Fresh off of telling the United Kingdom that it wasn’t ready for the Olympics during an tour of London, Romney unsubtly jabbed President Obama in Jerusalem this Sunday — as he often does on U.S. soil — for criticizing Israeli policy. Romney suggested that any public criticism of Israel in public would be off-limits in a Romney Presidency:

We cannot stand silent as those who seek to undermine Israel voice their criticisms. And we certainly should not join in that criticism. Diplomatic distance in our public between our nations emboldens Israel’s adversaries.

Watch it:

Romney regularly attacks While Romney is right to say that Israel is a close American ally that deserves our support, that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t ever publicly criticize Israel when we believe it to be in American (or Israeli) interests. Indeed, though Romney said the United States and Israel have “been the most natural of allies” since 1948, every Republican President since then has publicly criticized Israeli policies:

George W. Bush: President Bush, who once said “it is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation,” rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for announcing construction in the West Bank town Ma’ale Adumim, saying “the road map calls for no expansion of the settlements.”

George H.W. Bush: Like his son, Bush Sr. condemned settlement activity, saying “we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.” He also pushed Israel to stay out of the first Gulf War.

Ronald Reagan: After Israel attacked Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, Reagan’s administration voted to condemn Israel in the U.N. Security Council. Reagan also temporarily halted security cooperation with Israel after its 1981 annexation of the Golan heights.

Gerald Ford: Ford promised a “reassessment” of US-Israel relations after failed US diplomacy with respect to an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty.

Richard Nixon: In a United Nations debate, George H.W. Bush (then representing Nixon at the U.N.) said, with respect to settlements, “We regret Israel’s failure to acknowledge its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as its actions which are contrary to the letter and the spirit of this convention.”

Dwight Eisenhower: The first Republican President to handle diplomacy with Israel threatened it with sanctions as a consequence of its actions in the 1956 Suez Crisis, and told Americans in a radio address that “It was a matter of keen disappointment to us that the Government of Israel, despite the United Nations action, still felt unwilling to withdraw” from territory taken in the war.

Setting aside the merits of the GOP’s historical criticism, it’s clear that past Republican presidents didn’t shirk from publicly finding fault with Israel when they felt it was necessary. Romney, then, is repudiating his party’s traditional approach to handling the US-Israeli relationship. This suggests either that previous Republican Presidents have “emboldened Israel’s enemies” or that Israel’s ties with America are strong enough to weather occasional public disagreement.

Though Romney has criticized Obama’s handling of relations between the two countries as hostile towards the Jewish state, Israeli officials beg to differ: the Obama Administration has stepped up security cooperation with Israel and put unprecedented pressure on Iran’s threatening nuclear program. It does make one wonder what Romney means when he says he would “do the opposite” of Obama on Israel.

Despite criticism from leading Republicans over their attacks on a notable senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a group of House Republicans conducting a witch hunt on government officials supposedly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood are doubling down on their accusations.

The group, led by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), has yet to provide actual evidence of the “infiltration” they say is occurring, and the attacks on Huma Abedin, a long-time and well-known Clinton aide, drew ridicule from across Washington and highlighted the shoddiness of the entire report. But the lawmakers aren’t giving up, The Hill reports:

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) told The Hill that the media’s focus on Abedin was a “deliberate effort to change the subject.”

“The focus in the media has been on one sentence in one of those letters, and … they have the right to do that,” Franks said. “But it certainly doesn’t serve the American people when they overlook the central focus of the letters to try to take out of context one element of it that seems to be the only thing the left can aim at.”

Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL), and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) all made similar points in refusing to apologize for their comments, and Bachmann went a step farther Thursday, launching a new attack on Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who has led the fight against the group of lawmakers’ ridiculous report.

While Republicans like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have dismissed Bachmann’s absurd attacks on Abedin and others as the witchhunt it is, others, like Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) have backed the group as being “concern[ed] about the security of the country.”

Tell Speaker Boehner to remove Bachmann from the House Intelligence Committee before her reckless politics damage our national security.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, a top foreign policy advier to Mitt Romney said the GOP presidential nominee would support an Israeli decision to attack Iran’s nuclear program. The right-wing adviser Dan Senor said Iran should not be able to attain a nuclear “capability” — a significant break in language from state U.S. policy.

Senor told reporters:

If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing the capability, the governor would respect that decision.

In a follow-up statement, Senor said, “We should employ any and all measures to dissuade the Iranian regime from its nuclear course, and it is his fervent hope that diplomatic and economic measures will do so,” but that an American attack should remain an option.

While Obama has said an Iranian nuclear weapon is “unacceptable,” declaring a nuclear “capability” an American “red line” that would trigger war sets a lower threshold for U.S. military involvement. The CIA has laid out a specific definition, but the “nuclear capability” language is a complex issue. The word “capability” has a special meaning in the non-proliferation context, but it’s not always clear exactly what. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), one of the Senate’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.” Hawks in Congress pushed a bill this year to shift the official U.S. “red line” to a nuclear “capability.”

During an appearance with Romney in Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayahu said he agreed with Romney’s approach, falsely claiming that “all the sanctions and diplomacy so far have not set back the Iranian program by one iota.” U.N. sanctions have delayed Iran’s nuclear progress. A U.N. ban on selling Iran weapons technologies appears to have set back their ballistic missile programs as well.

President Obama considers a potential Iranian nuclear weapon a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. And he’s vowed again and again to keep all options on the table to deal wtih it. U.S., U.N. and Israeli intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of building international pressure and using diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and potential consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis. Obama has also reaffirmed Israel’s “sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.”

Romney has long supported military involvement in the Middle East and still defends President Bush’s preventative invasion in Iraq. In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Romney said, “President Bush took action which he believed, based upon the information that was available to him, both from British intelligence and intelligence in our country and around the world, that Saddam Hussein presented a very serious threat to the world, including the potential of weapons of mass destruction.”