amy: ali gharib is a contributor to the nation.his most recent piece is headlined, "dissent breaks out at the center for american progress over netanyahu's visit." we will be back with him in a minute. ♪ [music break] amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. would ask about some of the objections raised by center for american progress staff last week regarding the invitation to netanyahu. in the statement they read aloud, they wrote -- what do we meanwhile, the cap executive vice president for sternal affairs told foreign policy magazine that as a think tank "we believe we need to be open and engaging with people we don't agree with." she pointed out the israelis initially reached out to cap and in the past, cap has been "highly critical of the prime minister for only dealing with the right." she would on to say -- ali gharib, and can you comment on what she said and whether from your assessment from the event the questions asked were critical of netanyahu? >> i t

ali gharib, contributor to "the nation" magazine, and kiron skinner, an advisor for rand paul.est in terms of if you're a republican candidate and you're looking to take advantage of what has transpired in the last week, who seems to have played this best? kiron, first with you. >> i hope that no one is using this as an opportunity to play it best but to really krb lly ce to our understanding of the challenges that we face. i think everyone is stumbling with this -- the paris and mali attacks because it is difficult to find a common language about the global conflict we're in. this is where i think the president could have made some ground this week and maybe even pushed the republicans into a different type of conversation. we know that we're not at war with a billion muslims. but we are in a global war on terror that is largely led by muslims, that's largely funded and yideologically supported by the saudis. i think if we had talked to the american public about the fact that we really are in a long war, that would have -- >> now you're saying there was a vacuum from the vacuu