Schmuck With Earflaps Goes Nuclear On Netanyahu

[The Guesser]

[h=1]Former Mossad head urges Israeli voters to oust Binyamin Netanyahu[/h] Meir Dagan says prime minister’s policies are ‘destructive to the future and security of Israel’




Binyamin Netanyahu has said he believes that his speech is necessary to strengthen opposition
to a potential nuclear deal with Iran being negotiated by the US and key allies.

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
Friday 27 February 2015 14.09 EST Last modified on Friday 27 February 2015 19.07 EST




A former head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service Mossad is urging voters to oust Binyamin Netanyahu in the next general election, accusing the prime minister of endangering the country’s security with his stance on the Iranian nuclear programme.

Meir Dagan, a vocal critic of Netanyahu’s Iran policy since stepping down as Mossad chief four years ago, is to be a keynote speaker at a rally in Tel Aviv next weekend, calling on the public to turf the prime minister out of office on 17 March.
Netanyahu was due to fly to Washington on Friday.
In a trenchant critique of Netanyahu’s leadership, delivered in a long interview in Israel’s biggest-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Dagan said the prime minister’s policies were “destructive to the future and security of Israel”.

Netanyahu’s planned speech has brought the already uncomfortable state of relations with the Obama administration to a new low amid suspicion that the speech – at the invitation of Republican house speaker John Boehner – was designed to enhance the Israeli prime minister’s electoral prospects.
Netanyahu has said he believes that his speech is necessary to strengthen opposition to a potential nuclear deal with Iran being negotiated by the US and key allies.
The intervention by Dagan – who ended his tenure as the head of Mossad in 2011 – is doubly significant because he shares the prime minister’s view over the risk posed by a nuclear Iran and is regarded as generally hawkish on defence and security matters.

Netanyahu has made security and the Iranian nuclear programme – and the US-led negotiations to contain it – his key election issue.
Recent days have also seen anonymous criticism of Netanyahu’s speech from serving intelligence officers as well as from former diplomats and political figures in Israel, including Isaac Herzog, the leader of the opposition.
Saying that he was aware that Israel was already “paying a high price” over the confrontation with the Obama administration – albeit in ways he could not disclose – Dagan said: “The person causing the most strategic harm to Israel on the Iranian issue is the prime minister.

“As someone who has served Israel in various security capacities for 45 years, including during the country’s most difficult hours, I feel that we are now at a critical point regarding our existence and our security.
“Our standing in the world is not brilliant right now. The question of Israel’s legitimacy is up for debate. We should not erode our relations with our most important friend. Certainly not in public, certainly not by becoming involved in its domestic politics. This is not proper behaviour for a prime minister.”
Insisting he held no personal animus towards Netanyahu, who had helped him get a liver transplant, he said: “I have no personal issue with the prime minister, his wife, his spending and the way he conducts himself. I’m talking about the country he leads.
“An Israeli prime minister who clashes with the US administration has to ask himself what the risks are. On the matter of settlements, there is no difference between the two [US] parties. And even so, they provide us with a veto umbrella. In a situation of a confrontation, this umbrella is liable to vanish, and within a short time, Israel could find itself facing international sanctions.

“The risks of such a clash are intolerable. We are already today paying a high price. Some of them I know and cannot elaborate.
“I would not have confronted the United States and its president. Netanyahu may get applause in Congress, but all the power is in the White House. What will Netanyahu gain by addressing Congress? I just don’t understand it. Is his goal to get a standing ovation? This trip to Washington is doomed to failure.”
Dagan’s intervention follows that of fellow former Mossad head Shabtai Shavit and the former head of the elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit who are among scores of former commanders involved in a video published on Facebook calling for Israel to replace Netanyahu.

Netanyahu’s determination to push on with his speech has seen unusually critical remarks from senior US administration officials in the last week who have gone out of their way to express their displeasure.
Among them was John Kerry, the secretary of state, who openly questioned Netanyahu’s judgment on the issue, and Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice who warned that it was “destructive to the fabric” of US-Israeli relations.
Netanyahu’s plans to speak to Congress have also irritated many Democratic party members who view the speech as a partisan intervention in US politics on the side of the Republican party, prompting a number of Democrats to say they would not attend the speech.
The speech is also being snubbed by Obama and Joe Biden, his vice president.
After leaving Mossad, Dagan went public with his criticism of Netanyahu’s Iran policy, saying a military attack on Iran was “the stupidest thing I have ever heard”.

 

[The Guesser]

[h=1]The Real Subject of Netanyahu's Congressional Spectacle (It Isn't Nukes)[/h] Paul R. Pillar

inShare​

Benjamin Netanyahu will talk next week, as he has innumerable times before, about how an Iranian nuclear weapon is supposedly an extremely grave and imminent (he has been saying for years that it is just around the corner) threat to world peace and to his nation. There has been genuine concern in Israel about this subject, but Netanyahu's own behavior and posture indicate this is not the concern that is driving his conduct and in particular his diplomacy-wrecking efforts. He is acting out of other motives, ones that—quite unlike the objective of avoiding an Iranian nuclear weapon—are not shared with the United States and instead directly conflict with U.S. interests.
There have been plenty of reasons to doubt all along Netanyahu's alarmist rhetoric. There has been his history of wolf-crying on the subject, against the background of an Iran that has not even decided to build a nuclear weapon. There is the further background of Israel's overwhelming military superiority in the region, at not only the conventional level but also at the level about which Netanyahu is raising such alarm [4]. And there are the repeated indications that his alarmism goes beyond what even his own security services believe [5].

But even those reasons are not the main ones to conclude that Netanyahu is not acting on behalf of precluding an Iranian nuclear weapon. The main, and most obvious, reason is that he is pushing for an outcome that would remove restrictions and enhanced monitoring of the Iranian nuclear program and would give the Iranians more freedom to expand that program than they otherwise would have. That would be the result of destroying the negotiation process that Netanyahu is trying to destroy, while destroying along with it the preliminary agreement that has kept the Iranian program more heavily restricted and monitored than it had ever been before. An absence of agreement is the only plausible alternative [6] to whatever agreement emerges from the current negotiations, and Netanyahu is smart enough to realize that.

The made-for-TV (and for Israeli campaign ads) platform in the House of Representatives chamber does not give members of Congress an opportunity to ask questions of Netanyahu. All that members can do is to bob up and down out of their seats in a gluteus-abusing way of supposedly expressing their “support for Israel.” But if they could ask questions, the glaring question begging to be asked is, “Mr. Prime Minister, if you really are so concerned about the possibility of the Iranian nuclear program leading to a nuclear weapon, why are you urging us to take actions that would result in that program having fewer restrictions, and less international monitoring, than it otherwise would?”

The prime objective that Netanyahu is pursuing, and that is quite consistent with his lobbying and other behavior, is not the prevention of an Iranian nuclear weapon but instead the prevention of any agreement with Iran. It is not the specific terms of an agreement that are most important to him, but instead whether there is to be any agreement at all. Netanyahu's defense minister recently made the nature of the objective explicit [7]when he denounced in advance “every deal” that could be made between the West and Tehran. As accompaniments to an absence of any agreements between the West and Iran, the Israeli government's objective includes permanent pariah status for Iran and in particular an absence of any business being done, on any subject, between Washington and Tehran.

From Netanyahu's viewpoint this objective serves several purposes. It diminishes the freedom of action of a major competitor (the second most populous country in the Middle East) for regional influence, and one that will continue to be highly critical of Israel as long as the Palestinian issue endures. By postulating a permanent, ominous threat emanating from Iran, one of the assumptions underlying a U.S. strategic relationship with Israel is retained. By opposing—and to the extent Israeli efforts are successful, preventing—the United States from doing any worthwhile business with Iran, whether on nuclear matters or on anything else, the Israeli claim to being the only reliable and effective U.S. partner in the region sounds more convincing.
The specter of Iran and especially of its nuclear program also serves as the best possible distraction and diversion from issues in which Israel is the chief problem and that Netanyahu and his government would rather not talk about. This especially includes, of course, the continued Israeli occupation of, and policies in, Palestinian territory. Netanyahu repeatedly and quickly responds to efforts by others to engage on these other issues, and especially to any direct criticism of Israeli policies, by reminding us that Iran is the “real” threat to peace and security in the region. Permanent festering of the Iranian nuclear issue serves Netanyahu's objectives better than any resolution of the issue would.
The United States does not share an interest in any of these objectives, and some of them are clearly contrary to U.S. interests. The United States does not have an interest in blanket favoring of any one competitor for regional influence over others; it instead has interests in many individual issues, on some of which its interests might align with those of particular regional players and on others of which it may share interests with other players. It is contrary to U.S. interests to give the right-wing Israeli government any means to perpetuate the occupation and the unresolved conflict with the Palestinians, given the multiple ways, including having the United States share blame for the occupation in the eyes of most Middle Easterners, that the occupation redounds to the disadvantage of the United States.
Probably the most direct conflict with U.S. interests comes from Netanyahu in effect telling the United States that it cannot do business with certain other countries, and that it cannot fully use its diplomatic tools to pursue U.S. interests as it sees fit. It is in the U.S. interest to use diplomacy with Iran, most obviously and immediately to restrict the Iranian nuclear program but also potentially on many other issues of importance to the United States. Netanyahu is trying to keep one of the United States' hands tied behind its back. He is trying to restrict the freedom of action not just of Iran but of the United States. That is bad for U.S. interests no matter what party is in power in Washington, no matter who is the U.S. president, no matter what other countries U.S. diplomacy may touch, and no matter what specific policies the U.S. administration of the day may want to achieve and ought to have both hands free to try to achieve.
Amid all the understandable controversy about the highly inappropriate way in which Netanyahu's Congressional appearance has come about, there have been appeals to focus on the substance at hand. Good advice—as long as we recognize the actual substance and the actual game being played. We should not be diverted by the scaremongering rhetoric from the man at the podium, who is acting so inconsistently with the implications of his own rhetoric, any more than we should dwell forever on the underhanded political games that got him there. In between the bounces on their seats, members of Congress should think hard about whether it is Likud's interests or U.S. interests that they have at heart, and how efforts associated with the former are undermining the latter.

 

[The Guesser]

Grow baby Grow. My Senators and Congressman are too gutless to reply to my E Mail about this. I'm sure they will after the debacle. Kudos to the ones with guts below:

34 Democrats skipping Netanyahu's speech
Posted: Feb 26, 2015 10:16 PM EST Updated: Feb 27, 2015 2:18 PM EST

By Alexandra Jaffe CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to a joint session of Congress next week has further strained an already tense relationship with President Barack Obama.
And a number of top Democrats --- including Vice President Joe Biden, whose job description includes the title President of the Senate --- won't be attending.
Netanyahu is expected to use the speech to sharply criticize the White House's efforts to negotiate a deal on Iran's nuclear program and to urge Congress to pass new sanctions on the nation, a position that puts him sharply at odds with the president. On Tuesday, National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Netanyahu's decision to speak was "destructive to the fabric of the relationship" between Israel and the U.S.
The expected substance of the speech, coupled with the fact that the White House was not alerted to the invite ahead of time, has Democrats crying foul.
Twenty-seven Democratic House members and four Democratic senators have said in recent weeks they're not going to the speech, many in protest to a move that they say is an affront to the president.
Many more have said they're undecided on whether to attend, and more defections could emerge in the coming days. A full list of the Democrats who have confirmed they're missing the speech follows:
SENATE - 4 members
Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.)
Sen. Patrick Leahy (Vt.)
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii)
HOUSE - 30 members
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (Ore.)
Rep. G.K. Butterfield (N.C.)
Rep. Andre Carson (Ind.)
Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.)
Rep. Steve Cohen (Tenn.)
Rep. Peter DeFazio (Ore.)
Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.)
Rep. Donna Edwards (Md.)
Rep. Keith Ellison (Minn.)
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.)
Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (Ill.)
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.)
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (Texas)
Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.)
Rep. John Lewis (Ga.)
Rep. Betty McCollum (Minn.)
Rep. Jim McDermott (Wash.)
Rep. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.)
Rep. Beto O'Rourke (Texas)
Rep. Chellie Pingree (Maine)
Rep. Charles Rangel (N.Y.)
Rep. Cedric Richmond (La.)
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (Ill.)
Rep. Bennie Thompson (Miss.)
Rep. John Yarmuth (Ky.)
Rep. Danny Davis (Ill.)
Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.)
Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.)
Rep. Kathleen Clark (Mass.)
Rep. William Lacy Clay (Mo.)

 

[duckhunter]

Guesser, as I've stated before, netanyahu is only after saving his own skin, and saving his political career at any cost. If he truly believes in Israel's best interests, he would not be acting like a lunatic. Here's another great read.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/...yahu-speech/Il1CgIXxb41b9Zir1SwbFP/story.html

 

[duckhunter]

[h=2]Binyamin Netanyahu’s expensive speech[/h] Editor

By Uri Avnery
Winston Churchill famously said that democracy is the worst political system, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Anyone involved with political life knows that that is British understatement.
Churchill also said that the best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with an average voter. How true.
I have witnessed 20 election campaigns for the Knesset. In five of them I was a candidate, in three of them I was elected.
As a child I also witnessed three election campaigns in the dying days of the Weimar republic, and one (the last more or less democratic one) after the Nazi ascent to power.
(The Germans at that time were very good at graphic propaganda, both political and commercial. After more than 80 years, I still remember some of their election posters.)
[h=3]For God’s sake, do not mention peace![/h] Elections are a time of great excitement. The streets are plastered with propaganda, politicians talk themselves hoarse, sometimes violent clashes break out.
Not now. Not here. Seventeen days before the election, there is an eerie silence. A stranger coming to Israel would not notice that there is an election going on. Hardly any posters in the streets. Articles in the newspapers on many other subjects. People shouting at each other on TV as usual. No rousing speeches. No crowded mass meetings.
Everybody knows that this election may be crucial, far more so than most.
It may be the final battle for the future of Israel – between the zealots of Greater Israel and the supporters of a liberal state. Between a mini-empire that dominates and oppresses another people and a decent democracy. Between settlement expansion and a serious search for peace. Between what has been called here “swinish capitalism” and a welfare state.
Seventeen days before the election, there is an eerie silence. A stranger coming to Israel would not notice that there is an election going on.


In short, between two very different kinds of Israel.
So what is being said about this fateful choice?
Nothing.
The word “peace” – shalom in Hebrew – is not mentioned at all. God forbid. It is considered political poison. As we say in Hebrew: “He who wants to save his soul must distance himself.”
All the “professional advisers”, with whom this country is teeming, strongly admonish their clients never ever to utter it. “Say political agreement, if you must. But for God’s sake, do not mention peace!”
Same about occupation, settlements, transfer (of populations) and such. Keep away. Voters may suspect that you have an opinion. Avoid it like the plague.
The Israeli welfare state, once the envy of many countries (remember the kibbutz?) is falling apart. All our social services are crumbling. The money goes to the huge army, big enough for a medium power. So does anyone suggest drastically reducing the military? Of course not. What, stick the knife in the backs of our valiant soldiers? Open the gates to our many enemies? Why, that’s treason!
So what do the politicians and the media talk about? What is exciting the public mind? What reaches the headlines and evening news?
Only the really serious matters. Does the prime minister’s wife pocket the coins for returned bottles? Does the prime minister’s official residence show signs of neglect? Did Sara Netanyahu use public funds to install a private hairdresser’s room in the residence?
[h=3]The Great Absent One[/h] So, where is the main opposition party, the Zionist Camp (also known as the Labour Party)?
The party labours (no pun intended) under a great disadvantage: its leader is the Great Absent One of this election.
Yitzhak Herzog does not have a commanding presence. Of slight build, more like a boy than a hardened warrior, with a thin, high voice, he does not seem like a natural leader. Cartoonists have a hard time with him. He does not have any pronounced characteristics that make him easily recognisable.
He reminds me of Clement Attlee. When the British Labour Party could not decide between two conspicuous candidates, they elected Attlee as the compromise candidate.
He, too, had no commanding features. (Churchill again: An empty car approached and Major Attlee got out.) The world gasped when the British, even before the end of World War II, kicked Churchill out and elected Attlee. But Attlee turned out to be a very good prime minister. He got out in time from India (and Palestine), set up the welfare state and much more.
Herzog started out well. By setting up a joint election list with Tzipi Livni he created momentum and put the moribund Labour Party on its feet again. He adopted a popular name for the new list. He showed that he could make decisions. And there it stopped.
The Zionist Camp fell silent. Internal quarrels paralysed the election staff.
(I published two articles in Haaretz calling for a joint list of the Zionist Camp, Meretz and Ya’ir Lapid’s party. It would have balanced the left and the centre. It would have generated rousing new momentum. But the initiative could only have come from Herzog. He ignored it. So did Meretz. So did Lapid. I hope they won’t regret it.)
Now Meretz is teetering on the brink of the electoral threshold, and Lapid is slowly recovering from his deep fall in the polls, building mainly on his handsome face.
In spite of everything, Likud and the Zionist camp are running neck and neck. The polls give each 23 seats (of 120), predicting a photo finish and leaving the historic decision to a number of small and tiny parties.
[h=3]A game changer for worse[/h] The only game changer in sight is the coming speech by Binyamin Netanyahu before the two Houses of Congress.
It seems that Netanyahu is pinning all his hopes on this event. And not without reason.
All Israeli TV stations will broadcast the event live. It will show him at his best. The great statesman, addressing the most important parliament in the world, pleading for the very existence of Israel.
Netanyahu is an accomplished TV personality. He is not a great orator in the style of Menachem Begin (not to mention Winston Churchill), but on TV he has few competitors. Every movement of his hands, every expression of his face, every hair on his head is exactly right. His American English is perfect.
I cannot imagine any more effective election propaganda. Using the Congress of the United States of America as a propaganda prop is a stroke of genius.


The leader of the Jewish ghetto pleading at the court of the Goyish king for his people is a well-known figure in Jewish history. Every Jewish child reads about him in school. Consciously or unconsciously, people will be reminded.
The chorus of senators and congress(wo)men will applaud wildly, jump up and down every few minutes and express their unbounded admiration in every way, except licking his shoes.
Some brave Democrats will absent themselves, but the Israeli viewers will not notice this, since it is the habit on such occasions to fill all empty seats with members of the staff.
No propaganda spectacle could be more effective. The voters will be compelled to ask themselves how Herzog would have looked in the same circumstances.
I cannot imagine any more effective election propaganda. Using the Congress of the United States of America as a propaganda prop is a stroke of genius.
[h=3]Spitting in President Obama’s face[/h] Milton Friedman asserted that there is no such thing as a free lunch, and this lunch has a high price indeed.
It means almost literally spitting in the face of President Obama. I don’t think there was ever anything like it. The prime minister of a small vassal country, dependent on the US for practically everything, comes to the capital of the US to openly challenge its president, in effect branding him a cheat and a liar. His host is the opposition party.
Like Abraham, who was ready to slaughter his son to please God, Netanyahu is ready to sacrifice Israel’s most vital interests for election victory.
For many years, Israeli ambassadors and other functionaries have toiled mightily to enlist both the White House and the Congress in the service of Israel. When Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin came to Washington and found that the support for Israel was centred in the Congress, he made a large – and successful – effort to win over the Nixon White House.
Like Abraham, who was ready to slaughter his son to please God, Netanyahu is ready to sacrifice Israel’s most vital interests for election victory.


AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and other Jewish organisations have worked for generations to secure the support of both American parties and practically all senators and congress(wo)men. For years now, no politician on Capitol Hill dared to criticise Israel. It was tantamount to political suicide. The few who tried were cast into the wilderness.
And here comes Netanyahu and destroys all of this edifice for one election spectacle. He has declared war on the Democratic Party, cutting the bond that has connected Jews with this party for more than a century. Destroying the bipartisan support. Allowing Democratic politicians for the first time to criticise Israel. Breaking a generations-old taboo that may not be restored.
President Obama, who is being insulted, humiliated and obstructed in his most cherished policy move, the agreement with Iran, would be superhuman if he did not brood on revenge. Even a movement of his little finger could hurt Israel grievously.
Does Netanyahu care? Of course he cares. But he cares more about his re-election.
Much, much more.



[h=3][/h]

 

[duckhunter]

In the history of war and peace in this 21st century, crucial decisions in the next several weeks may determine in which direction this troubled planet will go. With the deadline looming in nuclear negotiations with Iran, success will open historic opportunities to solve several of the region’s intractable problems. Failure, on the other hand, may plunge the world into catastrophic military conflict.

The encouraging news is that an international agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program appears to be in sight. It would grant Iran the right to peaceful nuclear energy, but ensure that it doesn’t have the capability of building a nuclear bomb. We shall know more about this in the days ahead.




But before then, we all must endure a farce. And, yes, it is one that is starring the extreme right wing of Israeli and American politics.

Next Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s alarmist-in-chief, will make a mockery of American democracy by going to Washington to speak to a formal session of the U.S. Congress. Ostensibly, he has been invited by Congressional Republicans to repeat his government’s wild-eyed warnings about the “existential” threat of Iran.

But more to the point, this is about a spineless politician coming to the end of an Israeli election campaign, willing to do anything to wreck a potential deal with Iran and, in the process, eager to give the finger to his archenemy, President Barack Obama.

Netanyahu’s visit was initiated by House Speaker John Boehner and Israel’s U.S. ambassador but without consultation with the White House. This breach of protocol has produced anxious division among American Jews and partisan conflict among U.S. politicians. Dozens of Democrats, including Vice-President Joe Biden, will skip the event.

It has also caused a firestorm in Israel. Accusing Netanyahu of treating the U.S. like a “banana republic,” journalist Oudeh Basharat wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “It’s not a speech. Nor is it Israeli chutzpah. For all intents and purposes, it’s a coup.”

In spite of the insult, Basharat writes, Netanyahu knows that the United States “won’t lift a finger against Israel” in retaliation: “Such reactions by the U.S. banana republic whet Netanyahu’s appetite. The Arabic expression puts it this way: ‘When someone is used to riding on your back, every time he sees you, he feels tired.’”

It wasn’t always thus. There were examples in the 1980s and 1990s when U.S. governments dealt sternly with Israeli hubris. But Netanyahu has a long history of rubbing foreign politicians the wrong way.

At the G20 summit in France in 2011, French President Nicolas Sarkozy branded the Israeli prime minister a “liar” in a private conversation with Obama: “I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar.” Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more than you.”

After his first White House meeting with President Bill Clinton in 1996, Clinton was quoted by his Mideast envoy as having said afterward about Netanyahu: “Who the f--- does he think he is? Who’s the f---ing superpower here?” Good questions, Bill.

But it appears the Obama administration’s irritation with Netanyahu’s congressional gambit has hit the breaking point. On Tuesday, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, was blunt about how Netanyahu’s speech will hurt U.S.-Israeli ties: “It’s destructive of the fabric of the relationship.”

A few days earlier, Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, said that Israel, in its criticism of the Iranian negotiations, has been “cherry-picking specific pieces of information and using them out of context to distort the negotiating position of the U.S.”

This approach is vintage Netanyahu. Over the years, he has consistently lied about the Iranian threat. Never has he mentioned that the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons is the State of Israel — not Iran.

We should be thankful that while this farce unfolds in Congress serious negotiators representing six of the world’s leading powers will be hard at work in Geneva trying to come up with a historic breakthrough. Like Richard Nixon’s dramatic overture to China in 1972, this may eventually be regarded as Obama’s greatest achievement

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[ScottL]

Senate Unanimously Welcomes Netanyahu to America

No Senate Democrats block measure backing Bibi’s speech
By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON
The Senate on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution welcoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to America and endorsing his speech before a joint session of Congress.


Critics of the Obama administration view the unanimous approval as a rebuke to the White House and Democrats, who have vowed to boycott Netanyahu’s address and work to counter his warnings about the dangers of a nuclear Iran.


No Senate Democrats sponsored the measure, which attracted 50 Republican cosponsors. However, none attempted to block its passage, signaling that support for Israel and Netanyahu’s message has outweighed a pressure campaign by the Obama administration to sabotage the address.


“The Senate warmly welcomes the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, on his visit to the United States, which provides a timely opportunity to reinforce the United State-Israel relationship,” the resolution states.


Congress “eagerly awaits the address of Prime Minister Netanyahu before a joint meeting of the United States Congress,” it continues.
The lawmakers go on to reaffirm their “commitment to stand with Israel during times of uncertainty” and vow to “strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself from threats to its very survival,” according to the measure.


Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas), the chief sponsor of the resolution, said in a statement that the United States must be vocal about its support for the Jewish state as the Obama administration works toward a final deal with Iran that critics argue would permit it to retain the most controversial aspects of its nuclear infrastructure.


“During this time of such great instability and danger in the Middle East, the United States should be unequivocal about our commitment to one of our closest and most important allies,” Cornyn said. “I hope all my colleagues will join me in welcoming Prime Minister Netanyahu to Washington so we can continue to work together to advance our common security interests.”


Passage of the measure came on the same day it was revealed that Netanyahu would be meeting with top senators in a private meeting about Iran. The two events indicate a forceful and coordinated pushback against claims that the speech is partisan in nature.


Netanyahu is expected to tell Congress in his address—which comes as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) holds its annual conference—that the White House is on the cusp of agreeing to a deal with Iran.


Some congressional Democrats have already promised to boycott the speech, claiming Netanyahu’s presence in the United States is an attempt to interfere with the White House’s diplomacy.


The White House is already laying groundwork behind the scenes to oppose Netanyahu’s remarks. Administration officials will take to the Sunday morning news shows and other avenues to speak in favor of a deal, the Associated Press reported earlier this week.


One pro-Israel political strategist said the passage of the resolution welcoming Netanyahu highlights an internal struggle taking place among Democrats.


“By refusing to block this resolution that passed unanimously, Democrats are showing they’re still grappling with this new political situation surrounding the U.S.–Israel relationship,” said the source, who requested anonymity. “Clearly, they’re still in the process of formulating how they’re going to respond to this new context.”


“And you can see part of the internal struggle of these members play out in public when Democrats don’t cosponsor the resolution, but don’t object when it’s brought up for unanimous consent,” the source said. “Even the most liberal Democratic senator didn’t object when it would have been easy to do so if they wanted.”

 

[ScottL]

Stop the witch-hunt against Netanyahu

[YNET, Netanyahu’s arch enemy, published this article.]


Op-ed: Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, Herzog is underestimating evil and its promises to wipe the Jewish state off the map, while the media and left-wing camp are concentrating on PM’s so-called ‘corruption.’
Shoula Romano Horing, YNET


Until the current election campaign and the daily vicious, personal attacks against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, I think I never really gauged the media and center-left camp’s cruelty, or their recklessness in regard to the security and safety of Israel and the Jewish people.
I never realized how low they are willing to descend to have an Israel without Netanyahu and to replace him with Tzipi Livni and Isaac Herzog as US President Barack Obama’s and the Europeans’ weak and obedient poodles.


In the same week that it was reported that the West was making too many concessions in the negotiations that will establish jihadist Iran as a threshold nuclear state with less than a one year breakout time, the left is obsessing with Netanyahu and his wife’s alleged overspending.


In the same week that the International Atomic Energy Agency expressed concerns that Iran is hiding possible military elements of its nuclear program, the media only talks about Netanyahu’s recycled bottles and his spending on furniture and food while hosting world leaders and dignitaries.


In the same week that the Labor Party’s Herzog told the Washington Post that he “trusts US president Obama to reach a good deal on Iran” and declined to call a potentially nuclear Iran “an existential threat” to Israel, the media has been calling for a police investigation of Netanyahu over nothing.


The media is silent about the fact that one week before Netanyahu’s speech to the Congress about Iran, Herzog decided to undermine and publicly contradict his own prime minister by saying that a nuclear Iran is only “a big threat. That’s enough.”


Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, an Israeli leader, in the tradition of Neville Chamberlain, is again underestimating evil and its spoken promises that it intends to wipe the Jewish state off the map, while the media concentrates instead on Netanyahu’s so-called “corruption” for choosing not to welcome world leaders in a dingy, rundown, tiny house with worn out furniture and no food or alcohol.


Islamic evil similar to Nazism is rising and spreading in the Middle East and the media, and Herzog and Livni are keeping their heads in the sand. They are telling us that they will consider dividing Jerusalem and withdraw from the West Bank, in the same week Jews were being victimized again at a synagogue in Copenhagen, a four-year-old Israeli girl died from injuries she suffered in a Palestinian terrorist attack and a Jewish man was stabbed.


These are scary times for Israel. The elections in Israel should be about issues and the future vision the candidates have for the country. The elections should be about who is the most experienced and competent leader to defend Israel’s interests and guarantee its survival.
Jews do not have another country besides Israel and they need to have a strong Jewish state as a safe haven, especially when anti-Semitism is on the rise everywhere.


Israel exists in the dangerous Middle East where the perception of power is the true power. The only leader left that Israel’s enemies fear is Netanyahu. They all know that he is the only one who can resist Obama’s pressures in the next two years to prevent a threshold nuclear Iran and another Hamastan with Islamic jihadists in the West Bank and Jerusalem.


Netanyahu does not deserve character assassination and baseless accusations after choosing to dedicate his life to serving Israel instead of his own personal interests. He Joined the IDF during the Six-Day War in 1967 and became a team leader in Sayeret Matkal, an elite special forces unit. He took part in many missions fighting terrorists and led a commando unit assault deep in Syrian territory. He was wounded twice in combat. He has been the UN ambassador and the foreign minister and has been tirelessly defending Israel on American TV for over 30 years.


He has become the most recognizable Israeli leader in the US and its most effective advocate and the Americans seem to embrace him as one of their own. A Gallup poll just taken in February, 2015 found that 70% of Americans perceive Israel favorably and 62% say they sympathize more with the Israelis than the Palestinians, despite the recent friction between Obama and Netanyahu and the leftist media‘s doomsday warnings about US- Israeli relations.


Moreover, Netanyahu as finance minister revived and restored a stagnate, and uncertain Israeli economy during Yasser Arafat’s war of terror by moving toward a more liberalized and free market economy, and encouraging investment in research and high tech.


If Netanyahu was corrupt or greedy he would have stayed in private business like his ex-co-worker Mitt Romney. In the 1970s, Romney attended business school at Harvard while Netanyahu attended MIT. After graduating near the top of their classes, they both ended up in the Boston Consulting Group. But after two years, while Romney proceeded to private consulting and accumulated more than $250 million in wealth, Netanyahu chose instead to return back to Israel to serve his country. Do you really think that such a man would or need to “steal” money from his country for his personal needs?


Every Western leader lives in splendor and wealth despite the conditions of their national economy. Despite a continuing recession and stagnant personal income for the last six years, President Obama resides in the White House and his spending on state dinners while hosting foreign leaders reportedly has been soaring.


Despite a 10% unemployment rate in France, the president lives in the Élysée Palace.


Moreover, if the media is not politically motivated, why it is ignoring the same State Comptroller report which found that President Peres’ spending exceeded the budget for his presidential residence an average of NIS 18 million shekels annually over four years?


The media and the left-center camp have done enough to assassinate and undermine the prime minister of the only Jewish state. Have they no sense of decency, at long last?


The media and the center-left politicians have seen fit to bring out gutter politics, and if there is God in heaven, it will do neither them nor their cause any good, and they will be soundly defeated in the coming elections by Israeli voters.

Shoula Romano Horing is an attorney. Her blog can be found here: www.shoularomanohoring.com .

 

[ScottL]

[h=3]Why Bibi’s Speech Matters[/h] [h=2]Column: It exposes the Iran deal as indefensible—and Obama’s politics as bankrupt[/h]Matthew Continetti, FREE BEACON
The emerging nuclear deal with Iran is indefensible. The White House knows it. That is why President Obama does not want to subject an agreement to congressional approval, why critics of the deal are dismissed as warmongers, and why the president, his secretary of state, and his national security adviser have spent several weeks demonizing the prime minister of Israel for having the temerity to accept an invitation by the U.S. Congress to deliver a speech on a subject of existential import for his small country. These tactics distract public attention. They turn a subject of enormous significance to American foreign policy into a petty personal drama. They prevent us from discussing what America is about to give away.


And America is about to give away a lot. This week the AP reported on what an agreement with Iran might look like: sanctions relief in exchange for promises to slow down Iranian centrifuges for 10 years. At which point the Iranians could manufacture a bomb—assuming they hadn’t produced one in secret. Iran would get international legitimacy, assurance that military intervention was not an option, and no limitations on its ICBM programs, its support for international terrorism, its enrichment of plutonium, its widespread human rights violations, and its campaign to subvert or co-opt Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, and Syria. Then it can announce itself as the first Shiite nuclear power.


And America? Liberals would flatter themselves for avoiding a war. Obama wouldn’t have to worry about the Iranians testing a nuke for the duration of his presidency. And a deal would be a step toward the rapprochement with Iran that he has sought throughout his years in office. The EU representative to the talks, for example, says a nuclear agreement “could open the way for a normal diplomatic relation” between Iran and the West, and could present “the opportunity for shaping a different regional framework in the Middle East.” A regional framework, let it be said, that would leave American interests at risk, Israel one bomb away from a second Holocaust, nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle East, and Islamic theocrats in charge of a large part of a strategic and volatile region.


I feel safer already.


Close to a decade of negotiations meant to end the Iranian nuclear program is about to culminate in the legitimization of that program and an enriched—in both senses of the word—empowered, and no less hostile Iran. Our government and the media that so often resembles its propaganda organ will attempt to characterize this colossal failure of nerve as a personal victory for a lame duck president and a milestone in international relations.

It is important that they lose this battle, that the Iran deal is revealed to the world for the capitulation that it is, that the dangers of sub-letting the Middle East to the Koranic scholars of Qom and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are given expression, not only for substantive reasons of policy and security but also because the way in which the advocates of détente have behaved has been reprehensible.


What the opponents of a bad deal with Iran have witnessed over the last few months is the transference of Obama’s domestic political strategies to the international stage.

A senior administration official is on record likening an Iranian nuclear agreement to Obamacare, and the comparison makes sense not only in the relative importance of the two policies to this president, not only because both policies are terrible and carry within them unforeseen consequences that will not be manifest for years, but also because of the way opponents of both policies are treated by the White House. If they are not ignored or dismissed, their motives are impugned. They are attacked personally, bullied, made examples of.


The alternative to a bad deal is not a better deal or tougher sanctions, Obama says, but war: “Congress should be aware that if this diplomatic solution fails, then the risks and likelihood that this ends up being at some point a military confrontation is heightened, and Congress will have to own that as well, and that will have to be debated by the American people.”

The opponents of a nuclear Iran aren’t sincere, Obama explained to Senate Democrats last month, but are merely acting at the behest of their (Jewish) donors. Congress has no role to play in either approving of or enforcing a deal with Iran, John Kerry says, because any attempt to strengthen America’s hand or verify that Iran is in compliance would be like “throwing a grenade” into the meeting room.


As for Netanyahu, he is called “chickenshit” by anonymous sources, the national security adviser says his decision to address Congress is “destructive” of the U.S.-Israel alliance, Kerry tells Congress they shouldn’t listen to Bibi because he voiced wan support for regime change in Iraq (a war that Kerry voted to authorize), the congressional liaison rallies the Congressional Black Caucus to boycott the speech, and the administration leaks to the AP its strategy “to undercut” his speech and “blunt his message that a potential nuclear deal with Iran is bad for Israel and the world.” The strategy includes media appearances and the threat of a “pointed snub” of AIPAC, which has done everything it can over the last several years to ignore or acquiesce to President Obama’s anti-Israel foreign policy.


This sort of contempt for one’s opponents has become so commonplace in American politics since the 2010 “bipartisan healthcare summit” where the president snidely told John McCain “the election’s over” that I suppose it was only a matter of time before it influenced the administration’s relationships with foreign powers. But it says something about this president that the only country in the world that he treats seriously as an opponent is the state of Israel—that he holds the Israeli government to a standard he applies to no other government, that he is openly hostile to the elected prime minister of Israel and not-so-secretly hopes for the prime minister to be replaced in the upcoming election, and that he threatens reprisal against an domestic interest group with predominantly Jewish leadership and membership for a disagreement he has with a foreign prime minister—as though Jews were interchangeable when they are not, as in the case of the “deli” where they were “randomly” gunned down, invisible.


Netanyahu’s speech on Tuesday matters precisely because it is a rebuke to the Obama mode of politics to which America has become numb. Netanyahu’s refusal to back down in the face of political and media pressure, his insistence in making his case directly and emphatically, is as much a statement as any of the technical and strategic and moral claims he will make in his speech. And by going to war against Bibi, the White House has inadvertently raised the stature of his address from a diplomatic courtesy to a global event.


Netanyahu’s commitment to warning America about a nuclear Iran has given him the opportunity to explain just how devoid of merit the prospective deal is. His speech is proof that Congress is a co-equal branch of government where substantive argument can triumph over vicious personal attacks and executive overreach and utopian aspirations. Of course Barack Obama can’t stand it.

 

[ScottL]

It is now Friday morning, February 27 2015 in Wisconsin USA. Exactly four nights from now, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will be standing before the joint houses of the United States Congress, giving his invited address to every Republican Party member of the Congress, along with most of the Democratic Party members, various significant invited guests such as Elie Wiesel and many others who want to be there when he makes his historic appearance. And viewing him and listening to what he shall say will possibly be one of the largest aggregate audiences in recent memory.

Nothing that Susan Rice, Barack Hussein Obama, John Kerry, J Street, the present Iranian ayatollah, Nancy Pelosi, Hilary Clinton, Obama’s all but insignificant vice president, or anyone else in the world, shall stop his appearance before the Congress of the United States. The anyone else category includes the Netanyahu’s opposition leaders of the Labor + Livni temporary coalition.

I shall not be so bold as to predict that what the prime minister shall tell the US Congress will change what is now clearly seen as the un-American policies of the current president of the United States. His era shall still go down in history as the one occasion in which an American president deserted his one democratic ally state in the Middle East, for purposes of siding with and appeasing the nuclear weapon appetite of a crazed theocrat whose regime has targeted for destruction not only much of the Islamic Middle East that opposes his threats, but also the United States itself, and the Jewish State of Israel.

But even without bending the treachery of this strangest of all American leaders to date, Mr Netanyahu’s address to the US Congress, the American people, and the world, stands to make a serious impact on the Congress, whose leadership stands in solid opposition to Mr Obama. That opposition is very likely to harden in days and weeks to come. For starters, the United States Senate, whose advice and consent is required for all foreign treaties, would like not consent to any agreement Obama and Kerry negotiate with Iran. Which renders any such treaty null and void.

Mr Obama ought to be intelligent enough to know that he cannot long continue running the public affairs of the USA by edicts issued from the White House without the backing of the United States Congress. They will soon take a case to the United States Supreme Court, also dominated by conservative justices, that the president is violating the very tenets of the United States Constitution.

If and when that happens, Mr Obama will find himself unable to preside over this country. And under such circumstances, the armed forces could in fact come to common understanding that the president is no longer able to function and carry out his duties to defend the United States from external enemies.

If and when matters get that far, the situation could grow ugly, but especially so for a national leader who can no longer count on the loyalty of the country’s armed forces. Those officers are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, just as Mr Obama has done. All this has happened before, throughout history. And, as we all know, there are certain limits to any certitudes, including American exceptionalism. Because ordinary people and numerous influential all across this country are beginning to seriously question the loyalty of this particular president to the fundaments of the culture and the laws of the United States, purportedly the land of his birth, and even greater questions about his Moslem connections through birth and early schooling in a foreign country.

In any case, Mr Obama and his advisers have locked themselves fecklessly into a situation in which — if neither the Speaker of the House of Representatives nor the Prime Minister of Israel could be persuaded or threatened to back down — than the White House’s present occupant would be seen as the loser of a spectacular confrontation, and Mr Netanyahu would be seen — and widely regarded in Beijing, Moscow, Cairo, Athens, Riyadh, and Jerusalem — as the man who called the bluff of this particular US President.

Some of you would argue with me that the very act that shall take place next Tuesday evening — HaShem willing — will have no effect on the Knesset election two weeks later. Without making specific predictions, because I am not a political pollster, I nevertheless am certain there shall be a significant impact, and one that supports Mr Netanyahu.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

 

[ScottL]

[h=3]The Chamberlainization of Israeli politics[/h] Through ongoing attrition by the Arabs and capitulation by the Jews, what once were unthinkable concessions have become perceived policy imperatives.
By Martin Sherman, JPOST

We regard the agreement signed last night… as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again… a British prime minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time.
– Neville Chamberlain, 1938, in wake of signature of the Munich Agreement with Hitler


You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war. – Winston Churchill, 1938, in wake of signature of the Munich Agreement with Hitler


In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners… all are losers…. We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and goodwill… even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators.
– Neville Chamberlain, 1938


You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength… to wage war against a monstrous tyranny…. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory; victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

– Winston Churchill, 1940


Since the late 1960s, following the sweeping military victory of the Six Day War, Israeli politics has been undergoing a malignant metamorphosis. Its progression was gradual, barely perceptible, until the early 1990s, when the metamorphosis mutated into a massive metastasis.


From vaunted virtue to vilified vice
The result has been a stunning sea-change, which has transformed the conduct of the political discourse, the substance of accepted/ acceptable political perceptions, and the assessment of existing/desired political outcomes, making them all virtually unrecognizable relative to those that prevailed decades ago.


The 1993 Oslo Accords, in which Israel agreed to accept the terrorist PLO as a legitimate negotiating partner, was a dramatic discontinuity in the evolution of Zionism.


Indeed, it soon saw a profound transformation of political processes in Israel, in which everything that came after it was qualitatively different – often diametrically opposed – to what came before.


As I noted in my column “Religion of retreat” (June 26, 2014): “Not only did the [Oslo process] grossly distort the founding ethos of Zionism, it inverted its essence and [reversed] the thrust of Zionism’s fundamental principles. What was once vaunted as virtue became vilified as vice – and vice versa.


Thus, it ushered in the previously taboo of Palestinian statehood as an acceptable, even preferred, mainstream policy option.
To justify this ideo-intellectual somersault, its architects began spawning an approach – or rather, a syndrome – that elevated surrender of homeland and abandonment of kin as the loftiest of enlightened values, while denigrating any sign of assertive endorsement of Jewish identity or solidarity as “ethnocratic racism.”


From defiant ‘David’ to compliant ‘Goliath’
Now, almost a quarter-century after the fatal concoction of the noxious Oslowian brew that culminated in the so-called Declaration of Principles (aka Oslo I) on the White House lawn in September 1993, Israel is a vastly different place – not only in terms of outer physical appearance, but in terms of inner spiritual vigor. There appears to be an inverse relationship between the height and opulence of the myriad towering high-rises, springing up in cities all around the country, and the level of national pride and self-esteem Israel conducts itself with in the international arena.


Paradoxically, as the external signs of material success multiply, there seems to be a diminishing belief in the nation’s ability to determine its destiny. The greater the economic prosperity and technological advancement, the less its apparent will to exercise its rights as a sovereign state.
Increasingly, Israel seems to see itself (and allows others to see it) less and less as a diminutive but daringly defiant “David,” and more and more as a compliant “Goliath,” susceptible to pressure, acquiescing to ever-more outrageous demands, plainly detrimental to its national interest, in a frantic effort to avoid appearing intransigent.


But of course, complying with such demands is inevitably counterproductive, for it only whets appetites for further and more far-reaching demands – and heightens impatient expectations that they be complied with, forthwith.


Slippery slope…
In the first volume of his epic series on the Second World War, Winston Churchill, traced the tragic chain of events the Chamberlain government’s policy of appeasement had wrought just prior to the German invasion of Poland: “Look back and see what we had successively accepted or thrown away: a Germany disarmed by solemn treaty; a Germany rearmed in violation of a solemn treaty; air superiority or even air parity cast away; the Rhineland forcibly occupied and the Siegfried Line built or building; the Berlin- Rome Axis established; Austria devoured and digested by the Reich; Czechoslovakia deserted and ruined by the Munich Pact, its fortress line in German hands, its mighty arsenal of Skoda henceforward making munitions for the German armies… the services of 35 Czech divisions against the still unripened German Army cast away… all gone with the wind.”

He lamented the folly and the inevitable consequences of this policy: “… if you will not fight when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival…” Sternly, he warned of the “wrong judgments formed by well-meaning and capable people,” who, “however honorable their motives,” would be “blameworthy before history” for facilitating the tragedy he correctly foresaw, resulting from their futile attempts to assuage dictators by accommodating their demands.


Pernicious parallel
Israeli political leaders would do well to heed the lesson to be learned from the catastrophic consequences that continued concession and capitulation culminated in, for a similar process has afflicted Israeli policy in its struggle to contend with its tyrannical Arab adversaries.
This pernicious parallel is thrown into stark relief by Yitzhak Rabin’s final address to the Knesset (October 5, 1995), barely a month before his assassination. In the address, in which he sought parliamentary ratification of the Oslo II Agreement, he laid out his vision for the permanent agreement with the Palestinians.


Repudiating the now well-known Obama prescription, he asserted categorically, “We will not return to the June 4, 1967, lines.”
Rejecting the idea of a sovereign Palestinian state, he declared: “The permanent solution will include a Palestinian entity which will be an entity which is less than a state.”


Rabin then went on to detail some of “the main changes… which we envision and want in the permanent solution.”
On Jerusalem: “First and foremost, a united Jerusalem, including both Ma’aleh Adumim and Givat Ze’ev – as the capital of Israel, under Israeli sovereignty.”

On the Jordan Valley: “The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest sense of that term.”
On settlements: “Changes which will include the addition of Gush Etzion, Efrat, Betar and other communities, most of which are in the area east of what was the Green Line prior to the Six Day War.”
And perhaps most significantly: “The establishment of [new] blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the ones in Gush Katif” – the latter subsequently destroyed by Ariel Sharon’s 2005 Gaza disengagement.


Once unthinkable concessions; today policy imperatives
As I have pointed out in previous columns (see for example, “A hijacked ‘heritage,’” October 17, 2013) in which I referred to this address, it is remarkable for a number reasons.


First, as mentioned, it was made just prior to his assassination, and as such was his last public prescription for a permanent resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians.


Moreover, not only was it delivered after he had been awarded the Nobel Peace prize and hailed internationally as a “valiant warrior for peace,” it conveyed to the Israeli public the outcome they should expect at the culmination of the Oslo process.

Finally, it should be recalled that, at the time, this Oslo-compliant position articulated by Rabin was considered a radical lurch leftward, entailing concessions not only unthinkable prior to his 1992 election, but totally incompatible with the platform he had presented to the voter.


Yet despite all this; despite fact that the Oslo formula as presented by Rabin was considered by much of the electorate as excessively – indeed, unacceptably – concessionary; despite the fact that it was only ratified in the Knesset by the vote of a soon-to-be convicted drug-smuggling fraudster (then- MK Gonen Segev), if, in the present political climate, it was embraced verbatim by Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, they would be dismissed as unreasonable, unrealistic rejectionists.


Thus, by an ongoing process of attrition by the Arabs on the one hand, and capitulation by the Jews on the other, what once were unthinkable concessions became perceived policy imperatives for any conceivable configuration of a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians.


Uselessness of unctuousness
Predictably, the Oslo-complicit concessions did little to advance the cause of peace or assuage Palestinian grievances. Far-reaching offers, acquiescing to virtually all Palestinians demands, by Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert were rejected or ignored, only precipitating more violent conflagrations.


Further conciliatory gestures by Netanyahu – his acceptance of Palestinian statehood, the construction freeze in Judea-Samaria, the unrequited release of convicted terrorists – were to no avail – either in advancing substantive accords with the Palestinians or in obviating his image as a rejectionist with the international community.


Last week, The Jerusalem Post’s Sarah Honig, with her usual eloquence and perceptiveness, provided a scathing indictment of the self-obstructive – even self-destructive – obsequiousness that has taken hold of many in the Israeli political establishment, willing to imperil themselves, their people and their country, in a desperate endeavor to avoid angering others.


Focusing on the domestic censure of Netanyahu’s acceptance of the offer to address a joint session of Congress to convey his grave misgivings as to the dangers entailed in the emerging agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, she commented bitterly: “You can take the Jew out of the Diaspora, but not all the Diaspora out of all Jews. Israel’s Left and its media mouthpieces are prime examples.


To hear them, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unpardonably angered the nobleman from the Oval Office. It was Netanyahu’s duty to obediently… self-destruct to appease his boss.”
It seems Chamberlain is alive and well in influential political circles in Israel.


Selling surrender as strategy
Astonishingly, undeterred by Arab intransigence, the Israeli adherents of the Chamberlainesque policy of political appeasement and territorial withdrawal have now come up with an even more radical proposal in their obsessive and futile pursuit of an unattainable peace accord.


Although many on the Israeli Left have despaired of reaching such an accord through bilateral contacts with the Palestinians, they have now embraced a new and more perilous paradigm – originally named the Saudi Peace Plan, now known as the Arab Peace Initiative.
The initiative is, in effect, a document of surrender to the Arabs, which in erases all the accomplishments of the 1967 Six Day War and even some of the 1948 War of Independence.


It contravenes every single element of Rabin’s previously cited prescription. It demands: (a) Israel return to the 1967 lines – with or without insignificant land swaps (b) the division of Jerusalem, (c) the evacuation of the Golan, and (d) a “just settlement” of the Palestinian refugee “problem.”


In short, it is a transparent blueprint for the staged annihilation of the Jewish state, which makes the fact that almost 200 senior security experts have embraced it – together with the ridiculous notion of a “regional solution” – as a “strategic initiative,” all the more distressing. But more on the Arab Peace Initiative and the “regional solution” in coming weeks.


Historians will be baffled
Allow me to conclude with one more excerpt from Churchill. He warned that “if mortal catastrophe should overtake the British Nation and the British Empire, historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory.”
The same goes for Israel.
Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.org) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies. (www.strategicisrael.org)

 

[duckhunter]

Israelis have a chance to dump Netanyahu..............

One of the few things most world leaders, and doubtless much of world opinion, can agree on is that they’d like to see the back of Binyamin Netanyahu. The iciness of the relationship between Israel’s prime minister and Barack Obama turned to permafrost long ago, but even Bibi’s fellow rightists find him unbearable. Note the unguarded remarks of Nicolas Sarkozy picked up by an open mic in 2011: “I cannot stand him. He’s a liar,” the then French president confided to his US counterpart. “You’re fed up with him?” said Obama. “I have to deal with him every day.”
There was nothing much either of them could do about Netanyahu. Only one group of people – Israeli voters – can get rid of him, and on 17 March they’ll have their chance. No doubt those outside Israel, given a vote, would find the decision straightforward: ejecting Netanyahu as punishment for last summer’s Gaza bombardment, which cost more than 2,100 Palestinian lives, or for his continuing building of settlements in the occupied West Bank. But Israelis have a host of additional reasons to prise Bibi from the prime ministerial chair he’s been glued to for nine of the past 19 years.
A series of conversations I had in Israel this week made clear that close to the top of that list is his catastrophic handling of Washington, a relationship regarded as the bedrock of Israel’s security. Netanyahu has alienated Obama personally – not least by hosting what was all but a campaign rally for his opponent Mitt Romney in 2012 – but has now infuriated the Democratic party too, by accepting a Republican invitation to address Congress in March, an initiative in which the White House played no part. Until now, US support for Israel has always been bipartisan. But Netanyahu’s insistence on behaving like an honorary Republican has put that in peril. Likud leaders have wrecked US-Israeli relations before – famously Yitzhak Shamir in 1992 – and the voters booted him out as a result.
But it goes further. Many Israelis, especially those who travel in, or do business with, the wider world are aware that their country is on course to becoming what one Israeli journalist described to me as “an isolated, pariah state”. They know that Israel has to change course – to end the occupation and pursue an accommodation with the Palestinians – if it is not to be pushed further out into the cold. European parliaments voting to recognise Palestinian statehood, irritable Democrats in Washington: the signs are already there.
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Tellingly, a group of heavy-hitting business tycoons, Israeli and Palestinian, have formed a pro-peace group called Breaking the Impasse. “If we do not come to an agreement with the Palestinians, our ability to retain our economic success almost disappears,” Yair Lapid, the outgoing finance minister and leader of the Yesh Atid party, told me at his regular corner table in a Tel Aviv cafe.
The complaint against Netanyahu is not that he has failed to make peace or solve the problem – most know how hard that it is. It is that he offers no political horizon at all, merely an everlasting status quo. With Bibi it’s all today, no tomorrow. I was told that Israel’s military brass fear the West Bank could “blow up this year”, partly because Palestinians see no prospect of any change.
Some insist such worries are the preserve of the elite. But the rest of Israeli society has its own reasons to dismiss Bibi. Israel has gone from one of the world’s most equal societies to one of the most unequal in a generation, the gap between the super-rich and the rest widening each year. I met professional couples in excellent jobs who can’t afford to buy a home without parental help. Mass social protests in 2011 proved how deep this fury went – but Bibi has done little to address it.
Add to that the constant swirl of accusations about the Netanyahu household – including the upcoming findings of an investigation into the spending habits of the first couple – and it’s not hard to see why a recent poll found that 66% of Israelis wanted him gone.
The end of the Bibi era would be a clear boost for those desperate for change in the apparently never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My conversations with those hoping for a place in the next government were full of talk of new approaches, including thinking regionally: seeking an understanding with the wider Arab world, especially that part of it whose fear of a surging Islamic State might outweigh its unwillingness to engage with Israel. Those who have grown pessimistic about a deal with Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, can nevertheless imagine reaching a bargain with a coalition of Arab states, one that would include an Israeli pullback from occupied Palestinian territory. Banishing Bibi could unlock all sorts of possibilities.
And yet few would bet it’s going to happen. The polls have shown an uptick for Netanyahu’s Likud in recent days, and that might be down to his opponents, a supposed dream ticket of Labour’s Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister. A visit to their HQ suggested a low-energy campaign, lacking the sheer hunger necessary to oust a bare-knuckle fighter like Bibi. Herzog has a version of Ed Miliband syndrome: the smart scion of Labour aristocracy who just doesn’t look like a prime minister. The Haaretz political correspondent Barak Ravid says Herzog is leading a “bad campaign, that’s disorganised, lacking in creativity and with nothing on the ground”. He has failed to capitalise on the inequality issue or to channel the public’s deep frustration, despite promoting several leaders of the 2011 protests to Labour’s senior ranks.
But the problem goes deeper. “Bibi is still the authentic voice of the majority of Israelis,” says the author Tom Segev. The one thing no Israeli ever wants to be is a freier – a sucker, a naive fool who’s taken in. Even if Israelis dislike Netanyahu and despise his wife, they don’t fear that he will be a freier in negotiations with the Palestinians or anyone else. An Israeli electorate still on its guard, still anxious about personal security – however irrational that may seem to people far away – might well conclude that it’s safer with Bibi than with the untested freier-in-waiting they detect in Herzog.
This being Israel, everything could change between now and March 17. Labour only has to edge a single seat ahead of Likud for Netanyahu to be finished. But right now his opponents look like a team facing an open goal and poised to miss. They need to raise their game – and fast. Otherwise he will renew the lease on an office he has come to regard as his own. Of course a change at the top will arrive eventually – but Israel itself might have to change first.............

Jonathan Freedland

---

 

[ScottL]

Israelis have a chance to dump Netanyahu..............

One of the few things most world leaders, and doubtless much of world opinion, can agree on is that they’d like to see the back of Binyamin Netanyahu. The iciness of the relationship between Israel’s prime minister and Barack Obama turned to permafrost long ago, but even Bibi’s fellow rightists find him unbearable. Note the unguarded remarks of Nicolas Sarkozy picked up by an open mic in 2011: “I cannot stand him. He’s a liar,” the then French president confided to his US counterpart. “You’re fed up with him?” said Obama. “I have to deal with him every day.”

No news. France hates the Jews. Sarkozy, like Obama is a scumbag POS who's been Fucking Israel over since he arrived in the WH. And this quote is proof. The author of the article is the head of the opinion section of the Guardian, the most anti-Semitic rag in Europe.

"One of the few things most world leaders, and doubtless much of world opinion, can agree on is that they’d like to see the back of Binyamin Netanyahu."

Let's just change that to, "the back of any Jew," just for accuracy. Tough Shit, we aren't going anywhere.

 

[duckhunter]

No news. France hates the Jews. Sarkozy, like Obama is a scumbag POS who's been Fucking Israel over since he arrived in the WH. And this quote is proof. The author of the article is the head of the opinion section of the Guardian, the most anti-Semitic rag in Europe.

"One of the few things most world leaders, and doubtless much of world opinion, can agree on is that they’d like to see the back of Binyamin Netanyahu."

Let's just change that to, "the back of any Jew," just for accuracy. Tough Shit, we aren't going anywhere.

No one is grouping Jews in general, and no one is asking Jews "to go anywhere". The bottom line is that Israel, and the whole world for that matter, will be better off with someone other than netanyahu at the helm..........the article only mentions netanyahu, it does not refer to the Jewish people. JMO.

 

[ScottL]

No one is grouping Jews in general, and no one is asking Jews to go anywhere. The bottom line is that Israel, and the whole world for that matter, will be better off with someone other than netanyahu at the helm...........jmo.

Most of the information you gather to form that opinion comes from people who hate Jews and want Israel gone. People who have lied about and smeared Israel in the world press for years.

History has shown us the outcome of what happens when Israel, or any nation has a weak leader.

This isn't about Netanyahu, or Obama. It's about stopping a murderous theocracy from acquiring stronger weapons with which to commit mass murder.

 

[ScottL]

www.CarolineGlick.com

It is hard to get your arms around the stubborn determination of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today. For most of the nine years he has served as Israel’s leader, first from 1996 to 1999 and now since 2009, Netanyahu shied away from confrontations or buckled under pressure. He signed deals with the Palestinians he knew the Palestinians would never uphold in the hopes of winning the support of hostile US administrations and a fair shake from the pathologically hateful Israeli media.

In recent years he released terrorist murderers from prison. He abrogated Jewish property rights in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria. He agreed to support the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River. He agreed to keep giving the Palestinians of Gaza free electricity while they waged war against Israel. He did all of these things in a bid to accommodate US President Barack Obama and win over the media, while keeping the leftist parties in his coalitions happy.

For his part, for the past six years Obama has undermined Israel’s national security. He has publicly humiliated Netanyahu repeatedly.

He has delegitimized Israel’s very existence, embracing the jihadist lie that Israel’s existence is the product of post-Holocaust European guilt rather than 4,000 years of Jewish history.

He and his representatives have given a backwind to the forces that seek to wage economic warfare against Israel, repeatedly indicating that the application of economic sanctions against Israel – illegal under the World Trade Organization treaty – are a natural response to Israel’s unwillingness to bow to every Palestinian demand. The same goes for the movement to deny the legitimacy of Israel’s very existence. Senior administration officials have threatened that Israel will become illegitimate if it refuses to surrender to Palestinian demands.

Last summer, Obama openly colluded with Hamas’s terrorist war against Israel. He tried to coerce Israel into accepting ceasefire terms that would have amounted to an unconditional surrender to Hamas’s demands for open borders and the free flow of funds to the terrorist group. He enacted a partial arms embargo on Israel in the midst of war. He cut off air traffic to Ben-Gurion International Airport under specious and grossly prejudicial terms in an open act of economic warfare against Israel.

And yet, despite Obama’s scandalous treatment of Israel, Netanyahu has continued to paper over differences in public and thank Obama for the little his has done on Israel’s behalf. He always makes a point of thanking Obama for agreeing to Congress’s demand to continue funding the Iron Dome missile defense system (although Obama has sought repeatedly to slash funding for the project).

Obama’s policies that are hostile to Israel are not limited to his unconditional support for the Palestinians in their campaign against Israel. Obama shocked the entire Israeli defense community when he supported the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, despite Mubarak’s dependability as a US ally in the war on Islamist terrorism, and as the guardian of both Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel and the safety and freedom of maritime traffic in the Suez Canal.

Obama supported Mubarak’s overthrow despite the fact that the only political force in Egypt capable of replacing him was the Muslim Brotherhood, which seeks the destruction of Israel and is the ideological home and spawning ground of jihadist terrorist groups, including al-Qaida and Hamas. Obama then supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s regime even as then-president Mohamed Morsi took concrete steps to transform Egypt into an Islamist, jihadist state and end Egypt’s peace with Israel.

Israelis were united in our opposition to Obama’s behavior. But Netanyahu said nothing publicly in criticism of Obama’s destructive, dangerous policy.

He held his tongue in the hopes of winning Obama over through quiet diplomacy.

He held his tongue, because he believed that the damage Obama was causing Israel was not irreversible in most cases. And it was better to maintain the guise of good relations, in the hopes of actually achieving them, than to expose the fractures in US-Israel ties caused by Obama’s enormous hostility toward Israel and by his strategic myopia that endangered both Israel and the US’s other regional allies.

And yet, today Netanyahu, the serial accommodator, is putting everything on the line. He will not accommodate. He will not be bullied. He will not be threatened, even as all the powers that have grown used to bringing him to his knees – the Obama administration, the American Jewish Left, the Israeli media, and the Labor party grow ever more shrill and threatening in their attacks against him.

As he has made clear in daily statements, Netanyahu is convinced that we have reached a juncture in our relations with the Obama administration where accommodation is no longer possible.

Obama’s one policy that Netanyahu has never acquiesced to either publicly or privately is his policy of accommodating Iran.

Since Obama’s earliest days in office, Netanyahu has warned openly and behind closed doors that Obama’s plan to forge a nuclear deal with Iran is dangerous. And as the years have passed, and the lengths Obama is willing to go to appease Iran’s nuclear ambitions have been left their marks on the region, Netanyahu’s warnings have grown stronger and more urgent.

Netanyahu has been clear since his first tenure in office in the 1990s, that Iran’s nuclear program – as well as its ballistic missile program – constitutes a threat to Israel’s very existence. He has never wavered from his position that Israel cannot accept an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.

Until Obama entered office, and to an ever escalating degree since his reelection in 2012, preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons has been such an obvious imperative among both Israelis and Americans that Netanyahu’s forthright rejection of any nuclear deal in which Iran would be permitted to maintain the components of its nuclear program was uncontroversial. In some Israeli circles, his trenchant opposition to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear capabilities was the object of derision, with critics insisting that he was standing strong on something uncontroversial while buckling on issues like negotiations with the Palestinians, where he should have stood strong.

But now we are seeing that far from being an opportunist, Netanyahu is a leader of historical dimensions. For the past two years, in the interest of reaching a deal, Obama has enabled Iran to take over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. For the first time since 1974, due to Obama’s policies, the Golan Heights is an active front in the war against Israel, with Iranian military personnel commanding Syrian and Hezbollah forces along the border.

Iran’s single-minded dedication to its goal of becoming a regional hegemon and its commitment to its ultimate goal of destroying the US is being enabled by Obama’s policies of accommodation. An Iran in possession of a nuclear arsenal is an Iran that can not only destroy Israel with just one or two warheads. It can make it impossible for Israel to respond to conventional aggression carried out by terrorist forces and others operating under an Iranian nuclear umbrella.

Whereas Israel can survive Obama on the Palestinian front by stalling, waiting him out and placating him where possible, and can even survive his support for Hamas by making common cause with the Egyptian military and the government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the damage Obama’s intended deal with Iran will cause Israel will be irreversible. The moment that Obama grants Iran a path to a nuclear arsenal – and the terms of the agreement that Obama has offered Iran grant Iran an unimpeded path to nuclear power – a future US administration will be hard-pressed to put the genie back in the bottle.

For his efforts to prevent irreparable harm to Israel Netanyahu is being subjected to the most brutal and vicious attacks any Israeli leader has ever been subjected to by an American administration and its political allies. They are being assisted in their efforts by a shameless Israeli opposition that is willing to endanger the future of the country in order to seize political power. (And The Guesser)

Every day brings another serving of abuse. Wednesday National Security Adviser Susan Rice accused Netanyahu of destroying US relations with Israel. Secretary of State John Kerry effectively called him a serial alarmist, liar, and warmonger.

For its part, the Congressional Black Caucus reportedly intends to sabotage Netanyahu’s address before the joint houses of Congress by walking out in the middle, thus symbolically accusing of racism the leader of the Middle East’s only liberal democracy, and the leader of the most persecuted people in human history.


Radical leftist representatives who happen to be Jewish, like Jan Schakowsky of suburban Chicago and Steve Cohen of Memphis, are joining Netanyahu’s boycotters in order to give the patina of Jewish legitimacy to an administration whose central foreign policy threatens the viability of the Jewish state. (She's nicer than me to phony Jews -SL)


As for Netanyahu’s domestic opponents, their behavior is simply inexcusable. In Israel’s hour of peril, just weeks before Obama intends to conclude his nuclear deal with the mullahs that will endanger Israel’s existence, Labor leader Yitzhak Herzog insists that his primary duty is to defeat Netanyahu.

And as far as Iran is concerned, he acts as a free loader and a spoiler. Either he believes that Netanyahu will succeed in his mission to derail the deal with or without his support, or he doesn’t care. But Herzog’s rejection of Netanyahu’s entreaties that he join him in Washington next week, and his persistent attacks on Netanyahu for refusing accommodate that which cannot be accommodated shows that he is both an opportunist and utterly unworthy of a leadership role in this country.

Netanyahu is not coming to Washington next Tuesday to warn Congress against Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, because he seeks a fight with Obama. Netanyahu has devoted the last six years to avoiding a fight with Obama, often at great cost to Israel’s national security and to his own political position.

Netanyahu is coming to Washington next week because Obama has left him no choice. And all decent people of good will should support him, and those who do not, and those who are silent, should be called out for their treachery and cowardice.

 

[The Guesser]

[h=1]At what price Netanyahu?[/h] By Robert Kagan February 27

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He writes a monthly foreign affairs column for The Post.

Do we really need the Israeli prime minister to appear before Congress to explain the dangers and pitfalls of certain prospective deals on Iran’s nuclear weapons programs? Would we not know otherwise? Have the U.S. critics of those prospective deals lost their voice? Are they shy about expressing their concerns? Are they inarticulate or incompetent? Do they lack the wherewithal to get their message out?
Not exactly. Every day a new report or analysis warns of the consequences of various concessions that the Obama administration may or may not be making. Some think tanks in Washington devote themselves almost entirely to the subject of Iran’s nuclear program. Congress has held numerous hearings on the subject. Every week, perhaps every day, high-ranking members of the House and Senate, from both parties, lay out the dangers they see. The Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and others publish countless stories on the talks in which experts weigh in to express their doubts. If all the articles, statements and analyses produced in the United States on this subject could be traded for centrifuges, the Iranian nuclear program would be eliminated in a week.
Nor can it be said that we are somehow unaware of Israel’s views on this deal. It is not as if our news media will not report Israeli concerns and complaints. The statements and opinions of the Israeli prime minister, of members of his government and of the military and intelligence services are amply covered in the United States. Israeli officials — including the prime minister — can and do travel to the United States to express their concerns, with or without presidential invitations. They give speeches at the United Nations. They go on Sunday morning television programs and voice their opinions before millions of American viewers. They can even meet with members of Congress in both parties if they choose to.
Given all this, can it really be the case that the American people will not know what to think about any prospective Iran deal until one man, and only one man, gets up to speak in one venue, and only one venue, and does so in the first week of March, and only in that week? That is what those who insist it is vital that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak before a joint meeting of Congress next week would have us believe.

Even the most eloquent speech by Netanyahu will not add more than marginally to what has already been said and heard. But even if the drama of the situation and the prime minister’s eloquence were to highlight the already well-articulated case against a bad deal, the question is: at what price?
For there is a price. I will leave it to the Israeli government and people to worry about what damage the prime minister’s decision could have on U.S.-Israeli relations going forward, and not just under this administration. Those Americans who care most about that relationship will also have to weigh whether the short-term benefits of having Netanyahu speak will outweigh potential long-term costs. Looking back on it from years hence, will the spectacle of an Israeli prime minister coming to Washington to do battle with an American president wear well or poorly?

For the United States, however, there is no doubt that the precedent being set is a bad one. This is not the first time that a U.S. administration and an Israeli prime minister have been at loggerheads. President George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker, reportedly detested then-prime minister Yitzhak Shamir and did their best to help him lose his next election. Baker even had a few choice words for the American Jews who tried to come to the Israeli government’s defense. Did anyone at the time think of inviting Shamir to address Congress? The very idea would have been regarded as laughable. Now, we’re supposed to believe that it’s perfectly reasonable.
Is anyone thinking about the future? From now on, whenever the opposition party happens to control Congress — a common enough occurrence — it may call in a foreign leader to speak to a joint meeting of Congress against a president and his policies. Think of how this might have played out in the past. A Democratic-controlled Congress in the 1980s might, for instance, have called the Nobel Prize-winning Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to denounce President Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America. A Democratic-controlled Congress in 2003 might have called French President Jacques Chirac to oppose President George W. Bush’s impending war in Iraq.

Does that sound implausible? Yes, it was implausible — until now. Now we are sailing into uncharted waters. Those who favor having Netanyahu speak may imagine this is an extraordinary situation requiring extraordinary measures, that one side is so clearly right, the other so clearly wrong. Yet that is often how people feel about the crisis of their time. We can be sure that in the future the urgency will seem just as great. The only difference between then and now is that today, bringing a foreign leader before Congress to challenge a U.S. president’s policies is unprecedented. After next week, it will be just another weapon in our bitter partisan struggle.

 

[The Guesser]

[h=1]Netanyahu, his pants on fire, brings torch to Washington: Burman[/h] [h=2]Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu takes wild-eyed warnings about Iran to U.S. Congress, damaging international negotiations and American relations.[/h]





By: Tony Burman Special to the Star, Published on Sat Feb 28 2015
In the history of war and peace in this 21st century, crucial decisions in the next several weeks may determine in which direction this troubled planet will go.

With the deadline looming in nuclear negotiations with Iran, success will open historic opportunities to solve several of the region’s intractable problems. Failure, on the other hand, may plunge the world into catastrophic military conflict.

The encouraging news is that an international agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program appears to be in sight. It would grant Iran the right to peaceful nuclear energy, but ensure that it doesn’t have the capability of building a nuclear bomb. We shall know more about this in the days ahead.

More at thestar.com:

Benjamin Netanyahu racing off a cliff built on his own hawkish bluster

Anti-Semitism just won’t stand still: Salutin


But before then, we all must endure a farce. And, yes, it is one that is starring the extreme right wing of Israeli and American politics.


Next Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s alarmist-in-chief, will make a mockery of American democracy by going to Washington to speak to a formal session of the U.S. Congress. Ostensibly, he has been invited by Congressional Republicans to repeat his government’s wild-eyed warnings about the “existential” threat of Iran.


But more to the point, this is about a spineless politician coming to the end of an Israeli election campaign, willing to do anything to wreck a potential deal with Iran and, in the process, eager to give the finger to his archenemy, President Barack Obama.


Netanyahu’s visit was initiated by House Speaker John Boehner and Israel’s U.S. ambassador but without consultation with the White House. This breach of protocol has produced anxious division among American Jews and partisan conflict among U.S. politicians. Dozens of Democrats, including Vice-President Joe Biden, will skip the event.

It has also caused a firestorm in Israel. Accusing Netanyahu of treating the U.S. like a “banana republic,” journalist Oudeh Basharat wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz: “It’s not a speech. Nor is it Israeli chutzpah. For all intents and purposes, it’s a coup.”

In spite of the insult, Basharat writes, Netanyahu knows that the United States “won’t lift a finger against Israel” in retaliation: “Such reactions by the U.S. banana republic whet Netanyahu’s appetite. The Arabic expression puts it this way: ‘When someone is used to riding on your back, every time he sees you, he feels tired.’”

It wasn’t always thus. There were examples in the 1980s and 1990s when U.S. governments dealt sternly with Israeli hubris. But Netanyahu has a long history of rubbing foreign politicians the wrong way.

At the G20 summit in France in 2011, French President Nicolas Sarkozy branded the Israeli prime minister a “liar” in a private conversation with Obama: “I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar.” Obama replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more than you.”

After his first White House meeting with President Bill Clinton in 1996, Clinton was quoted by his Mideast envoy as having said afterward about Netanyahu: “Who the f--- does he think he is? Who’s the f---ing superpower here?” Good questions, Bill.

But it appears the Obama administration’s irritation with Netanyahu’s congressional gambit has hit the breaking point. On Tuesday, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, was blunt about how Netanyahu’s speech will hurt U.S.-Israeli ties: “It’s destructive of the fabric of the relationship.”

A few days earlier, Josh Earnest, the White House spokesman, said that Israel, in its criticism of the Iranian negotiations, has been “cherry-picking specific pieces of information and using them out of context to distort the negotiating position of the U.S.”

This approach is vintage Netanyahu. Over the years, he has consistently lied about the Iranian threat. Never has he mentioned that the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons is the State of Israel — not Iran.


We should be thankful that while this farce unfolds in Congress serious negotiators representing six of the world’s leading powers will be hard at work in Geneva trying to come up with a historic breakthrough. Like Richard Nixon’s dramatic overture to China in 1972, this may eventually be regarded as Obama’s greatest achievement.

 

[The Guesser]

Dividing the U.S. on Israel

By ISAAC HERZOG FEB. 27, 2015

JERUSALEM — My father, Chaim Herzog, first went to Washington in 1950 to help open the Israeli Embassy. Throughout his life, he was committed to the American-Israeli alliance and did his utmost — as a general, diplomat and president of Israel — to maintain the deep bond between the Jewish democratic state and the United States.
He realized that the intimate relationship between the two countries was based not only on immense strategic interests but also on shared core values. He also knew that Israel must always be grateful to America, which has stood by us since the moment our country was born, and that support for Israel must always be a nonpartisan issue in the United States. We Israelis must be allied with all Americans — seeking their support while offering them sincere, profound and loyal friendship.

As I compete against Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s 2015 elections, I am as committed to the bipartisan approach as my father and Israel’s other founding fathers and mothers were — for example, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres.

That is why I strongly believe that Mr. Netanyahu’s planned speech to the Republican-controlled Congress next week — an invitation he accepted without consulting America’s Democratic president — is a major mistake. It will only undermine Israel’s ability to influence the critical issue of securing a genuine guarantee that Iran will never gain access to nuclear weaponry. Such an outcome is what Israel needs, but it can be achieved only through a full and trusting dialogue with the American administration, based on broad bipartisan support.

I too am concerned about the possibility that American diplomats could be tempted to accept an insufficient guarantee of our safety. But those concerns can be fully expressed without injecting ourselves into America’s own politics, and that respectful approach would foster a healthier dialogue about the issue among Americans. We should never have reached the point at which President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan E. Rice, would say publicly that an Israeli prime minister has done something “destructive of the fabric of the relationship.”

Instead of creating the false impression that our interests are allied with only one American party or interest group, we should be reaching out to all Americans — Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, hawks and doves. Israel is, after all, not only a rock-solid ally in a stormy Middle East, but a fellow democracy that upholds the self-evident truths that America is based on, and it has a historical obligation to uphold: freedom, human rights and the pursuit of peace. Facing such ghastly phenomena as the Islamic State and the human catastrophe in Syria, Israel is an oasis of liberty that has the right and the duty to defend itself. But it should always remember the moral debt it owes its older sibling, which has stood by it for more than half a century.

Americans also need to understand another point about our boisterous democracy. However deeply I disagree with Mr. Netanyahu on many issues — the peace process, settlement policy, social justice issues and his coming speech to Congress — on one thing there is no daylight between us: Israel’s security. No Israeli head of state will tolerate terrorist rockets raining down on our children. No Israeli head of state will turn a blind eye to the dangers posed by the new, chaotic and violent Middle East. No Israeli head of state will ever tolerate a nuclear Iran.
Especially on the Iranian nuclear threat, Israelis are one. We know that the theocracy in Tehran combines hegemonic and nuclear ambitions that pose a strategic danger to our small nation.
But a nuclear Iran would endanger not only Israel. If it goes nuclear, the Middle East will go nuclear, putting world peace itself in jeopardy. This is why the Iranian nuclear challenge must not be seen as Mr. Netanyahu’s obsession, or anyone’s partisan issue, but as a central issue for the whole international community to address.
Indeed, my countrymen are joined by many Arabs who are likewise concerned about the centrifuges spinning at Natanz and Fordow. Israelis and Arabs live in the Middle East, and know the Middle East. Facing a dangerous Iran as well as the violence of Islamists at their most extreme, we are willing to work together to stabilize our region and offer it a better future. When reasonable Israelis, Saudis, Egyptians, Jordanians and others sound the same alarm bells about Iran, everyone should pause and beware of accepting an irreversible deal we might live to regret.
I do support a diplomatic endeavor that effectively blocks Iran’s path to the bomb. But that effort also must keep all options on the table, deny Iran a pass on its destabilizing regional policies and support of terror, and be accompanied by an international demand that Iran abandon its threat to the existence of Israel.

This is my plea: for us all to rise to the Iranian challenge. Iran is a danger not to Israel alone, and it must not be made a partisan issue. Iran is a critical international issue that the nations of the world should defuse.
As an Israeli and as a citizen of the free world who always has believed in American leadership, I hope that America will lead once again with assertive, bold and creative diplomacy. Let us work together as allies to guarantee our children’s future.
Isaac Herzog is the leader of the Israeli Labor Party and of the opposition at large in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament.

 

[The Guesser]

[h=1]If Netanyahu's right, why is he so wrong?[/h] [h=2]Even if he is correct about Iran, Netanyahu's steps have minimized Israel's ability to exert influence, and his moves on Obama's turf have politicized U.S.-Israel relations so much that no one seriously addresses his points any more.[/h] By Barak Ravid 08:48 01.03.15

10

Over the weekend the Prime Minister’s Office released a video showing Benjamin Netanyahu in his study preparing Tuesday’s speech to Congress. A source at the residence says that not much Hebrew has been heard around the prime minister in recent days. Many of the people around him speak American English in a heavy Republican accent.

One of the key people helping craft the speech is Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, who has been in Jerusalem the past few days. Dermer is a persona non grata in Washington these days, the man who concocted the speech idea with House Speaker John Boehner, behind the White House’s back.

But not only Dermer is in Jerusalem. Netanyahu has apparently recruited American consultants to help write the speech, to help him compose a text with maximum appeal.
Like every Israeli politician, Netanyahu likes to be photographed surrounded by army officers in fatigues, with plenty of maps around. But photos of him penning a speech reflect his true self much more accurately.
For Netanyahu, words and rhetoric are the essence of his existence. His attitude could be summarized by borrowing from the sound bite where he mocked the left’s approach to land concessions: “If you haven’t delivered a speech you’ve haven’t done anything.”

We can assume that in the coming days we’ll see much more of Netanyahu and the blue pen in that photo. His spokesmen will tell us how busy he is making last-minute changes. His mouthpiece, the newspaper Israel Hayom, will probably trumpet this address for the umpteenth time as “the speech of his life.”

Even before hearing the address, we can assume he’ll stick to habit and include some kitsch. There will be artificial historical analogies and visual gimmicks.
In the past he compared Iran to the biblical archenemy Amalek. This time, with Purim coming up, he has already made comparisons between the Persians of yore and the Iranians of today. It’s as if he were Mordechai confronting the evil Haman seeking to wipe out the Jews.
In this analogy, U.S. President Barack Obama probably plays the role of King Ahasuerus. One wonders who’ll play Queen Esther.
Netanyahu is going to Washington with the declared intention of warning Congress about a bad and dangerous deal with Iran. Some of his arguments hold plenty of truth.
The pending agreement is worse than many people, including supporters of the diplomatic process, envisaged. The U.S. administration loosened many of its red lines during the negotiations, and on some issues it completely folded. The Americans not only worried about a breakdown of the negotiations, but showed their fears.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei continued labeling the United States an enemy, claiming that Washington needs the negotiations much more than Tehran does. The Americans, in their wobbling, proved him right. As time passed, the Iranians squeezed more concessions out of Washington.
There are many worrisome clauses in the agreement that’s shaping up, the chief one being what happens when it expires. If at that time all restrictions on Iran are lifted, what will prevent the regime in 2030 from assembling tens of thousands of centrifuges and proceeding toenrich uranium?
The White House has not yet responded to this basic question, which has become the weak spot in the agreement. Senior officials stress that after restrictions are lifted in 15 years, Iran will still be bound by the treaty preventing the proliferation of nuclear arms. But this treaty has already been repeatedly breached by Iran.
For better or worse, the imminent agreement buys time, maybe 10, 15 or even 20 years. Senior U.S. officials say that by then Khamenei will no longer be around and there will be a chance for dramatic changes in the regime. But hopes, wishes and learned assessments can’t replace a work plan.



So if Netanyahu is right, why is he so wrong? First, because there is no such thing as a good agreement with Iran. As in almost every security-diplomatic issue, the choices are between bad, very bad and disastrous.

Netanyahu has not yet produced convincing arguments on why the alternative he proposes is less bad and how it would lead to a peaceful resolution. Imposing additional sanctions at this stage, as proposed by Netanyahu, would ruin the talks and trigger a rush toward an Iranian military nuclear capability — and possibly war.
Second, Netanyahu is mistaken in his tactics. Over the last six years he has maneuvered Israel into a corner in which it has few options. He decided against a military option, and today this isn’t a viable option. He failed to forge an intimate relationship with Obama, instead creating a continuous crisis with the White House leaving Israel no diplomatic clout.
His last weapon is the speech. Despite what he thinks, a speech is not equivalent to deeds. In this case it’s more of a demonstration.
It won’t stop the bad deal with Iran. Even if he’s right, his steps have minimized Israel’s ability to exert influence. His moves in Obama’s backyard have so severely politicized U.S.-Israeli relations that no one takes his points seriously anymore. Those points sound like spin for his election campaign.
The tragedy is that the speech hampered any bipartisan support against the deal. The House and Senate have friends of Israel who oppose the agreement and could have influenced Obama. But now they’ll keep silent.
Even though Netanyahu has made Iran his highest priority, he has failed to devise a strategy in which Israel’s interests are maximally protected in an agreement with Tehran.