Obama, Biden skipping AIPAC summit?

The White House will not send President Obama, Vice President Biden or Secretary of State John Kerry to speak at a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group’s annual event, The Wall Street Journal reports.

{mosads}The newspaper repots that the administration will announce as early as Thursday that it will send a senior official to next week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference but hasn’t yet decided who will go.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday that the White House will provide more information soon, adding that the administration didn’t want to announce its plans before informing AIPAC.

“Once we’ve made a decision, we’ll get back to AIPAC about who the speakers will be, and then we’ll be in a position to talk about it,” he said.

“It does seem just as a matter of common courtesy. It seems like we should respond to their invitation first, and then we can talk about it publicly.”

AIPAC’s conference comes the same week as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech to Congress. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) invited Netanyahu without conferring with the White House, a move that Democrats and the White House have panned as partisan.

White House national security adviser Susan Rice said Wednesday that the visit is “destructive” to the Israeli-American relationship. Earnest defended those comments later that day.