Israel will get their war.

I don't trust Netanyahu as far as I can throw him. He reminds me so much of Putin, in temperament and attitude: Arrogance, authoritarianism, megalomaniac asshole.

Israel is the obnoxious little 80 lb. bully that gets away with being an obnoxious bully because they have the biggest kid on the playground backing them up.

If they piss off enough people here that our politicians are forced to abandon them, they won't last a week. They'll take the rest of the ME with them when they expend their nuclear arsenal, and the world will breathe a sigh of relief and get on with figuring out some method of drilling for oil through radioactive glass.

AIPAC is spinning its attempt to undermine the President's express foreign policy decision as some kind of "backup plan."

This was pretty outrageous -- we actually try to use the sanctions for what everyone claims their purpose has always been -- to leverage concessions on nuclear development in Iran, and Israel is going to come in and tell us we can't do that?

Wow. That's nuts. Luckily, Americans have had a bellyful of needless wars in the Middle East and weren't in the mood to get nudged into another one.

From what I have seen,
AIPAC is a very conservative Pro-Right Wing Lobby for what amounts to Israel's Tea Party,
and does NOT represent the people of Israel.

won how many seats again in the 2013 election?



Following the 2009 elections, in which right-wing and religious parties won the majority (65 out of 120, or 54%) of the seats, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu established a government including right-wing parties Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, the ultra-orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism, the religious Zionist Jewish Home, and the centre-left Labor Party.


2013-
The elections saw the Likud Yisrael Beiteinu alliance emerge as the largest faction in the Knesset, winning 31 of the 120 seats. Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu formed the country's thirty-third government after establishing a coalition with Yesh Atid, the Jewish Home and Hatnuah, which between them held 68 seats.


Party Chairman Votes % Seats +/–
Likud Yisrael Beiteinu Benjamin Netanyahu 885,054 23.34% 31 Red Arrow Down.svg -11
Yesh Atid Yair Lapid 543,458 14.33% 19 Green Arrow Up.svg +19
Labor Party Shelly Yachimovich 432,118 11.39% 15 Green Arrow Up.svg +7
The Jewish Home Naftali Bennett 345,985 9.12% 12 Green Arrow Up.svg +9
Shas Eli Yishai 331,868 8.75% 11 Green Arrow Up.svg +1
United Torah Judaism Yaakov Litzman 195,892 5.16% 7 Green Arrow Up.svg +2
Hatnuah Tzipi Livni 189,167 4.99% 6 Green Arrow Up.svg +6
Meretz Zahava Gal-On 172,403 4.55% 6 Green Arrow Up.svg +3
United Arab List–Ta'al Ibrahim Sarsur 138,450 3.65% 4 Gray Rectangle Tiny.svg 0
Hadash Mohammad Barakeh 113,439 2.99% 4 Gray Rectangle Tiny.svg 0
Balad Jamal Zahalka 97,030 2.56% 3 Gray Rectangle Tiny.svg 0
Kadima Shaul Mofaz 79,081 2.09% 2 Red Arrow Down.svg -26

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_legislative_election,_2013

They're less than 25% of the vote, but they're the biggest party, and they can always find a couple coalition whores to go with them to form a government.

Wolf

From the article:

In another small but telling contretemps, a group of prominent liberal Jews sent a letter last week to Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, rebuking him for speaking last month at a closed-door gathering of Aipac, which they said “speaks for Israel’s hard-line government and its right-wing supporters.”

. . .

The trouble is, Aipac’s fervent push on Iran sanctions has increasingly allied it with Mr. Netanyahu and against Mr. Obama. J Street, a more dovish pro-Israel group, has lobbied vigorously against the bill, underscoring divergent views within the pro-Israel lobby.

“You’re seeing, in the American Jewish community, an engagement in the debate in a more complex way,” said Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat. “Some say they want sanctions, but some say they support the White House.”

. . .

Mr. Murphy said he was not worried about bucking Aipac. “The pro-Israel community in Connecticut knows I’m a strong supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship,” he said, “and I always will be.”

and I assume you're talking about something else.

Or China? Or Cuba?

The audacity of using Israel's political muscle to essentially bully Congress into starting a war with Iran. How would it feel to Israel if the Palestinians could do the same thing and force Congress to declare war on Israel if they don't pull out of their illegal settlements?

it's very close to being the same thing. Ditto the way some of the Russian jews in their government are allying with Russia. They are no longer one of our closest allies. Israel may still be an ally, but their current government isn't even our friend.