Public Intelligence

The White House is rolling out the red carpet ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday visit to Washington as President Obama tries to smooth over tensions and move forward on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. The prime minister is expected to get a very different welcome than the one he received back in March.

The Obama administration has “screwed up the messaging” about its support for Israel over the past 14 months, and it will take “more than one month to make up for 14 months,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said on Thursday to a group of rabbis called together for a meeting in the White House.

The Obama administration’s row with Israel over settlements has prompted some analysts to wonder whether it seeks “regime change,” a new government that can make peace with the Palestinians. However, the analysts doubt that President Barack Obama’s administration, which has made Arab-Israeli peace a national security priority, will achieve anything if it has indeed adopted such a strategy. In unusually harsh words, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday that his right-wing government’s plans to build new settler homes in east Jerusalem sent a “deeply negative signal” about Israel’s ties to its top ally.

The US is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Vice President Joe Biden said in Jerusalem on Tuesday, stressing that when it came to Israel’s security, there was “no space between the United States and Israel.” Following a two-hour meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu in his office, about an hour of that in private conversation, Biden – standing next to Netanyahu – said the cornerstone of the US-Israeli relationship was “our absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to Israel’s security.”

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has authorised the construction of more than 450 new housing units in settlements in the occupied West Bank, his ministry said in a statement on Monday. “Defence Minister Ehud Barak has authorised the construction of 455 housing units in settlement blocs” in the occupied West Bank, it said after an earlier statement that he had approved 366 and would later approve more units to bring the total to 450.

One of the entries indicates nuclear secrets black market, and it says,”Edmonds alleges that in the course of her work for the government she found evidence that the FBI, State Department and Pentagon had been infiltrated by a Turkish and Israeli run intelligence network that paid high ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets,” and they have some footnotes for that, some cites. Is that correct that you’ve made those allegations?

For over three decades the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been an effective lobby within Congress to ensure that Israel remains strong militarily and economically, and endures as a national homeland for Jews. While acknowledging its effectiveness, AIPAC critics maintain that AIPAC is an ex-officio arm of the Israeli government which shamelessly manipulates the political process whenever it decides that there is a perceived threat to Israel’s interests. This paper will examine AIPAC’s origins, its structure and agenda. and its lobbying techniques to better understand why AIPAC is considered by many to be the most influential Congressional lobby.

Sidney Harman was born in 1919. He attended Baruch College of the City University of New York, graduating in 1939. In 1953, Harman and Bernard Kardon founded Harman/Kardon, Inc. Both Harman and Kardon were engineers by training and had worked at the Bogen Company, which was then the top manufacturer of public address systems. Their collaboration helped to create the high-fidelity audio industry. As early as 1954, the company simplified access to high-fidelity sound for the non technical consumer with the introduction of the world’s first true hi-fi receiver, the Festival D1000. This product incorporated a tuner, control unit and power amplifier in a single chassis. Four years later, Harman Kardon presented the world’s first stereo receiver.

Mr. Zuckerman now serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Boston Properties, Inc. and has been a director since June 23, 1997. Mr. Zuckerman co-founded Boston Properties in 1970 after spending seven years at Cabot, Cabot & Forbes where he rose to the position of Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. He is also Publisher of the New York Daily News. He serves as trustee of Memorial Sloan-Kettering and he is also a member of the JPMorgan National Advisory Board, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Washington Institute for Near East Studies and the International Institute of Strategic Studies. He is also a former Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, a former lecturer of City and Regional Planning at Yale University and a past president of the Board of Trustees of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Mr. Zuckerman was awarded the Commandeur De L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Guild Hall and the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architecture in New York. He has also received three honorary degrees.