On March 3 after Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and as thousands of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) activists finished their visits with members of Congress, about 150 protesters gathered for the JVP-DC Metro’s “Netanyahu, You Don’t Speak for Me” rally in freezing rain on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building.
Congress interrupted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech 39 times to applaud. 23 of these times were standing ovations. Over 10 minutes of the 40-minute speech consisted of applause. In other words, 27% of the time Netanyahu spoke was actually Congress applauding and doing standing ovations.
Due to the overwhelming response and support to the “ONE WORD” campaign, Ads Against Apartheid has gone national as the Palestine Advocacy Project. They are currently running ads in public transit systems and on mobile billboard trucks in Washington, DC, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, San Diego, and San Antonio.
The New York Times reports that Netanyahu’s speech is giving Democrats the “awkward, painful choice between the president of their country and their loyalty to the Jewish state.” Huh? Loyalty to Israel? The cat is out of the bag, but the media can’t explain it.
Ali Abunimah’s book on Palestinian activism, the Battle for Justice in Palestine, is running second in an Atlantic magazine readers’ poll on the nonfiction book for March
Amira Hass reports for Haaretz: “Residents of Gaza who want to marry overseas are supposed to receive a permit in advance of the wedding date from the Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces.”
Last night Israeli TV covered the leak of an outrageous video of Israeli soldiers inciting their trained “elite” dogs to attack and maul a captured Palestinian teen near an illegal West Bank settlement two months ago. The video appeared on the Facebook page of Michael Ben-Ari, a Kahanist politician, who praised the attack.
Read the full transcript of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, augmented with annotations from Mondoweiss staff and contributors.
Amid overwhelming praise for the Netanyahu speech from cable analysts, some sanity is breaking through. Marc Ginsberg said Netanyahu was likening Obama to a Nazi appeaser, Nancy Pelosi said she was in tear from the insult to the intelligence of the U.S. and Christiane Ahmanpour called it “dark, Strangelovian.”
Mr. Netanyahu’s speech on March 3, 2015 will be marked as the day when an Israeli Prime Minister has pushed the chutzpah so far as to embarrass the President of the United States in front of the whole world. But why is he so adamant that Iran is “the” absolute existential threat to the Jewish people in the first place? Anne-Marie Codur says all the laws of geopolitics and all the facts indicate that Netanyahu is simply lying.