Not that Barack Obama is entirely wrong about about Netanyahu. But politics being what it is, Obama and his cohorts would have no compunction about meddling and massaging Israeli politics to act as midwife for the birth of some regime change to a center left coalition. In their slow and calculated way, there is some effort to work on American public opinion against Israel through willing lackeys of the Thomas Friedman variety and the territorial concession school of hard knocks. its the manifestation of the Obama left-wing narrative that exercises its own peculiar form of racism through the trustworthy bis of mother-goose homilies that form the staple canon of liberal, humanistic and enlightenment values that permeate Western democracy and effectively open the gates of moral relativism in dealing with different national groupings; it’s normal, even commendable for for some Arabs to advocate a cult of death and non-respect of treaties with israel while totally unacceptable for Israel to see the peace process as a sham of giving land for nothing in return and endangering the security of its citizens. The Arabs have never signed an agreement with Israel they couldn’t use for toilet paper ( even if they wipe with the left hand).
In this paradigm, Israel is wrong, and as a chosen people has to make the concessions. Israel has caved and gone down this path before to no advantage, temporary lulls in the conflict to be followed by more blackmail. The only justification for an Israeli state is Biblical old testament prophecies in the Torah and this is rarely if ever invoked by Israel much to their detriment. Also, the demographics in Israel with a half of Israeli pre-schoolers now of “religious” disposition and growing, means the standard American foreign policy will be dealing with a more assertive and religious ally.
—Jacques de Letin, “Moses at Mount Sinai—click image for source…
(seel ink at end)…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation, US President Barack Obama said after Israel announced it would expand construction in the disputed E1 area shortly after the United Nations General Assembly voted in late November to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority to that of a non-member state.
According to Bloomberg, when informed about the Israeli government’s decision to build additional housing units in the between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, the American leader “didn’t even bother getting angry. He told several people that this sort of behavior on Netanyahu’s part is what he has come to expect, and he suggested that he has become inured to what he sees as self-defeating policies of his Israeli counterpart.
Jeffrey Goldberg’s report said that in the weeks after the UN vote, Obama said privately and repeatedly, “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are,” adding that with each new settlement announcement, Netanyahu is moving Israel down a path toward near-total isolation….
—Title: Moses on Mount Sinai 1895 – 1900
Artist: Jean-Leon Gerome (1824 – 1904)
Oil on canvas, Private collection
Biography: He was a pupil of Paul Delaroche and inherited his highly finished academic style. Gerome travelled widely in Turkey, Egypt and North Africa. A sculptor as well as a painter, his female figures have the same classical precision of Ingres, but are in much more realistic poses. His best-known works are his oriental scenes.—click image for source…
Goldberg wrote that “if Israel, a small state in an inhospitable region, becomes more of a pariah – one that alienates even the affections of the US, its last steadfast friend – it won’t survive. Iran poses a short-term threat to Israel’s survival; Israel’s own behavior poses a long-term one.
“On matters related to the Palestinians, the president seems to view the prime minister as a political coward, an essentially unchallenged leader who nevertheless is unwilling to lead or spend political capital to advance the cause of compromise,” according to the Bloomberg reporter. Read More:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4332630,00.html?fb_action_ids=10151359684427668&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582
—Closer to his ideological core is an unswerving conviction that the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem might as well relinquish their hopes for a sovereign state. The Green Line, which demarcates the occupied territories from Israel proper, “has no meaning,” he says, and only a friyer, a sucker, would think otherwise. As one of his slick campaign ads says, “There are certain things that most of us understand will never happen: ‘The Sopranos’ are not coming back for another season . . . and there will never be a peace plan with the Palestinians.” If Bennett becomes Prime Minister someday—and his ambition is as plump and glaring as a harvest moon—he intends to annex most of the West Bank and let Ara
ties like Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin be “self-governing” but “under Israeli security.”
“I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state,” he says of the Palestinians. No more negotiations, “no more illusions.” Let them eat crème brûlée.
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/21/130121fa_fact_remnick#ixzz2I3M1WZkm—
ADDENDUM:
Some good points to the interview, but one based on the roots of the Jewish Zionist left which in a sense struggles with an almost Biblical base sense of Jewish inferiority, going back to when Moses sent spies form each tibe into the Promised Land, and all but Joshua and Caleb reported being “like grasshoppers in their eyes”.Historically, when Jews bend over backwards to appease the dominant culture and distance themselves from their raison d’etre, tragic things happen…
Shimon Peres ( New York Times)…Money will be transferred to them, and weapons will be smuggled to them, and there will be no one who will stop this flow. Most of the world will support the Palestinians, justify their actions, level the sharpest criticism at us, falsely label us a racist state. Our economy will suffer gravely if a boycott is declared against us. The world’s Jews want an Israel they can be proud of and not an Israel that has no borders and that is considered an occupying state….We must not lose the support of the United States. What gives Israel bargaining power in the international arena is the support of the United States. Even if the Americans do not take part in the negotiations, they are present at them. If Israel were to stand alone, its enemies would swallow it up. Without U.S. support, it would be very difficult for us. We would be like a lone tree in the desert….This is not a simple negotiation — but I thought the conditions exist to set out on the path. Like the Oslo process, it has to be secret….I do not accept the assertion that Abu Mazen is not a good negotiating partner. To my mind, he is an excellent partner. Our military people describe to me the extent to which the Palestinian forces are cooperating with us to combat terror….
…The settlers have not eliminated the chance for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The settlements today cover 2 percent of the entire area. The Palestinians have already accepted the Clinton parameters, which include leaving three blocs of Jewish settlements and exchanging other territory for them. In my opinion, many of the rest will leave of their own free will. The difficulty with us is similar to that of the man with a hammer who thinks every problem is a nail. Problems are not nails. If there is good will, they can all be overcome. This applies, for example, to the issue of water. Soon there will be a surplus of water in Israel, thanks to seawater desalination, and we will be able to make up the Palestinians’ shortage of potable water. Look, the whole world is in turmoil. The Palestinian problem isn’t the main problem in the Middle East. But there are a billion and a half Muslims. The Palestinian problem affects our entire relationship with them. If the Palestinian problem were to be solved, the Islamist extremists would be robbed of their pretext for their actions against us. Of course, this requires concessions….
…If Hamas accepts international demands, forsakes terror, stops firing missiles at us and recognizes the existence of the State of Israel, it will be possible to open negotiations. Where did this Khaled Meshal suddenly pop out of, with his words that come straight from the Middle Ages? Precisely now, when the whole world is tired of wars and violence, he arises out of the dark of night with these sadistic desires to strike and to murder? Does he really think that they will be able to destroy the State of Israel, with the I.D.F. and our intelligence services? That we are a bunch of turkeys that will march in formation to a Thanksgiving feast?…
…You didn’t think that Arafat should be assassinated.
No. I thought it was possible to do business with him. Without him, it was much more complicated. With who else could we have closed the Oslo deal? With who else could we have reached the Hebron agreement? On the other hand, I tried to explain to him, for hours on end, a complete educational course: how to be a true leader. We sat together, with me eating from his hand. It took courage. I told him he must be like Lincoln, like Ben-Gurion: one nation, one gun, not innumerable armed forces with each firing in a different direction. At first, Arafat refused, he said, “La, la, la” [Peres does a fairly convincing imitation of Arafat saying “no” in Arabic], but later he said, “O.K.” He lied right to my face, without any problem [regarding promises to fight Palestinian militias and insurgencies]. Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/magazine/shimon-peres-on-obama-iran-and-the-path-to-peace.html?pagewanted=4
Rand Paul in Israel:…It is “none of our business” whether Israel builds new neighborhoods in east Jerusalem or withdraws from the Golan Heights, and the US should not tell Israel how to defend itself, US Sen. (RKentucky) said on Saturday night at the end of a week-long visit to the country….
…“The biggest threat to our nation right now is our debt,” said Paul, adding that a bankrupt America would not be a good ally for Israel. “This does mean that we have to reassess who to give aid to, and when we do reassess that, I would begin with countries that are burning our flag and chanting ‘Death to America.’ No one is accusing Israel of that.”
Paul said he was not talking about anything different than what Netanyahu said in a 1996 speech to Congress, in which he advocated Israel gradually weaning itself off of American aid dollars.
This would benefit Israel and its defense industry, because it would not have to buy all its weaponry from the US, and a curtailment of US foreign aid would also mean less money for arms for Israel’s neighbors, Paul said.
Stating that the US gives more foreign aid to Israel’s neighbors than to Israel, Paul said that if the US gives 20 F-16 fighter plans to Egypt, Israel then feels it needs to buy 25; or if the US gives Egypt 200 tanks, Israel feels the need to purchase 300.
Paul stressed that he was worried about giving weapons to Egypt at the present time, especially since President Mohamed Morsi is listening to a spiritual leader calling for “the death of Israel and all its friends.”
The senator said he was “very disappointed” that after giving Egypt some $60 billion in aid over the past 30 years, rioters there climbed the roof of the embassy last year, took down the US flag and burned it.
“That should never have happened and is inexcusable,” he asserted….
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