U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is skipping town on March 3, and avoiding the proverbial ‘tempest in a teapot’ he fears will occur when Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addresses a rare joint session of Congress.

It is the role of the vice president, as president of the Senate to attend joint meetings of the Congress. But Biden did miss one other session, however, in 2011, according to the White House.

Biden’s office confirmed to NBC News on Friday that he will be traveling abroad at the time of Netanyahu’s speech, but could not say where or why. As NBC News journalist Steve Benen observed, “It’s hardly unreasonable to wonder if this is the diplomatic equivalent if ‘I’m washing my hair – somewhere.’”

“We are not ready to announce details of his trip yet, and normally our office wouldn’t announce this early, but the planning process has been underway for a while,” a spokesperson for the office explained to Politico.com.

Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she was “seriously considering going” and that it was her “intention to go” although she was still her “hope that the event will not take place. There’s serious unease.”

Three other prominent House Democrats – Reps. John Lewis of Georgia, G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon – plan to skip the session.

Last Wednesday seven Jewish Democrats met with Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer to discuss the controversy, caused in part because the speech was arranged with Dermer by GOP House Speaker John Boehner several months ago, without consulting the White House.

The proximity of the session to Israel’s national elections is also a concern – but far more threatening to the White House, apparently, is the proximity of the speech to the deadline in talks with world leaders for an agreement with Iran on its nuclear development program.

Israel’s prime minister has openly opposed the wide-ranging agreement being discussed by the U.S. and world leaders with Iran, which grants Tehran far more flexibility with its uranium enrichment activities than reasonable or safe, according to military experts.

Rabbi Philip Berg (born Shraga Feivel Gruberger in Brooklyn, in 1927 or 1929), founder of the controversial Los Angeles based Kabbalah Centre, that attracted many movie celebrities to join its ranks, died on Monday at age 86 (or 84).

Rabbi Berg was ordained in 1951, from Yeshiva Torah voDaas

Berg’s Kabbalah Centre introduced a New Age version of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, made famous for it promotion of its version of Kabbalah to non-Jewish celebrities. The Kabbalah Center’s assets are believed to be in the many millions of dollars, acquired from donations, selling red bendels (strings), and pocket Zohars.

Primarily based in Los Angeles, the group has centers in 40 countries.

A few years ago, Rabbi Berg suffered a stroke, and his wife Karen Berg, and their two children began to take over running the business.

Rabbi Berg will be buried in Tzfat, Israel.

An Egyptian radio host who identifies himself as the official voice of Donald Duck on Disney Middle East called on Twitter for Israel to be “demolished.”

The discussion that began Sunday on the Twitter feed of Wael Mansour continued on Tuesday.

“I truly wish #Israel is demolished, I hate Zionism, I have so much hate inside me with every single child they murder or land they seize!” Mansour tweeted Sunday. The tweet followed one that read: “I saw a video of Israeli soldiers brutally arresting a palestinian woman in front of her 3 children coz they seized her home & she objects!” which could explain his Twitter outburst.

Mansour responded to some critics by tweeting: “I don’t know why insulting #Israel & #Zionism is “Anti-Semitic”?! They are just a bunch of Polish/ Ethiopian immigrants roughly 70 years old” and “There are Jews who hate Zionism; does it make them Jews Anti-Jews?! Of course NO! We respect Jews & disrespect Zionism, there’s a difference.”

The Algemeiner called on Disney chairman Bob Iger, who is Jewish, to respond to the controversy. Disney owns the rights to Donald Duck.

Contacted directly via Twitter by the Algemeiner, Mansour told the paper, “The Zionist entity is a racist entity by definition, performing crimes of hate by the power of its criminal law. I stand firm by what I said.”

Mansour said Egypt “dictates an overwhelming Islamic sentiment that happened normally. On the other hand, the Zionist entity is a bunch of immigrants stealing lands and creating a state based on a racist difference.”

Contrary to the claims made by Palestinian leaders, various NGOs, and certain members of the international community, international law fully recognizes the Jewish people’s claim to Jerusalem, where they have historical roots dating back over 3,000 years and have been the largest ethnic group in the city since 1820.

Ernst Frankenstein, a British authority on international law said, for example, that the Jewish people have a right to their ancestral homeland and ancient capital city in Jerusalem based on the fact that the Jewish people never relinquished their historic claims to the area.

Furthermore, Frankenstein claimed that Roman, Byzantine, and other successors lacked a “continuous and undisturbed presence” in Israel that would dispossess the Jewish claim to the land. In fact, the Ottoman Turks, who owned the Land of Israel prior to WWI and the British Mandate, renounced their claim to all of the land of Israel in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. When the Balfour Declaration was drafted there was no Palestinian “nation.” In 1919, Palestine was a sparsely populated land where Lord Balfour claimed that only 700,000 Arabs lived, of whom a large number migrated within recent history.

In contrast, there were far more Jews in the world in need of a homeland in 1919 than there were Arab residents in Israel and there existed a significant Jewish minority that continued to live in Israel. As the Blackstone Memorial, signed by Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Melville Fuller, proclaimed in 1891, Israel, which included Jerusalem, is the “inalienable possession” of the Jewish people “from where they were expelled by force.”

The Balfour Declaration was drafted with the goal of establishing a Jewish national home in the Land of Israel. The “civil and religious” rights of the Arabs were to be respected, yet politically, the country was supposed to belong to the Jews. The Balfour Declaration was ingrained into international law at the San Remo Conference. Through San Remo, “The Jewish people have been given the right to establish a home, based on the recognition of their historical connection and the grounds for reconstituting this national home,” Jacques Gauthier, an expert on international law, had explained.

Thus, the Palestine Mandate, which included a united Jerusalem was established with the goal of guiding “towards independence and self-governance those races, peoples or communities who for various reasons are not yet able to stand alone” – in this case the Jewish people – according to J. Stoyanovsky writing in The Mandate for Palestine. Around the same period of time, the international community discussed setting up mandates to assist other nations in similar situations, such as the Armenians, although in their case it wasn’t implemented.

Contrary to Palestinian claims, none of the resolutions passed since the San Remo Conference renounce the Jewish claim to a united Jerusalem. U.N. Resolution 181, although it called for Jerusalem to be an international city, never held any force under international law and it was rejected by the Arab side. Furthermore, the resolution states that a referendum was to be held after 10 years to determine changes to the city’s status; since Jerusalem had a Jewish majority, it was expected that a united Jerusalem was to become a part of Israel after 10 years. Furthermore, U.N. Security Resolution 242, of which all peace negotiations are based on, deliberately makes no mention of Jerusalem and does not call upon Israel to withdraw from all of the territories it captured in 1967. And finally, when Jordan controlled east Jerusalem, Jordan’s annexation of the area was never recognized by the international community; and since that date, Jordan has relinquished all of her claims to Jerusalem.

Thus, Israel has the strongest claim to Jerusalem according to international law.

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