2012 President Election

CNN: Israel is signaling a major change in tone toward U.S. President Barack Obama now that he has won reelection. In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, gave what could only be described as a ringing endorsement of the Obama administration’s handling of Iran’s nuclear program. It [...]

Haaretz reports: Following U.S. President Barack Obama’s victory in the American presidential elections, on Wednesday former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of blatantly interfering in favor of Republican nominee Mitt Romney, adding that he did so in the name of Netanyahu and Romney-backer Sheldon Adelson. “This represents a significant breach of [...]

Carol Rosenberg reports: The American Civil Liberties Union chief congratulated President Barack Obama, and in the same breath early Wednesday called on him to make good on his first-term promise to shut down the prison camps at Guantánamo. “We urge President Obama to dismantle a national security state where warrantless surveillance, extra-judicial killings of American [...]

Reuters reports: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces an even more awkward time with Washington and re-energized critics at home who accused him on Wednesday of backing the loser in the U.S. presidential election. With Iran topping his conservative agenda, Netanyahu will have to contend with a strengthened second-term Democratic president after four years of [...]

BuzzFeed: Puerto Ricans voted Tuesday to adjust the relationship between the territory and the United States and pursue statehood, advancing the quest of many on the island to become the nation’s 51st state. In a two-part referendum, voters supported abandoning the status quo and embracing statehood — the first time such an effort has received [...]

The New York Times reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday reiterated his willingness to attack the Iranian nuclear program without support from Washington or the world, returning to an aggressive posture that he had largely abandoned since his United Nations speech in September. “When David Ben-Gurion declared the foundation of the state of Israel, [...]

By Cora Currier and Theodoric Meyer, ProPublica, November 1, 2012 In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy on Tuesday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo linked the storm to a broader change in the weather. “I don’t call it ‘global warming’ because you trigger a whole political debate,” Cuomo said. “But the frequency of extreme weather is [...]

Mark Danner writes: Amid the clamorous controversies of this election campaign, what strikes one here on the West Bank of the Jordan is the silences. Though the issue of Palestine promises to have a much more vital part in the volatile, populist politics of the Middle East’s new democracies—whose vulnerable governments actually must take some [...]

Gary Younge writes: The symbolic resonance of Obama’s victory for black Americans has not diminished [since he took office]. At rallies the hawkers are still there with T-shirts setting him alongside Martin Luther King, setting his logo within Superman’s crest or insisting: “I like my coffee black. Like my president”. According to Gallup 90% of [...]