
Gallipoli was a failure that haunted Churchill as much as supporting the Iraq War haunts many politicians today. Yet he was right about Hitler when others hid from the truth. Churchill, like Netanyahu and unlike Barack Obama, worried more about victory than pride.
by Joel B. Pollak6 Mar 2015, 4:43 AM PST0

Conservatives, long used to the media protecting the Clintons at all costs, are puzzled by the fact that journalists seem to be pouncing on the latest scandal involving Hillary Clinton’s offsite email server. As Clinton scandals go, this hardly seems the worst. It seems that federal laws may have been broken–but they may not have been. (The Wall Street Journal concluded, bizarrely, that the private email system “was legal while she served as the nation’s top diplomat.”) Why the sudden interest?
by Joel B. Pollak5 Mar 2015, 10:56 PM PST0

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, sat down with NBC News this week for an exclusive interview. NBC’s headline for the interview is: “Iran Foreign Minister: We Believe We Are ‘Very Close’ to Nuke Deal.” But the Times of Israel noted a buried lede–“Zarif: The Netanyahu regime ‘should be annihilated’.” While the American editors focused on boosting prospects for President Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic initiative, their Israeli counterparts focused on the threat that remains.
by Joel B. Pollak5 Mar 2015, 6:56 AM PST0

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned home Wednesday to positive reviews of his speech in Congress the day before. If it had been his intention to use the event to boost his campaign, however, he made little impact, enjoying a modest bump in the polls, at best. In one poll, the speech received rave reviews, with 44% of respondents saying it boosted their opinion of him, versus 12% who said it hurt their image of him. However, his Likud party was still in second place.
by Joel B. Pollak4 Mar 2015, 11:01 PM PST0

It does not matter whether they attended the speech, boycotted the speech, or read the transcript of the speech. Democrats, surprised by how convincing Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday turned out to be, have simply decided to lie about it. Netanyahu said “we should give up on any diplomatic path,” according to Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA). He failed to provide “viable alternatives,” according to President Barack Obama. None of that is true, as the transcript shows.
by Joel B. Pollak4 Mar 2015, 10:39 PM PST0

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday was so successful that many of his critics conceded that he had defied their expectations. Some, however, took issue with the fact that he invoked
by Joel B. Pollak4 Mar 2015, 6:43 AM PST0

Following his stirring address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will return home, having made his point about the dangers of the Iran deal currently on the table. The question is: what next for Congress? President Barack Obama has vowed to veto any new sanctions–and may have sown enough division in his party to prevent an override. Yet there is another bill in the works that, after Tuesday, Obama may find he cannot refuse.
by Joel B. Pollak3 Mar 2015, 11:17 AM PST0

How successful was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday? Judging from the changed reactions of his media critics, almost all of whom praised the speech, it was a complete triumph.
by Joel B. Pollak3 Mar 2015, 9:33 AM PST0

Speaker of the House John Boehner will present Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a bust of Winston Churchill when he arrives to address a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, according to the Speaker’s office.
by Joel B. Pollak3 Mar 2015, 6:55 AM PST0

Israeli Prime Minister addresses Congress on Tuesday, March 3. His topic, as per Speaker of the House John Boehner, is to explain “the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life.”
by Joel B. Pollak3 Mar 2015, 4:55 AM PST0

While nearly 1 in 4 congressional Democrats had announced their intention to boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, one California Democrat said that he was “honored” to have been chosen to be among the legislators who escort Netanyahu into the House chamber.
by Joel B. Pollak3 Mar 2015, 4:00 AM PST0

President Barack Obama took a stab at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with Reuters on Monday, on the eve of Netanyahu’s controversial speech to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday morning. Obama said that Netanyahu “made all sorts of claims” about the interim nuclear deal with Iran that turned out to be untrue. Yet Obama mischaracterized Netanyahu’s remarks, and misrepresented Iranian compliance with the terms of the interim deal.
by Joel B. Pollak2 Mar 2015, 2:59 PM PST0

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address Monday morning to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) seemed a curious addition to his visit, a kind of undercard bout before the main event. It turned out to be one of his best speeches ever, the perfect setup for his address to a special joint session of Congress on Tuesday. The 34 Democrats who are boycotting the address are likely feeling that they made the wrong decisions. Here are 5 reasons why.
by Joel B. Pollak2 Mar 2015, 10:53 AM PST0

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previewed his speech in Congress on Tuesday when he addressed the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Monday. “Reports of the demise of the Israeli-U.S. relations [are] not only premature–they’re just wrong. You’re here to tell the world that our alliance is stronger than ever,” he said, to applause. “Never has so much been written about a speech that hasn’t been given,” he joked.
by Joel B. Pollak2 Mar 2015, 7:29 AM PST0

UN Ambassador Samantha Power told the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Monday that the spat over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday would not affect relations between the two countries. The relationship, she says, “transcends politics, and always will.” She said that the partnership between the U.S. and Israel “should never be politicized,” even if there were debates about the best policy to deal with common threats.
by Joel B. Pollak2 Mar 2015, 6:48 AM PST0

The battle over pony rides at the Santa Monica Farmers Market is a classic study in how a tiny minority of activists can seize control of a city to destroy a business–and how a business owner, and the public, can fight back. The saga began last year, with a campaign by a radical animal rights activist to remove Tawni Angel’s pony rides and petting zoo from the market. In September 2014, the City Council voted in the dead of night to advise that the pony contract be dropped.
by Joel B. Pollak2 Mar 2015, 5:00 AM PST0

In most democracies, and especially small ones, politics ends at the water’s edge. Whatever criticism the opposition might have about the government, especially the leader, it refrains from doing so purely for the benefit of a foreign audience. Not so for the Israeli opposition, headed by Isaac Herzog of the Zionist Union, who has not only bashed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States as a purely political move, but has done so in a New York Times op-ed.
by Joel B. Pollak2 Mar 2015, 4:51 AM PST0

I’m fasting Monday and praying for Benjamin Netanyahu’s success in his speech to Congress on Tuesday. I don’t care for the pettiness of his American Jewish critics, who typify the establishment that remained silent during the Holocaust; nor the hysterics of his Israeli opponents, who prove by their behavior they are unfit to lead. I am hoping sense will prevail. I trust God and not the mainstream media, here and abroad, who have declared Netanyahu’s speech a disaster in advance.
by Joel B. Pollak1 Mar 2015, 9:48 AM PST0

The “progressive” movement sustains itself on the idea that it is standing up against abuses of power by the wealthy and well-connected, that it defends the rights of the most vulnerable, that it stops special interests from taking over the state. And yet the “progressive” administration of Barack Obama has done all that, and more. It has not just committed ordinary hypocrisy, selling out its principles or breaking its promises: worse, it has often fulfilled them, blind to the consequences.
by Joel B. Pollak1 Mar 2015, 6:28 AM PST0

There is a simple question that every critic of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday must answer: should he rather wait, as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko did, and address Congress after suffering a crushing defeat? Or should Netanyahu hasten to warn America before disaster strikes, before a deal is done with Iran that cannot be undone?
by Joel B. Pollak28 Feb 2015, 10:14 PM PST0

Nobel laureate, Holocause survivor, Jewish leader and world literary figure Elie Wiesel will participate in a bipartisan dialogue on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech to a joint session of Congress.
by Joel B. Pollak27 Feb 2015, 2:30 PM PST0

And Esther said to Hathach, and she ordered him to [tell] Mordechai: “All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that any man or woman who comes to the king, into the inner court, who is not summoned, there is but one law for him, to be put to death, except the one to whom the king extends the golden scepter, that he may live, but I have not been summoned to come to the king these thirty days. And they told Esther’s words to Mordechai. And Mordechai ordered to reply to Esther, “Do not imagine to yourself that you will escape in the king’s house from among all the Jews.” (Esther 4:10-13)
by Joel B. Pollak27 Feb 2015, 5:30 AM PST0

President Barack Obama is sending National Security Advisor Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Power–widely seen as among the most anti-Israel members of his administration–to address a prominent pro-Israel gathering next week. The move is described by the Associated Press as an effort to mend fences after the administration had withheld speakers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference. In reality, it is a further slap in the face.
by Joel B. Pollak26 Feb 2015, 9:20 AM PST0

President Barack Obama has done little to stop the terrorist militias of the so-called Islamic State from abducting and murdering Christians in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. As a junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, however, Obama was outspoken on the fate of minorities in Iraq. Obama wrote two letters to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, demanding to know what the Bush administration was doing to secure Assyrian Christians and other minorities in Iraq.
by Joel B. Pollak26 Feb 2015, 8:19 AM PST0

Many of the Democrats denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech next week to a special joint session of Congress as an intrusion into U.S. domestic politics leapt to their feet in 2010 when then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon, in a similar
by Joel B. Pollak26 Feb 2015, 7:38 AM PST0