Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. on Monday night was interrupted by left-wing protesters who heckled him and criticized his policies toward the Palestinians. 
 
 Protesters from the group Move Over AIPAC, at least some of whom say they are Jewish, stood up, held up banners and made statements criticizing Israeli defense policies. 
 
 Israeli officials traveling abroad continue to be accosted by young protesters confronting them over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Groups of Arab and Muslim students have disrupted speeches by Israeli officials on university campuses in the past, but recently some left-wing Jewish student groups have also joined the attacks. 
 
 Netanyahu's speech at the Jewish Federations General Assembly in New Orleans in November 2010 was marked by repeated heckling from Jewish students in the audience, protesting loyalty oath legislation and Israel's occupation of the West Bank, before being unceremoniously escorted away. 
 
 At the AIPAC conference on Monday, protesters used the same language that Netanyahu has used repeatedly in recent days and recontextualized it, inverting its intended meaning for political points. After Netanyahu told AIPAC that the borders that Israel occupied until the 1967 Six Day War are militarily "indefensible", protesters riffed on the word, using it in to mean unjustifiable. 
 
 One by one, activists sitting in the audience stood up and criticized Israel's policies towards the Palestinians, calling out, "Occupying Palestinian land is indefensible", "Starving Gaza is indefensible", "Bulldozing homes is indefensible", "Displacing refugees is indefensible" and "Silencing dissent is indefensible". 
 
 Ariel Vegosen, 30, one of the protesters, said in a statement, “As a young Jewish person it is important for me to stand up today and tell Netanyahu and AIPAC that their voices do not represent me.” 
 
 “I will not allow my faith to be misused as a weapon, covering up the theft of Palestinians’ homes and livelihoods," said Vegosen. "Judaism teaches me to stand up when I see oppression— discrimination is not a Jewish value and does not make Israel safer." 
 
 The hecklers were escorted out as other members of the audience cheered loudly. Netanyahu made light of the interruptions and asked, "Do you think they have these protests in Gaza?" implying that these protests of Israel ironically prove that Israel is a democracy that permits dissenting views, unlike the Hamas government. 
 
 Hecklers also booed as Netanyahu told the crowd that in Israel more than one million Muslims enjoy "full democratic rights," using this as testimony that Israel "and only Israel" can be trusted to ensure freedom for all faiths in a united capital of Jerusalem. 
 
 Netanyahu added that he "intends to speak the truth", to which another heckler yelled "denial!" before being escorted out by security. 
 
 In April, Kadima MK Avi Dichter was interrupted by protesters as he stood up to speak to an audience of hundreds of students at Brandeis University near Boston. Several students got up out of their seats and called Dichter, who was Director of the Shin Bet Security Service during the Second Intifada, a war criminal, both in English and Hebrew. ||||| Enlarge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves as he arrives May 23, 2011, to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference 2011 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech Monday that Israel must be mindful of its security and therefore cannot return to the 1967 borders. 
 
 "(A peace agreement) must leave Israel with security, and therefore Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 lines," he said in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel American lobby, as reported in CNN. 
 
 Netanyahu, speaking to the lobby after he had a testy meeting with President Obama Friday, acknowledged the "agony of war" but blamed the Palestinians for the inability to secure peace between the two sides. 
 
 "This conflict has raged for a nearly a century because the Palestinians refuse to end it. They refuse to accept the Jewish state," he said. 
 
 Palestinians have refused to restart stalled peace talks until the Israelis halt the settlement building in areas Palestinians hope will be their new state. The Israeli government, meanwhile, has criticized the Palestinian Authority for partnering with Hamas, a terrorist organization. 
 
 Obama raised the issue of borders in a major policy speech he gave last week, arguing that negotiations on final borders for the Jewish and Palestinian states must be based on the 1967 lines. This would mean Israel would have to give up land it captured in the Six Day War, notably east Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. 
 
 Netanyahu, who reacted harshly to Obama's speech, promised to present his vision for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians when he gives a speech before a joint meeting of Congress Tuesday. 
 
 "I will outline a vision for a secure Israeli-Palestinian peace," he said, as reported by Reuters. 
 
 "I intend to speak the unvarnished truth. Now more than ever what we need is clarity." 
 
 The Israeli leader received a warm welcome at the AIPAC event, drawing cheers and standing ovations, the Washington Post reports. He is also likely to receive a warm greeting by members of Congress, where he has strong bipartisan support. 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, an ally of Obama, said at Monday's dinner: “No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building or about anything else." 
 
 After his comment, the lights at the Washington Convention Center turned on and most of the crowd gave Reid a standing ovation, Politico reports. 
 
 The support by both the lobby group and Congress may remind Obama that he will have a tough political price to pay in the 2012 election if he pushes Netanyahu too hard on land swaps and settlement building, the Washington Post states. 
 
 In his own speech to AIPAC on Sunday, Obama stressed that the borders could be adjusted through mutually agreed upon land swaps. 
 
 http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/israel-and-palestine/110524/netanyahu-aipac-1967-borders
– Benjamin Netanyahu stuck to his guns in a speech to AIPAC yesterday, vehemently rejecting President Obama’s call for a return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Any peace agreement “must leave Israel with security, and therefore Israel cannot return to the indefensible 1967 lines,” he told the pro-Israel lobby, according to the Global Post. He heaped blame on the Palestinians, saying, “This conflict has raged for nearly a century because the Palestinians refuse to end it.” His speech was interrupted multiple times by Code Pink protesters, who echoed Netanyahu’s words back at him, telling him that “Starving Gaza is indefensible” and “Silencing dissent is indefensible” and so forth, according to Haaretz. Some of the protesters said they were Jewish. “I will not allow my faith to be misused as a weapon,” one protester said. “Discrimination is not a Jewish value.” Netanyahu replied, “Do you think they have these protests in Gaza?” implying that it was Hamas silencing dissent.