday Morning show, during his regular commentary, right-leaning CBS contributor Ben Stein gave a pessimistic view of the "Arab Spring" movement to topple authoritarian governments in the Middle East, charged that America would regret allowing Hosni Mubarak lose power in Egypt, and predicted that the radical Muslm Brotherhood would take over there. He also gave rare attention to…

Not waiting for history to play out, a New Times caption writer, below a picture of celebrants of Obama Bin Laden's demise outside the White House, has written: "As crowds gathered outside the White House, there was little question that Mr. Obama's presidency had forever been changed." The pic and caption follow the jump.

  While it was suggested during February's coverage of anti-government protests in Egypt that the radical Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood movement only had the support of a minority of Egyptians, a recent Pew Research Center poll finds that over 70 percent of the Egyptian public holds a favorable view of the Islamist organization. The same poll also notably finds that the more secular April 6…

 As previously documented by NewsBusters, Helen Thomas - former columnist and White House correspondent for both UPI and Hearst Newspapers - was scheduled to speak at a left-wing anti-Israel rally next month during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming visit to America. But the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Thomas "withdrew her participation fearing she will become the…

New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner and reporter Jennifer Medina summarized on Wednesday the outcry after the dramatic reversal earlier this month by Judge Richard Goldstone. The judge authored the notorious "Goldstone report" for the United Nations Human Rights Council, blaming the state of Israel, but not the terrorist group Hamas, for making targets of civilians during the…

After relegating to page A16 the stabbing slaughter of five members of a family of Israeli settlers on March 12 at the hands of Palestinians, the New York Times mustered front-page sympathy for Vittorio Arrigoni, a pro-Palestinian activist murdered in Gaza by a fringe Islamic group. Fares Akram and Isabel Kershner reported from Gaza for Saturday’s front page, “Killing of Pro-Palestinian…

 On Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel informed viewers that he is "worried" that a major war between some of the Arab countries and Israel could be in the not too distant future because of the "ferociously anti-Israel" sentiment of the "Arab street" that is likely to gain power in countries like Egypt. He ended up concluding: "But I think, over time, this…

 According to the Haaretz article, "Netanyahu Cancels Bieber Date Over Refusal to Meet Kids Affected by Gaza Rockets," Barak Ravid recounts reports that Canadian singer Justin Bieber declined to meet children who narrowly escaped being hit by rocket fire as they exited an Israeli school bus shortly before it was hit several weeks ago. A 16-year-old boy was seriously injured in the attack. The…

On April 2nd, The New York Times published a piece by Ethan Bronner titled, "In Israel, Time for Peace Offer May Run Out." In the piece, Bronner discussed various aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including statehood, violence, peace talks, religion, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Muslim Brotherhood. But while Bronner spent many paragraphs detailing the difficulties in establishing…

Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner on Friday filed a story on a heated debate at the Israeli Parliament over the advocacy group J Street, a flock of pro-peace doves who want to "end the occupation" of Palestinian land by Israel, “U.S. Group Stirs Debate on What It Means to Be ‘Pro-Israel.’” The Times has been pushing the “moderate” (actually left-wing) group J Street since its 2008…

In a Wednesday story at Reuters ("Bombing near Jerusalem bus stop kills woman, 30 hurt") describing the aftermath of  "a bomb planted in a bag exploded near a bus stop in a Jewish district of Jerusalem," reporter Crispian Balmer wrote the following (bold is mine): Medics said three people were seriously hurt by the explosion, which hit one of the main routes into central Jerusalem in the…