When Donald Trump declared he would be moving the US embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, it sent a very strong signal to Palestinians and the Arab world that the US did not consider them to be human beings. The move, which was overwhelmingly denounced by the international ...read more
Donald Trump came into office on the heels of a claim that he had a secret plan to defeat ISIS. But at the rate he and the passengers in the clown car also known as the Trump administration are going, America may soon lack the intelligence needed to take down ISIS or any other ...read more
One young man, a recent immigrant to America, graduated from killing with his hands to building a sophisticated network of contract killers—both to support his own expanding illegal gambling ring and for hire. Another young man, friends with the first, was a known rapist, ...read more
Last Friday, the United Nations Security Council caused an uproar when they voted to condemn Israeli settlements being built on Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. America could have vetoed the controversial resolution but decided to abstain from the vote ...read more
Ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won reelection last week, White House has been offering blistering criticism of Netanyahu over some of the desperate rhetorical measures he took in the waning days and hours of his reelection campaign, including a racist appeal to ...read more
At a joint press conference with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in the East Room Wednesday afternoon, President Obama took two questions each from the American press and Afghan reporters, one of which provided him with a golden opportunity to lead Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ...read more
(Image: a Jewish settler in Hebron throws wine on a Palestinian woman) The election of Benjamin Netanyahu to his fourth term as prime minister of Israel has solidified what many have already known about the state of Israel: it is a racist, colonial state that cannot be considered ...read more
Update: On Thursday afternoon, President Obama called Prime Minister Netanyahu to congratulate him. The White House released the following readout (via email):Readout of the President’s Call with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel President Obama spoke today by telephone with ...read more
Many of the people who avoid Fox News because they think the network peddles deceptive, slanted reporting opt to watch MSNBC instead, but those viewers got a dose of that bad medicine Wednesday morning just the same. Yes, it happened during Morning Joe, but the actual perpetrator ...read more
For several months now, the right has been trying to concoct a narrative that the Obama administration is interfering with the Israeli elections by trying to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. First, they've attacked by association over former Obama campaign official ...read more
If you thought that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had hit rock bottom with his warmongering speech to Republicans in Congress, then rest easy. Somehow, Bibi has reached a new low. On the eve of Israeli elections, with poll numbers flagging and his coalition ...read more
We've covered Benjamin Netanyahu's horrendously ill judged speech before Congress a fair bit here at the Banter, discussing the political implications of the speech and 'Bibi's' serial lies about the threat Iran poses to the Middle East and the rest of the world. A more difficult ...read more
March has rolled right in like a reminder that this year, like all previous ones, marks yet another notch off your incredibly short road to the grave. Rest easy, friend, for your agonizingly short descent into the cold and immortal nothingness does not proceed alone. Your humble ...read more
This speech wasn’t Bibi Netanyahu’s fault. It was Speaker John Boehner’s idea to set up the Israeli prime minister’s address to Congress in retaliation for President Obama’s refusing to strengthen sanctions on Iran. If anything, Netanyahu’s visit says more about the dysfunction ...read more
It's official: President Obama has run out of what little patience he had left for Benjamin Netanyahu. With the Israeli prime minister and infuriatingly obvious liar scheduled to give an angry speech to a (mostly Republican) at 11:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Obama has gone on the ...read more
When Benjamin Netanyahu spoke in front of Congress in 2011, he received 29 standing ovations. Today we'll see more of the same. Netanyahu will speak before Congress Tuesday morning in what the White House has said is a breach of diplomatic protocol. In January, Speaker John ...read more
On the eve of his big speech before Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed AIPAC on Monday, and again outlined his skepticism about the Iranian nuclear talks. President Obama downplayed the tensions in an interview with Reuters, saying that while the ...read more
Here's the week that was, at Banter.Republican Govs Don’t Give a Shit They’re Blowing Holes In Their States’ Budgets The Republican brain has long since taken its leave on economic policy, but GOP governors like Scott Walker (Wisc.), Sam Brownback (Kan.) and Bobby Jindal (La.) ...read more
Benjamin Netanyahu will speak before a joint session of Congress next week after being invited by House Speaker John Boehner. Netanyahu will use the occasion to bang the drums for a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program and shame the Obama administration for ...read more
On Monday afternoon, President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House to break the unsurprising news that the United States has not decided to provide lethal arms to Ukraine. That's a decision I kind of agree ...read more
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg has touched off something of an international incident over his reporting of an anonymous senior Obama administration official's use of the word "chickenshit" to describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a drama that continued to play out ...read more
When it was reported last week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry "not to ever second guess me again" regarding Hamas and ceasefire talks, even those aware of the sycophantic nature of U.S. policy ...read more
If you spend a decent amount of time on social media and news websites, you'll no doubt hear and read a steady stream of tone-deaf statements from politicians, celebrities, and other public figures who are incapable of imagining what life is like for other people. But every once ...read more
At around 7:19 p.m. GMT, a vandal sympathetic to the Palestinian cause replaced all of the text on the Wikipedia page for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a gigantic Palestinian flag.(Click to enlarge) The user who changed the page is listed as "TSKAero 1" but ...read more
On Thursday night, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution by unanimous consent supporting Israel around the same time the Israel Defense Forces launched a major ground offensive into Gaza. The latest flare up in violence has killed 274 Palestinians and one Israeli so far, but it's ...read more
Breitbart News editor Ben Shapiro got some mild pushback from Fox News' Megyn Kelly when he called the Obama White House a "borderline Jew-hating administration" for urging Israel to show restraint in responding to Hamas rocket attacks, but as criticism of Israel goes, Obama's ...read more
A favorite pastime of American politicians of both parties is grandstanding on behalf of Israel to appease their pro-Israel benefactors. Republican pols, however, have an added incentive to support the Jewish state because a good chunk of their voting base is composed of ...read more
It wasn't enough for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to push the peace process back by assaulting Gaza and inflicting massive a massive humanitarian disaster on the area - he is now authorizing the construction of 3,000 illegal settlement homes in the West Bank and East ...read more
Gilad Sharon, son of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, has written a sickening op-ed in the Jerusalem Post expressing a desire to 'flatten' Gaza, and even, it seems, suggest using nuclear weapons against the impoverished refugees:We need to flatten entire ...read more
The Daily Banter Headline Grab. From AP:JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel and the Hamas militant group edged closer to a cease-fire Tuesday to end a weeklong Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, but after a day of furious diplomatic efforts involving the U.S. secretary of state, U.N. ...read more
By Ben Cohen: The world watches as the deteriorating situation in Gaza unfolds, unable to prevent either side from pulling back from the brink of war. With Israel gearing up for a full out assault on the impoverished area it has been occupying for decades, the chances for a ...read more
The US military is now taking Israel's increasingly belligerent rhetoric against Iran more seriously and is directly warning it not to take any action. The delicate and volatile situation puts the United State's interests in the area in jeopardy and it is now calculating that ...read more
While distracting the world by parading silly diagrams of cartoon bombs around the UN and exaggerating the Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to approve legislation on illegal settlements in the West Bank. From the Guardian:The Israeli ...read more
By Ben Cohen: The pretense that the United States is an honest broker in the Israeli/Palestinian crisis must now be completely dismissed from serious circles. From the Guardian:The United States has warned European governments against supporting a Palestinian bid for enhanced ...read more
By Paul R. Pillar: One naturally wonders what was going through the mind of the Israeli prime minister, or of his staff or speechwriters, when deciding to include in his address to the United Nations General Assembly such an obvious invitation for satire and ridicule. And on a ...read more
Pictured above is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drawing a red line on an Iran bomb cartoon/diagram he brought to his speech at the UN. For reasons best known to himself, Netanyahu thought his audience needed a children's picture book bomb to illustrate the threat ...read more
By Lawrence Davidson: Much is being made of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s involvement in the on-going American presidential campaign. His public stance has been characterized as an Israeli effort to “openly…topple [President] Obama.” The truth is that the only ...read more
By Ben Cohen: Mitt Romney is not having a good week. After campaign ending footage was released of Romney describing half of the America population as blood sucking parasites, it then transpired that he had gone on to declare he wasn't interested in a settlement between the ...read more
By Ben Cohen: The United States takes enormous pride in the fact that it chooses its own course in the world. 'American Exceptionalism', the idea that the US is special, is massively popular amongst the political elite who brand it as a weapon when running against each other for ...read more
The White House has apparently rejected a request by Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to meet President Barack Obama when he travels to the US later this month for the UN General Assembly meeting. An Israeli official told the Reuters news agency that Netanyahu's aides ...read more
By Peter Dyer: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu complained to his cabinet on Sept. 2 that “the international community is not setting Iran a clear red line and Iran does not see international determination to stop its nuclear project.” But Netanyahu also is having ...read more
By Danny Schechter: What are “international obligations”? Does the United States have to uphold them along with other counties? Does Washington even know they are defined as “obligations owed by states to the international community as a whole, intended to protect and promote ...read more
Benjamin Netanyahu: "Time is running out" The Daily Banter headline grab (from the Guardian):Time is running out for the international community to halt Iran's nuclear programme by peaceful means, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told US defence secretary Leon ...read more
By Ben Cohen: International conflicts are difficult to understand without an intricate knowledge of history. While the media would have everyone believe that the emergence of volatile conflicts appear due to bad guys vying for power, the reality is often far more complicated. ...read more
By Robert Parry: The Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer wants war with Iran – and he’s furious at President Barack Obama for making it clear to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that if Israel attacks now, it will do so on its own. On Friday, Krauthammer, who ...read more
Most Israelis believe that if the United States does not attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel must no try to do so alone, according to a Haaretz poll.The Haaretz-Dialog poll, conducted under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University on Sunday and Monday ...read more
By Ben Cohen: Barack Obama has tried and largely failed to reign in Israel's aggression against the Palestinians while he has been in office. The far right Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has continued to build on Palestinian territories, execute Palestinian leaders ...read more
Barack Obama has admonished Israel for "too much loose talk of war" with Iran and said the world has a responsibility to give sanctions an opportunity to discourage Tehran from pursuing a nuclear weapon. Speaking before a meeting on Monday with the Israeli prime minister, ...read more
Image via WikipediaAndrew Sullivan on Netanyahu's relentless war against moderation and the Middle East peace process:The Obama goal was simple: win back global soft power in the war against Jihadist terrorism by demonstrating even-handedness again with the Israelis and ...read more
Image via WikipediaRobert Fisk breaks the extraordinary inside story about the unity deal between Hamas and Fatah. Key quote:The secret story of Palestinian unity is now revealed. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu’s reaction to the news – having originally refused to negotiate ...read more