The Netanyahu Speech Impasse and Other VOI News in Review

The fallout over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to the US Congress two weeks before the Israeli election continues to dominate the headlines in Israel and abroad.

With Israeli consuls across the US warning that the address will harm ties between the two countries; a threatened boycott of the speech by House democrats; and the latest news that Vice President Joe Biden will not attend; politicians and pundits from across the spectrum have been weighing in on the controversy.

In a highlight from Newsroom VOI, we hear exclusive interviews from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former deputy National Security Adviser in the George W. Bush administration Elliott Abrams, Pulitzer prize winning Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer and former Israeli Ambassador to the US and former Israeli deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.

In our weekly election round up we hear from Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely who, along with her party, is claiming that the US State Department is illegally funding the V15 campaign to oust PM Netanyahu. Itamar Weizman, the founder of the organization, responds to the claims.

VOI's Jonathan Benedek brings us a report on the resignation of William Schabas, the head of the UN inquiry into the war in Gaza last summer. And hear interviews with NGO Monitor's Gerald Steinberg and international human rights scholar Anne Bayefsky.

VOI's Mordechai Twersky talks to Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt about her memories of Churchill biographer Sir Martin Gilbert, who passed away this week.

Plus, award-winning investigative reporter Edwin Black shares with VOI the findings of his recently obtained Palestinian Authority documents detailing the payment system for convicted terrorists.