President Barack Obama Humiliates Benjamin Netanyahu

muckraker10021 · Jun 26, 2013

Did the Ashkenazi Jews who run Israel learn anything from their experience under Hitler's "final solution" Nazi genocide????

<hr noshade color="#333333" size="4"></hr>

<img src="http://www.counterpunch.org/images/header.jpg" width="600">

How Israeli Apartheid is Coming Unstuck
Big Racists vs. Little Racists

by Jonathan Cook | June 21, 2013

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/21/how-israeli-apartheid-is-coming-unstuck/

One incident of racism, though small in relation to the decades of massive, institutionalised discrimination exercised by Israel against its Palestinian Arab citizens, has triggered an uncharacteristic bout of Israeli soul-searching.

Superland, a large amusement park near Tel Aviv, refused to accept a booking from an Arab school on its preferred date in late May. When a staff member called back impersonating a Jew, Superland approved the booking immediately.

As the story went viral on social media, the park’s managers hurriedly offered an excuse: they provided separate days for Jewish and Arab children to keep them apart and prevent friction.

Government ministers led an outpouring of revulsion. Tzipi Livni, the justice minister, called the incident a “symptom of a sick democracy”. Defence minister Moshe Yaalon was “ashamed”. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that the “racist” policy be halted immediately.

Such sensitivity appears to be a reaction to an explosion of popular racism over the past few months against the one in five Israelis who belong to the country’s Palesinian Arab minority. Some Israeli Jews have started to find the endless parade of bigotry disturbing.

Israeli TV recently revealed, for example, that a group of children with cancer who had been offered a free day at a swimming pool were refused entry once managers discovered that they were Bedouin.

According to another TV investigation, Israel’s banks have a secret policy of rejecting Arab customers who try to transfer their accounts to a branch in a Jewish community, even though this violates banking regulations.

The settlers, whose violence was once restricted to setting fire to the crops of Palestinians or rampaging through their villages in the West Bank, are now as likely to attack Arab communities inside Israel. Torched mosques, offensive graffiti on churches and cars set ablaze in so-called “price-tag” attacks have become commonplace.

Similarly, reports of vicious attacks on Arab citizens are rapidly becoming a news staple. Recent incidents have included the near-fatal beating of a street cleaner, and a bus driver who held his gun to an Arab passenger’s head, threatening to pull the trigger unless the man showed his ID.

Also going viral were troubling mobile-phone photos of a young Arab woman surrounded by a mob of respectable-looking commuters amd shoppers while she waited for a train. As they hit her and pulled off her hijab, station guards looked on impassively.

Palestinian woman Hana Amtir attacked by Israelis on street

However welcome official denunciations of these events are, the government’s professed outrage does not wash.

While Netanyahu and his allies on the far right were castigating Superland for its racism, they were busy backing a grossly discriminatory piece of legislation the Haaretz newspaper called “one of the most dangerous” measures ever to come before the parliament.

The bill will give Israelis who have served in the army a whole raft of extra rights in land and housing, employment, salaries, and the provision of public and private services. The catch is that almost all of the country’s 1.5 million Palestinian citizens are excluded from military service. In practice, the benefits will be reserved for Jews only.

Superland’s offence pales to insignificance when compared to that, or to the decades of state-planned and officially sanctoned discrimination against the country’s Palestinian minority.

An editorial in Haaretz this month observed that Israel was really “two separate states, one Arab and one Jewish. … This is the gap between the Jewish state of Israel, which is a developed Western nation, and the Arab state of Israel, which is no more than a Third World country.”

Segregation is enforced in all the main spheres of life: land allocation and housing, citizenship rights, education, and employment.

None of this is accidental. It was intended this way to guarantee Israel’s future as a Jewish state. Legal groups have identified 57 laws that overtly discriminate between Jewish and Palestinian citizens, with a dozen more heading towards the statute books.

Less visible but just as damaging is the covert discrimination Palestinian citizens face every day when dealing with state institutions, whose administrative practices find their rationale in the entrenchment of Jewish privilege.

This week a report indentified precisely this kind of institutional racism when it found that students from the country’s Palestinian minority were confronted by a series of 14 obstacles not faced by their Jewish compatriots that contributed to denying them places in higher education.

The wave of popular prejudice and racist violence is no accident either. Paradoxically, it has been unleashed by the increasingly inflammatory rhetoric of rightwing politicians like Netanyahu, whose constant fearmongering casts Palestinian citizens as disloyal, a fifth column and a demographic threat to the state’s Jewishness.

So why if the state is so committed to subjugating and excluding Palestinian citizens, and Netanyahu and his ministers so determined to increase the weight of discriminatory legislation, are they decrying the racism of Superland?

To make sense of this, one has to understand how desperately Israel has sought to distinguish itself from apartheid South Africa.

Israel cultivates, as South Africa once did, what scholars term “grand apartheid”. This is segregation, largely covert and often often justified by security or cultural differences, to ensure that control of resources remains exclusively in the hands of the privileged community.

At the same time, Israel long shied away from what some call South Africa’s model of “petty apartheid” – the overt, symbolic, but far less significant segregation of park benches, buses and toilets.

The avoidance of petty apartheid has been the key to Israel’s success in obscuring from the world’s view its grand apartheid, most obviously in the occupied territories but also inside Israel itself.

This month South Africa’s departing ambassador to Israel, Ismail Coovadia, warned that Israel was a “replication of apartheid”. The idea that the world may soon wake up to this comparison deeply unnerves Netanyahu and the right, all the more so as they risk being identified as the party refusing to make concessions towards peace.

The threat posed by what happened at Superland is that such incidents of unofficial and improvised racism may one day unmask the much more sinister and organised campaign of “grand apartheid” that Israel’s leaders have overseen for decades.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His new website is www.jonathan-cook.net

Greed · Jul 1, 2013

muckraker10021 said:
Did the Ashkenazi Jews who run Israel learn anything from their experience under Hitler's "final solution" Nazi genocide????
<hr noshade color="#333333" size="4"></hr>

How Israeli Apartheid is Coming Unstuck
Big Racists vs. Little Racists

by Jonathan Cook | June 21, 2013
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/21/how-israeli-apartheid-is-coming-unstuck/

This should be consistent with the values of many people on this board.

Separate standards of right or wrong for man and for government. The Israeli government condemns the same actions its taking because the action was taken by individuals instead of by a bureaucrat.

This country does the same thing. Killing, theft, and fraud are all tolerated in our society as long as its done by elected officials, then it magically turns into something other than killing, theft, and fraud.

If people had the principle that government is nothing more than an extension of man, then they would want to limit government to the same laws that limit an individual. It would solve America's and Israel's problems.

QueEx · Oct 30, 2014

The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations

Is Officially Here

The Obama administration's anger is "red-hot" over Israel's settlement policies, and the
Netanyahu government openly expresses contempt for Obama's understanding of the Middle East.
Profound changes in the relationship may be coming.

The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname.

This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it's ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program.

The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu, and in particular, to the behavior of his cabinet. Netanyahu has told several people I’ve spoken to in recent days that he has “written off” the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached. For their part, Obama administration officials express, in the words of one official, a “red-hot anger” at Netanyahu for pursuing settlement policies on the West Bank, and building policies in Jerusalem, that they believe have fatally undermined Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace process.

Over the years, Obama administration officials have described Netanyahu to me as recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous, and “Aspergery.” (These are verbatim descriptions; I keep a running list.) But I had not previously heard Netanyahu described as a “chickenshit.” I thought I appreciated the implication of this description, but it turns out I didn’t have a full understanding. From time to time, current and former administration officials have described Netanyahu as a national leader who acts as though he is mayor of Jerusalem, which is to say, a no-vision small-timer who worries mainly about pleasing the hardest core of his political constituency. (President Obama, in interviews with me, has alluded to Netanyahu’s lack of political courage.)

“The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars,” the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. “The bad thing about him is that he won’t do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he’s interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He’s not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he’s not [Ariel] Sharon, he’s certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He’s got no guts.”

I ran this notion by another senior official who deals with the Israel file regularly. This official agreed that Netanyahu is a “chickenshit” on matters related to the comatose peace process, but added that he’s also a “coward” on the issue of Iran’s nuclear threat. The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. “It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic.

Now it’s too late.”

This assessment represents a momentous shift in the way the Obama administration sees Netanyahu. In 2010, and again in 2012, administration officials were convinced that Netanyahu and his then-defense minister, the cowboyish ex-commando Ehud Barak, were readying a strike on Iran. To be sure, the Obama administration used the threat of an Israeli strike in a calculated way to convince its allies (and some of its adversaries) to line up behind what turned out to be an effective sanctions regime. But the fear inside the White House of a preemptive attack (or preventative attack, to put it more accurately) was real and palpable—as was the fear of dissenters inside Netanyahu’s Cabinet, and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters. At U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, analysts kept careful track of weather patterns and of the waxing and waning moon over Iran, trying to predict the exact night of the coming Israeli attack.

Today, there are few such fears. “The feeling now is that Bibi’s bluffing,” this second official said. “He’s not Begin at Osirak,” the official added, referring to the successful 1981 Israeli Air Force raid ordered by the ex-prime minister on Iraq’s nuclear reactor.

The belief that Netanyahu’s threat to strike is now an empty one has given U.S. officials room to breathe in their ongoing negotiations with Iran. You might think that this new understanding of Netanyahu as a hyper-cautious leader would make the administration somewhat grateful. Sober-minded Middle East leaders are not so easy to come by these days, after all. But on a number of other issues, Netanyahu does not seem sufficiently sober-minded.

Another manifestation of his chicken-shittedness, in the view of Obama administration officials, is his near-pathological desire for career-preservation. Netanyahu’s government has in recent days gone out of its way to a) let the world know that it will quicken the pace of apartment-building in disputed areas of East Jerusalem; and b) let everyone know of its contempt for the Obama administration and its understanding of the Middle East. Settlement expansion, and the insertion of right-wing Jewish settlers into Arab areas of East Jerusalem, are clear signals by Netanyahu to his political base, in advance of possible elections next year, that he is still with them, despite his rhetorical commitment to a two-state solution. The public criticism of Obama policies is simultaneously heartfelt, and also designed to mobilize the base.

Just yesterday, Netanyahu criticized those who condemn Israeli expansion plans in East Jerusalem as “disconnected from reality.” This statement was clearly directed at the State Department, whose spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, had earlier said that, “if Israel wants to live in a peaceful society, they need to take steps that will reduce tensions. Moving forward with this sort of action would be incompatible with the pursuit of peace.”

It is the Netanyahu government that appears to be disconnected from reality. Jerusalem is on the verge of exploding into a third Palestinian uprising. It is true that Jews have a moral right to live anywhere they want in Jerusalem, their holiest city. It is also true that a mature government understands that not all rights have to be exercised simultaneously. Palestinians believe, not without reason, that the goal of planting Jewish residents in all-Arab neighborhoods is not integration, but domination—to make it as difficult as possible for a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem to ever emerge.

Unlike the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, I don’t have any hope for the immediate creation of a Palestinian state (it could be dangerous, at this chaotic moment in Middle East history, when the Arab-state system is in partial collapse, to create an Arab state on the West Bank that could easily succumb to extremism), but I would also like to see Israel foster conditions on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem that would allow for the eventual birth of such a state. This is what the Obama administration wants (and also what Europe wants, and also, by the way, what many Israelis and American Jews want), and this issue sits at the core of the disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem.

Israel and the U.S., like all close allies, have disagreed from time to time on important issues. But I don’t remember such a period of sustained and mutual contempt. Much of the anger felt by Obama administration officials is rooted in the Netanyahu government’s periodic explosions of anti-American condescension. The Israeli defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, in particular, has publicly castigated the Obama administration as naive, or worse, on matters related to U.S. policy in the Middle East. Last week, senior officials including Kerry (who was labeled as “obsessive” and “messianic” by Ya’alon) and Susan Rice, the national security advisor, refused to meet with Ya’alon on his trip to Washington, and it’s hard to blame them. (Kerry, the U.S. official most often targeted for criticism by right-wing Israeli politicians, is the only remaining figure of importance in the Obama administration who still believes that Netanyahu is capable of making bold compromises, which might explain why he’s been targeted.)

One of the more notable aspects of the current tension between Israel and the U.S. is the unease felt by mainstream American Jewish leaders about recent Israeli government behavior. “The Israelis do not show sufficient appreciation for America’s role in backing Israel, economically, militarily and politically,” Abraham Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, told me. (UPDATE: Foxman just e-mailed me this statement: "The quote is accurate, but the context is wrong. I was referring to what troubles this administration about Israel, not what troubles leaders in the American Jewish community.")

What does all this unhappiness mean for the near future? For one thing, it means that Netanyahu—who has preemptively “written off” the Obama administration—will almost certainly have a harder time than usual making his case against a potentially weak Iran nuclear deal, once he realizes that writing off the administration was an unwise thing to do.

This also means that the post-November White House will be much less interested in defending Israel from hostile resolutions at the United Nations, where Israel is regularly scapegoated. The Obama administration may be looking to make Israel pay direct costs for its settlement policies.

Next year, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, will quite possibly seek full UN recognition for Palestine. I imagine that the U.S. will still try to block such a move in the Security Council, but it might do so by helping to craft a stridently anti-settlement resolution in its place. Such a resolution would isolate Israel from the international community.

It would also be unsurprising, post-November, to see the Obama administration take a step Netanyahu is loath to see it take: a public, full lay-down of the administration’s vision for a two-state solution, including maps delineating Israel’s borders. These borders, to Netanyahu's horror, would be based on 1967 lines, with significant West Bank settlement blocs attached to Israel in exchange for swapped land elsewhere. Such a lay-down would make explicit to Israel what the U.S. expects of it.

Netanyahu, and the even more hawkish ministers around him, seem to have decided that their short-term political futures rest on a platform that can be boiled down to this formula: “The whole world is against us. Only we can protect Israel from what’s coming.” For an Israeli public traumatized by Hamas violence and anti-Semitism, and by fear that the chaos and brutality of the Arab world will one day sweep over them, this formula has its charms.

But for Israel’s future as an ally of the United States, this formula is a disaster.

http://www.theatlantic.com/internat...s-israel-relations-is-officially-here/382031/

muckraker10021 · Oct 31, 2014

QueEx · Mar 2, 2015

thoughtone · Mar 2, 2015

LOL! I thought negrocoons hated the CBC!

source: Washington Times

Black pastors urge CBC not to skip Netanyahu speech

Image: Star Parker for Freedom

The message from a dozen prominent black pastors this week to the Congressional Black Caucus was loud and clear: Don’t skip out on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyuhu’s speech.

About two dozen House and Senate Democrats, most of them black caucus members, have said they will not attend Mr. Netanyahu’s speech Tuesday before a joint session of Congress, which one pastor described as a “slap in the face to the people of Israel.”

“The thing to me that makes no sense is why the Congressional Black Caucus has teamed up with this current administration against Israel,” said Pastor Dexter D. Sanders of the Rock Center for Transformation in Orlando, Florida.

“And yes, black caucus, I’m saying you have gone against Israel when you decide to protest the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from coming and speaking on the behalf of the nation of Israel,” Mr. Sanders said. “That is a slap in the face to the people of Israel, and not only that, it’s a slap in the face to God. And not only that, it’s also a slap in the face of all Bible-believing African-American people in this country.”

The Christian pastors, representing churches nationwide from California to New York, delivered an often fiery defense on behalf of the speech at Thursday’s press conference at the National Press Club, organized by the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

Some black caucus members have argued that the Netanyahu speech comes as an insult to President Obama. House Speaker John Boehner invited the Israeli prime minister without first checking with the president, although Mr. Netanyahu has said he notified the White House before accepting.

Pastor Cecil Blye of More Grace Ministries in Louisville, Kentucky, dismissed suggestions that the House violated protocol by extending the invitation to weigh in on U.S. negotiations with Iran.

“Charges from some members of the United States Congress about the breaking of protocol are no more than a very red herring,” Mr. Blye said. “The American people need to hear Israel’s voice on this urgent matter now. If one side of the aisle can facilitate this, so be it.”

Critics have accused Mr. Netanyahu of using the speech to boost his party’s chances in the March 10 Israeli election. Some House members have asked Mr. Netanyahu to delay his speech until after the vote, but many pastors said they were alarmed by any effort to undermine the prime minister at a time when Israel faces an existential threat in the form of a potentially nuclear Iran.

“Israel knows and understands Iran better than the rest of the world. This is not the time to involve ourselves in petty political maneuvering designed to embarrass our friend,” said Pastor Stephen Broden of the Fair Park Bible Fellowship in Dallas.

Pastor Harvey Burnett of the New Bethel Church of God in Christ in Peoria, Illinois, said he was “particularly saddened that our black leadership has conspired to spread disinformation that Israeli leaders seek to undermine the President of the United States.”

A number of left-wing groups, including Roots Action, Code Pink, American Muslims for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, has urged lawmakers not to attend as part of the #SkipTheSpeech campaign.

“I find it deplorable that some of our nation’s political leaders would contemplate and even encourage a boycott or a walk-out during the visit of the Israeli prime minister,” said Mr. Burnett. “I find it deplorable that some of our nation’s black leaders would call the Congressional Black Caucus, whose members were elected by the public, to snub our greatest ally in the war against terrorists.”

Pastor Corey Tabor of the Full Life Community Church in Pflugerville, Texas, said that “to intentionally ignore and insult the leader of Israel to make a personal or political statement is irresponsible and immature.”

“In our democratic nations, our leaders have been sent to Congress to represent their entire constituency,” Mr. Tabor said. “We stand today to say that these congressmen do not speak for all black Christians. As Bible-believing people, we stand with Israel, and we urge our leaders to do the same.”

Pastor Carlton Smith of the Antioch Fellowship Assembly in Cleveland recounted how Jews had stood alongside black Americans in their fight for civil rights.

“They stood and marched with us in our struggle then, and we must stand with them in the face of their enemy now,” Mr. Smith said.

At least two Democratic House

members who plan to skip the speech—Reps. Steve Cohen of Tennessee and John Yarmuth of Kentucky—are Jewish. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden are also not expected to attend.

Bishop David Richey of the Gulf Coast Christian Center in Mobile

, Alabama, warned that missing the speech would send the wrong message to enemies of Israel and the United States.

“[T]his is certainly not the time to give even the least of hint that we are not the best of allies with the state of Israel,” said Mr. Richey, adding, “In order to remain the great nation that we are, some things must remain non-negotiable. I believe our current stand with Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu must be one of those things.”

The specter of lawmakers deliberating missing the speech may also do more

harm to U.S.-Israeli relations, said Pastor Claude May of the Oasis of Hope Christian Church in Detroit.

“I am afraid of the direction we are headed in, based upon fact that we are about to destroy a relationship that has always been strong

, always been great,” Mr. May said. “We have always been the strongest of allies with the nation of Israel since its inception, and I am deeply disturbed that that is being deteriorated by these acts.”

QueEx · Mar 2, 2015

Maybe now more will understand why the President tries not to address ISIS, etc., as Islamic Extremist -- because, perhaps, it would only be right to
look within, at the various Christian Extremist that we have amongst us including, but not limited to, some of these well intentioned but politically ignorant Black Preachers.

And, I'm not knocking religion and I'm not propping non-believers.

I am, however, very definitely a proponent of education.

P.S.

What are the GOTV numbers amongst these Pastor's own congregations ???

muckraker10021 · Mar 3, 2015

thoughtone said:
LOL! I thought negrocoons hated the CBC!

source: Washington Times

Black pastors urge CBC not to skip Netanyahu speech

Image: Star Parker for Freedom

The message from a dozen prominent black pastors this week to the Congressional Black Caucus was loud and clear: Don’t skip out on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyuhu’s speech.....

The men pictured above are all buffoons, they are ignorant as it pertains to facts readily available in the 'reality-based' world. They have been propagandized from birth and even though they are now adults and theoretically possess free-will, they prefer to retain as truth the lies they have been inculcated with since birth. They are mental slaves. The Europeans running Israel today like Netanyuhu are not even remotely descendants of the Israeli people mentioned in the King James version Christian bible that these dolts bang into their heads daily.

<HR NOSHADE COLOR="#FF0000" SIZE="8"></HR>

Why is anyone surprised by the unbridled warmongering of Benjamin <s>“Netanyahu”</s> Mileikowsky and his constant Neo-Con lies. The neo-cons want total war in the so-called middle east in order to create "Greater Israel"; they want a Clean Break

Yes Mileikowsky is his real name, Benjamin is Polish!

“Netanyahu” is a stage name, just like a rapper choosing a name.

Benjamin's father a super Zionist changed the family name in the 1930's. He picked the 'stage name' "Netanyahu" because it was a name mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The name נתניהו (Netanyahu) is mentioned a number of times in the Bible (in the Book of Jeremiah and in Chronicles)

What a slick hustle!

""...Anytime you turn on your own concept of God, you are no longer a free man. No one needs to put chains on your body, because the chains are on your mind. ...My main point here is that if you are the child of God and God is a part of you, the in your imagination God is supposed to look like you. And when you accept a picture of the deity assigned to you by another people, you become the spiritual prisoners of that other people.""

-Dr. John Henrik Clarke-

thoughtone · Mar 4, 2015

muckraker10021 said:
The men pictured above are all buffoons, they are ignorant as it pertains to facts readily available in the 'reality-based' world. They have been propagandized from birth and even though they are now adults and theoretically possess free-will, they prefer to retain as truth the lies they have been inculcated with since birth. They are mental slaves. The Europeans running Israel today like Netanyuhu are not even remotely descendants of the Israeli people mentioned in the King James version Christian bible that these dolts bang into their heads daily.

<hr color="#FF0000" noshade="" size="8">

QueEx said:
well intentioned but politically ignorant Black Preachers.

Well intentioned my ass! Star Parker (far right and not just for identification sake) is notorious for being on call to smear any black person at the behest of her republican masters.

Has she spoken out against republican voter suppression?
Has she spoken out against police brutality?
Has she spoken out against systemic racism in the media?

Some Jews may have stood by Black folk, but the educated know how much Jews have profited from the blood and sweat of Black folk unequally to their support.

BTW, what's that got to do with Israel and Netanyahu disrespecting the President of the United States?

QueEx · Mar 4, 2015

thoughtone said:
Well intentioned my ass! Star Parker (far right and not just for identification sake) is notorious for being on call to smear any black person at the behest of her republican masters.

Has she spoken out against republican voter suppression?
Has she spoken out against police brutality?
Has she spoken out against systemic racism in the media?

Some Jews may have stood by Black folk, but the educated know how much Jews have profited from the blood and sweat of Black folk unequally to their support.

BTW, what's that got to do with Israel and Netanyahu disrespecting the President of the United States?

T.O., sometimes a particular error, wrong, etc., predominates in a particular context that it becomes superfluous and unnecessary to cloud the issue with anything else. In the context above, "Ignorance" was sufficient.

thoughtone · Mar 4, 2015

QueEx said:
T.O., sometimes a particular error, wrong, etc., predominates in a particular context that it becomes superfluous and unnecessary to cloud the issue with anything else. In the context above, "Ignorance" was sufficient.

ig·no·rant

ˈiɡnərənt/

adjective

adjective:

lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.
"he was told constantly that he was ignorant and stupid"

My take is that ignorance implies a lack of willful knowledge.

These fools are willful and malicious.

QueEx · Mar 4, 2015

I don't want to argue about it but ignorance can arise from negligence, willfulness, indifference or it can even be imposed upon one or more people, i.e., by denial of education or the right to education during slavery.

Ignorance is a condition, however it might occur. So, no matter how they might have obtained it, it is what it is.

QueEx · Mar 4, 2015

muckraker10021 said:
<HR NOSHADE COLOR="#FF0000" SIZE="8"></HR>

Why is anyone surprised by the unbridled warmongering of Benjamin <s>“Netanyahu”</s> Mileikowsky and his constant Neo-Con lies. The neo-cons want total war in the so-called middle east in order to create "Greater Israel"; they want a Clean Break

Yes Mileikowsky is his real name, Benjamin is Polish!

“Netanyahu” is a stage name, just like a rapper choosing a name.

Benjamin's father a super Zionist changed the family name in the 1930's. He picked the 'stage name' "Netanyahu" because it was a name mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The name נתניהו (Netanyahu) is mentioned a number of times in the Bible (in the Book of Jeremiah and in Chronicles)

What a slick hustle!

Thanks for that! I didn't know that or much else about the Philadelphian. At times this forum is more like the Education Channel.

COINTELPRO · Mar 4, 2015

There is more to the speech than what it appears.

QueEx · Mar 6, 2015

QueEx · Mar 9, 2015

Republicans (Partners of Netanyahu)
Warn Iran -- and Obama -- That Deal Won't Last

A group of 47 Republican senators has written an open letter to Iran's leaders warning them that any nuclear deal they sign with President Barack Obama's administration won’t last after Obama leaves office.

Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber's entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage the Iranian regime from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process.

“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

http://www.bloombergview.com/articl...cans-warn-iran-and-obama-that-deal-won-t-last

QueEx · Mar 9, 2015

"I think it's somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress
wanting to make common cause with the hardliners in Iran,"
"It's an unusual coalition."

- Barack Obama, in response to the letter.

QueEx · Mar 9, 2015

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to U.S. senators:
You are ignorant of international law

c_330_235_16777215_0___images_stories_edim_irna1-81532407(1).jpg

Tehran Times
On Line: 09 March 2015 20:09
In Print: Tuesday 10 March 2015

TEHRAN – The Iranian foreign minister on Monday reacted to an open letter to Iran’s leaders by 47 U.S. Republican senators who had warned Tehran that any nuclear deal that the Islamic Republic signs with President Barack Obama’s administration won’t last after Obama leaves office.

Mohammad Javad Zarif said the letter lacks “legal validity” and shows that the signatories of the letter are “ignorant of international law”

“In our view this letter has no legal validity and is just a propaganda scheme,” Zarif noted.

Zarif said it is surprising that while nuclear talks have not reached a result yet pressure groups in the U.S. have become so “worried” that they have resorted to any “unconventional way” to kill it

The letter proved that
“like” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
these senators “are opposed to any deal”.

Expressing surprise on how it is possible that the legislators of a country write a letter against their own president and government to the leaders of another country, Zarif said, “The letter by the senators show that not only they are alien to international law but even not familiar with the details of the their own constitution about the authority of the president” in implementing foreign agreements.

Organized by freshman Senator Tom Cotton and signed by the chamber’s entire party leadership as well as potential 2016 presidential contenders Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the letter is meant not just to discourage Iran from signing a deal but also to pressure the White House into giving Congress some authority over the process.

“It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system … Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement,” the senators wrote. “The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”

Arms-control advocates and supporters of the negotiations argue that the next president and the next Congress will have a hard time changing or canceling any Iran deal -- -- which is reportedly near done -- especially if it is working reasonably well.

Zarif, who is a professor of international law, also said, “These senators must know that the U.S. is not equal to the entire world and that international relations is formulated based on international law and international commitments of governments and not based on the United States’ domestic laws.”

The chief Iranian diplomat added that the senators who have signed the letter may not be fully aware that according to international law governments must “live up to commitments” with other countries and cannot renege on their commitments according to their domestic regulations.

According to CNN, Democrats, including the White House, also slammed the letter, calling it a purposeful attempt to undermine the delicate negotiations as they reach their first, pivotal deadline later this month.

Republican Sens. Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, Dan Coats, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins and Bob Corker didn't sign the letter.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/politics...enators-you-are-ignorant-of-international-law

thoughtone · Mar 13, 2015

source: Addicting Info

What A Surprise: ‘Bibi’ Releases Campaign Ad With Footage From Congressional Address (VIDEO)

President Obama sure called this one.

The sole reason Obama publicly stated he would not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address before Congress was because he did not wish to contribute influence and potentially corrupt Israel’s upcoming Tuesday election. And now, just as suspected, Netanyahu’s released a campaign video in which he uses a bit of footage from that very address.

Of course, running parallel and just off-stage from the controversial speech by the prime minister was the issue of Speaker John Boehner’s immigration tantrum and threating to muck up DHS funding should he not be able to hijack the president’s agenda – a tantrum the president largely ignored the same way a parent might in order to teach their child a lesson.

Additionally, the U.S. is still in the midst of delicate negotiations with Iran over the country’s nuclear capabilities – negotiations which have since been muddied by yet another harebrained conservative scheme. You’ve likely already seen plenty of coverage about the 47 senators who wrote the leaders of Iran a letter, an act already dismissed as dubious at best.

Leading up to the congressional address, Netanyahu shrugged off objections raised by several Democrats, and during his address, Israeli election officials utilized a five-minute delay broadcasting the prime minister’s in order to circumvent any talk bordering on campaigning. But just as President Obama suspected and safeguarded against, a recent Netanyahu campaign ad was released Thursday, showcasing footage from the prime minister’s speech to Congress. In the ad, U.S. legislators are seen applauding for the prime minister.

Interestingly, the ad centers largely on a speech Netanyahu did not give at his congressional address, but elsewhere. It also exhibits a bit of Israeli military muscle, even possibly the “Iron Dome.”

Say what you will about Obama, but he saw this one coming, and he made the right call.

Check out Netanyahu’s ad below

<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pDmN6itHfOc" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" width="560"></iframe>

QueEx · Mar 13, 2015

'Post' poll: 60% of Israelis
don't want Netanyahu anymore

The Jerusalem Post
March 13, 2015

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chances of coasting to an easy victory in the March 17 election took a surprising hit on Thursday when a Panels Research poll taken for The Jerusalem Post and its Hebrew sister newspaper, Ma’ariv Sof Hashavua, found that a hefty majority of Israelis want him to lose.

The poll, taken on Wednesday among 500 respondents representing a statistical sample of the adult population, indicated that the election could end up being close and assumptions that Netanyahu cannot be defeated may be incorrect.

It asked respondents whether they want Netanyahu to remain prime minister after the vote. Sixty percent said no, 34% said yes, and 6% did not know.

The poll asked about several party leaders and asked respondents whom they would prefer one-on-one if there were direct elections for prime minister.

In a head-to-head race between Netanyahu and former welfare and social services minister Moshe Kahlon, 46% preferred Kahlon, 36% Netanyahu and 18% did not know. Between Netanyahu and former interior minister Gideon Sa’ar, 43% said Sa’ar, 38% Netanyahu and 19% did not know.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-Electio...f-Israelis-dont-want-Netanyahu-anymore-383724

COINTELPRO · Mar 18, 2015

I think Boehner has done a good thing for U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. needs to present a complex foreign policy to Israel and Middle East, openly expressing divergent views.

It is similar to somebody belonging to the KKK but has a black wife. You don't know what to think of the person.

One of the reasons that Osama Bin Laden cited for his hatred of the U.S. is our support of Israel. Appearing divergent and hostile to Israel could be a more effective strategy to fight terrorism. Working with Iran to end sanctions could also reduce tensions.

Before, we had both Democrats and Republicans openly supporting and heaping praises on Israel. This unbalanced foreign policy brought terrorism to the U.S. doorsteps.

QueEx · Mar 20, 2015

muckraker10021 · Apr 8, 2015

Bibi's Iran Shocker:
How He Accidentally Revealed His Desire For More War
Netanyahu has long claimed he doesn't want the U.S. to go to war with Iran.
But this weekend, he let the truth slip

by Elias Isquith | April 6th 2015 |http://www.salon.com/2015/04/06/bib...ccidentally_revealed_his_desire_for_more_war/

 Throughout his career, but especially in the time since President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has revealed himself to be something most politicians are not: a terrible bullshitter.
 I don’t mean “terrible” in a normative sense, though he often deploys bullshit for ends that I find morally abhorrent. I mean “terrible” in the sense of lacking skill. Even if you adjust your measurements to reflect his profession (where bullshit is nearly omnipresent), Netanyahu’s phoniness is obvious. It’s a strange thing to say about the second-longest serving PM in Israel’s history, I grant, but it’s true nonetheless. It’s absurdly easy to tell when “Bibi” is full of it.
 Let’s take the multiple appearances he made this weekend on American television, for example. During his time on both NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CNN’s “State of the Union” and ABC’s “This Week,” Netanyahu repeated the argument he made during his farcical speech before (most of) the Congress earlier this year. Evidently, the fact that the outline of an agreement negotiators unveiled last week is broadly seen as better than expected has not caused him to reevaluate his position.
 That’s his right, of course; and I’d never suggest that this longtime hawk’s fear of a nuclear Iran is insincere. But when Netanyahu tried to respond to a criticism levied his way by supporters of an agreement — that he wouldn’t accept any deal with the Iranian regime, short of its complete capitulation — he meandered over the line separating alarmism from bullshit. The choice wasn’t between compromise and war, he said. There was “a third alternative” of “standing firm, [and] ratcheting up the pressure until you get a better deal.”
 As countless people familiar with the issue have noted, it’s hard to imagine Netanyahu’s strategy not backfiring spectacularly. If the West walked away from negotiations, as Netanyahu recommends, it’s unlikely that countries in the European Union would respond by increasing sanctions to force Iran to be more compliant. What’s more likely is that they’d blame the U.S., raelax their sanctions, and get back in business with the regime instead. As far as many businesspeople in Europe, China and Russia see it, time and money are being wasted; and many of them don’t particularly care if Israel is under threat.
 Netanyahu has always lacked a good answer to this problem, but that has never seemed to worry him. In his hypothetical scenario, the step after the collapse of the global sanctions agreement is left blank. It’s kind of like the underpants gnome version of international politics. But for most other observers — including those who ultimately oppose a deal — that’s when a new war most likely steps in. And with negotiations now at their do-or-die moment, Netanyahu can’t wave-away the implications of a diplomacy breakdown to the same degree he has throughout Obama’s presidency.
 During his appearance on ABC, though, the mask slipped. “How did you get a peaceful solution in Syria?” he asked, referring to the crisis of late-2013, when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad allegedly used chemical weapons against his own people, and did so despite President Obama’s earlier threats. “You ratcheted up the pressure,” Netanyahu continued. “And when Syria saw … those pressures were raining down on them, they agreed … to what was not agreed before.” But as Netanyahu surely knows, this answer is disingenuous at best.
 Why is the Syria example so misleading? Not because Netanyahu’s mixed up his timeline or misrepresented the cause-and-effect. And not because Assad and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are allies, not the same person. No, the reason Netanyahu’s example is such nonsense is because it shows almost the exact opposite of what he said. If not for a last-minute intervention by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who offered to act as a mediator and dismantle its client Assad’s chemical weapons, a war between Syria and the United States is exactly what would have happened.
 Unless Netanyahu envisions a scenario in which the U.S. is just moments away from dropping bombs on Iran, only to have China or Russia step in and dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure instead, it’s a worthless comparison. And even in that bizarre and unlikely circumstance, Iran would still have to agree to give up its nuclear capacities, which no Iranian leader would agree to do, because it would be widely seen as a national humiliation. To say that even one part of this elaborate alternative universe could become reality would be an absurd exaggeration.
 When Netanyahu says he wants a “good” diplomatic solution more than he wants war, don’t listen to him. His definition of “good” would, in the eyes of Iran’s leaders (and others), be better understood as complete surrender. And it’s not incidental, of course, that even he only imagines this happening after the U.S. walks up to the very precipice of yet another war with a Muslim-majority nation. For Netanyahu’s claim not to prefer war to the deal on the table, in other words, there can be only one fair description: bullshit.

QueEx · Dec 27, 2016

For Obama and Netanyahu, a Final Clash After Years of Conflict

President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the Oval Office in November 2015. Credit
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

JERUSALEM — When President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel met in September for the last time before Mr. Obama leaves office, the session was marked by forced smiles and strained jokes about playing golf in retirement, as if bygones were bygones after nearly eight years of clawing conflict.

Of course it was never going to end that way. How could it? The narrative of the tense and tetchy relationship between liberal president and conservative prime minister instead reached a climax in a hyper-politicized showdown over war, peace, justice, security, human rights and, at last, the very meaning of international friendship.

Mr. Obama’s decision on Friday not to block a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements laid bare all the grievances the two men have nursed since shortly after they took office in 2009. For Mr. Netanyahu, it was the final betrayal by a president who was supposed to be an ally but never really was. For Mr. Obama, it was the inevitable result of Mr. Netanyahu’s own stubborn defiance of international concerns with his policies.

The two sides did little to hide their mutual contempt. After talks led them to conclude that Mr. Obama would not veto the resolution, as presidents of both parties have done in the past, Israeli officials essentially washed their hands of the incumbent and contacted his successor in the wings. President-elect Donald J. Trump promptly put out a statement calling on Mr. Obama to veto the resolution.

When that ultimately did not stop the Council from acting, Mr. Netanyahu’s team expressed blistering anger at Mr. Obama. An Israeli official, insisting on anonymity to maintain the veneer of diplomatic protocol, gave a statement to multiple reporters on Friday blasting Mr. Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, by name.

“President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the U.N.,” the official said. “The U.S. administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti-Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tailwind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory.”

The White House bristled at the attack, denying that it was behind the resolution but defending the decision to abstain rather than veto it as consistent with longstanding, bipartisan American opposition to Israeli settlement construction as an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.

The Israeli statement was “full of inaccuracies and falsehoods,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama, told reporters on a conference call. The president, he said, tried repeatedly to bring the rivals together at the negotiating table, only to see Israel continue building more housing in the occupied West Bank in a way that would make a peace agreement even harder to broker.

“We tried everything,” Mr. Rhodes said. In effect, he added just after Friday’s United Nations vote, Mr. Netanyahu had it coming. “Prime Minister Netanyahu had the opportunity to pursue policies that would have led to a different outcome today,” he said. “Absent this acceleration of settlement activity, absent the type of rhetoric we’ve seen out of the current Israeli government, I think the United States likely would have taken a different view.”

The clash just four weeks before Mr. Obama leaves office culminated a fractious eight years between the men. From the start, the two did not see eye to eye. Idealistic and perhaps overconfident, Mr. Obama arrived in the White House certain that he could be the president who would finally resolve the decades-old dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. But Mr. Netanyahu saw a naïf who failed to grasp the existential threat to Israel and who demanded more of his friends than his enemies.

The relationship was marked by one conflict after another, a reflection of not just personal differences but deeply held and diverging policy objectives of the men and their countries. Mr. Obama’s demand that Israel suspend new settlements to enter negotiations infuriated Mr. Netanyahu. The announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem while Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was visiting infuriated Mr. Obama. Two major pushes for negotiations by Mr. Obama unraveled amid mistrust and animosity.

The multinational deal masterminded by Mr. Obama to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions proved a breaking point. At first, Mr. Obama hid the secret talks with Iran from the Israelis. After the talks became public knowledge, Mr. Netanyahu flew to Washington to excoriate the effort in a joint meeting of Congress. But he could not stop it.

The two tried to put the rupture behind them last fall by sealing a 10-year $38 billion American security aid package for Israel, but even then the bitterness of their quarrels hung over the agreement. Mr. Netanyahu’s critics at home asserted that the package should have been $45 billion and that the prime minister’s speech to Congress had come with a $7 billion price tag. American officials said it never would have been that high, but the opposing sides remained scratchy.

Even after the smiles and golf get-together in New York in September, Mr. Obama made it clear that he was not yet done with his efforts to leave his mark on Middle East peace efforts as he considered outlining an American framework for an agreement. Mr. Obama was angered by Mr. Netanyahu’s proposal to save an illegal Israeli outpost in Amona by moving the settlers to another plot of land claimed by the Palestinians.

Mr. Netanyahu’s critics in Israel said the Amona controversy and proposed legislation to legalize other outlaw outposts were responsible for Mr. Obama’s decision to abandon Israel’s government on Friday.

“Netanyahu chose to advance the legalization bill, insisted on Amona and galloped into the wall in full knowledge that this would be the result — while choosing his personal interest over the national interest,” Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister, wrote on Facebook.

Mr. Netanyahu’s team rejected that. “I think the legalization bill had nothing to do with this,” said Michael Oren, a deputy minister and former ambassador to the United States, although he conceded that “it would have been good to discuss the legalization bill at a later time just because of questions like that.”

Mr. Oren said the real obstacle to peace was Palestinian incitement, not Israeli settlements. The United Nations was hypocritical, he said, because it singled out Israel while ignoring scores of other territorial disputes around the world. “It’s not only an anti-Israel resolution but an anti-Semitic resolution,” he said.

In the United States, Mr. Obama faced criticism not only from Republicans but from pro-Israel Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and a cross section of Jewish-American organizations, including several that have been at odds with Mr. Trump.

“It is deeply troubling that this biased resolution appears to be the final word of the administration on this issue,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement.

If it is the last word — and there are still 27 days left in the Obama presidency — it will serve as a coda to a relationship that never clicked.

SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/world/middleeast/israel-benjamin-netanyahu-barack-obama.html?_r=0

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QueEx · Dec 27, 2016

The roots of why Obama and Netanyahu dislike each other so much

QueEx · Dec 28, 2016

Israel's self-imposed exile

Ryan Cooper

Natanael Natanael Alfredo Nemanita Ginting

December 27, 2016

The final diplomatic act of the Obama administration toward Israel is a telling encapsulation of the entire rocky relationship.

Israel has profited tremendously during the Obama years — $24 billion in military subsidies so far, capped off by a record-breaking $38 billion more to be delivered over the next 10 years — and has enjoyed almost unquestioned use of America's powerful U.N. Security Council veto.

However, occasionally President Obama has voiced frustration about Israeli intransigence, most often over the continued Israeli settlement building in the West Bank (inflamed, no doubt, by endless highly personal insults from the Israeli prime minister to Obama himself).

Last week, the U.S. declined to veto a U.N. resolution condemning the settlements. Absent an American veto, the resolution sailed through 14-0.

Israeli officials reacted with furious outrage. On Saturday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fumed about this "shameful ambush by the Obama administration," and quickly summoned the U.S. ambassador to Israel for a dressing down. It's a preposterous, ginned-up overreaction — but it should not distract from the realization that this is a vision of what life will be like for Israel in its self-chosen exile when it inevitably loses its American protection.

Make no mistake: That really is inevitable. On its current track, Israel will one day be utterly alone before the crushing condemnation of nearly the entire world. And it has only itself to blame.

Of course, President-elect Donald Trump is probably not going to remove American protection from Israel. On the contrary, there is every sign he will back Netanyahu to the hilt. He abased himself before AIPAC during the campaign — reading a rare speech from the teleprompter instead of his usual manic, scattershot improvisation. Most tellingly, he selected as U.S. ambassador to Israel a right-wing fanatic who disdains the two-state solution and says Jewish supporters of the center-left think tank J Street are worse than the Jewish kapos who guarded concentration camps for the Nazis.

The Israeli hard right will get whatever it wants out of a Trump administration.

But that is precisely why Trump is a clear and present danger to Israel. Israel has become an abusive drunk of a nation that enforces an apartheid regime over the Palestinian lands of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It controls both places absolutely and barely anyone — including Netanyahu himself — even bothers to pretend that permanent control of Palestinian lands, and permanent disenfranchisement of the human beings who live there, is Israeli policy. The West Bank is shot through with ever-growing Israeli settlements, its citizens are subjected to endless harassment from occupying Israeli troops, and its government is totally in thrall to Israel. Gaza is basically an open-air prison camp, its citizens trapped in grueling poverty, its economy and infrastructure shattered by routine Israeli bombardment.

When presented with these facts, pro-Israel partisans invariably talk about Palestinian terrorism. And it is undeniably true that many Israeli civilians have been killed or wounded by bombs, rockets, and knives. This is tragic and obviously wrong; it is always wrong to hurt innocent people if it can possibly be avoided. But as Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall argues, violence is simply what happens when one group of people is occupied and oppressed by another for decades. Blowback is a fact of life in a tyranny; it happened in Rhodesia and it happened in apartheid South Africa. It is unrealistic to pretend that shouting about supposed unfairness might make it otherwise — in addition to a double standard, given the far greater quantity of horrendous violence visited on Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military.

As the 14-0 Security Council vote shows, Israel's actions toward the Palestinian people are despised almost everywhere save the United States. For now, cloaked in America's protection, that leaves Israel mostly unharmed. But only for now.

The U.S. will be less and less relatively powerful in the future, as China and India continue to grow and assert themselves. In a decade or two, Israel might be economically ring-fenced even over U.S. objections. And even if that weren't going to happen, Israel has worked assiduously to undermine its own long-term support within the U.S.

With rare and mostly symbolic exceptions, President Obama has bent over backward to appease Netanyahu and protect Israel from international condemnation. For that he has received sneering contempt from the Israeli political establishment, constant meddling in U.S. domestic politics to undermine his initiatives and elect his political opponents, strong disapproval from the Israeli public — and, of course, an outstretched hand demanding ever-greater military subsidies.

Continued access to America's Security Council veto depends above all on bipartisan support for Israel. But Israel's behavior has polarized partisan opinion. Democrats, especially younger and more liberal ones, are far less sympathetic toward Israel than Republicans are. As the fact of Israeli apartheid becomes ever more obvious, and the Israeli right continues to work hand-in-glove with conservative Republicans, that trend will only continue.

It's only a matter of time before the Democrats who come to national power are irritated enough at Israel's petulant self-indulgence that they will refuse free use of the Security Council veto. And on that day, Israel will stand naked and friendless before a firestorm of international condemnation and sanctions.

I would hope that at that point they will realize the error of their ways. But I wouldn't bet on it either.

SOURCE: http://theweek.com/articles/669442/israels-selfimposed-exile

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QueEx · Dec 29, 2016

muckraker10021 · Dec 29, 2016

Barack Backhands Bibi

by Patrick J. Buchanan | December 27, 2016 | http://original.antiwar.com/buchanan/2016/12/26/barack-backhands-bibi/

Did the community organizer from Harvard Law just deliver some personal payback to the IDF commando? So it would seem.

By abstaining on that Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem illegal and invalid, raged Bibi Netanyahu, President Obama "failed to protect Israel in this gang-up at the UN, and colluded with it."

Obama’s people, charged Bibi, "initiated this resolution, stood behind it, coordinated on the wording and demanded that it be passed."

White House aide Ben Rhodes calls the charges "falsehoods."

Hence, we have an Israeli leader all but castigating an American president as a backstabber and betrayer, while the White House calls Bibi a liar.

This is not an unserious matter.

"By standing with the sworn enemies of Israel to enable the passage of this destructive, one-sided anti-Israel rant and tirade," writes the Washington Times, "Mr. Obama shows his colors."

But unfortunately for Israel, the blow was delivered by friends as well as "sworn enemies."

The U.S. abstained, but Britain, whose Balfour Declaration of 1917 led to the Jewish state in Palestine, voted for the resolution.

As did France, which allied with Israel in the Sinai-Suez campaign of 1956 to oust Egypt’s Col. Nasser, and whose Mysteres were indispensable to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967.

Vladimir Putin, who has worked with Bibi and was rewarded with Israel’s refusal to support sanctions on Russia for Crimea and Ukraine, also voted for the resolution.

Egypt, whose Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was welcomed by Bibi after his coup against the Muslim Brotherhood president, and who has collaborated with Bibi against terrorists in Sinai and Gaza, also voted yes.

China voted yes as did Ukraine. New Zealand and Senegal, both of which have embassies in Tel Aviv, introduced the resolution.

Despite Israel’s confidential but deepening ties with Sunni Arab states that share her fear and loathing of Iran, not a single Security Council member stood by her and voted against condemning Israel’s presence in Arab East Jerusalem and the Old City. Had the resolution gone before the General Assembly, support would have been close to unanimous.

While this changes exactly nothing on the ground in the West Bank or East Jerusalem where 600,000 Israelis now reside, it will have consequences, and few of them will be positive for Israel.

The resolution will stimulate and strengthen the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, which has broad support among U.S. college students, Bernie Sanders Democrats and the international left.

If Israel does not cease expanding West Bank settlements, she could be hauled before the International Criminal Court and charged with war crimes.

Already, J Street, the liberal Jewish lobby that backs a two-state solution in Palestine – and has been denounced by Donald Trump’s new envoy to Israel David Friedman as "far worse than kapos," the Jewish guards at Nazi concentration camps – has endorsed the resolution.

The successful resolution is also a reflection of eroding support for Israel at the top of the Democratic Party, as a two-term president and a presidential nominee, Secretary of State John Kerry, were both behind it.

Republicans are moving to exploit the opening by denouncing the resolution and the U.N. and showing solidarity with Israel. Goal: Replace the Democratic Party as the most reliable ally of Israel, and reap the rewards of an historic transfer of Jewish political allegiance.

That Sen. George McGovern was seen as pro-Palestinian enabled Richard Nixon to double his Jewish support between 1968 and 1972.

That Jimmy Carter was seen as cold to Israel enabled Ronald Reagan to capture more than a third of the Jewish vote in 1980, on his way to a 44-state landslide.

Moreover, U.S. acquiescence in this resolution puts Bibi in a box at home. Though seen here as a hawk on the settlements issue, the right wing of Bibi’s coalition is far more hawkish, pushing for outright annexation of West Bank settlements. Others call for a repudiation of Oslo and the idea of an independent Palestinian state.

If Bibi halts settlement building on the West Bank, he could cause a split in his Cabinet with rightist rivals like Naftali Bennett who seek to replace him.

Here in the U.S., the U.N. resolution is seen by Democrats as a political debacle, and by many Trump Republicans as an opportunity.

Sen. Chuck Schumer has denounced Obama’s refusal to veto the resolution, echoing sentiments about the world body one used to hear on America’s far right.

"The U.N." said Schumer, "has been a fervently anti-Israel body since the days (it said) ‘Zionism is racism’ and that fervor has never diminished."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says he will urge Congress to slash funding for the United Nations.

If the folks over at the John Birch Society still have some of those bumper stickers – "Get the U.S. out of the U.N., and the U.N. out of the U.S.!" they might FedEx a batch over to Schumer and Graham.

May have some converts here.

MCP · Sep 25, 2018

'The difference between America and Israel? There isn't one'

(Moderator’s Note:
This Op-Ed was published:
March 1, 2015)

https://www.independent.co.uk/voice...rica-and-israel-there-isn-t-one-10078658.html

Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sarah left Israel for a 48-hour trip to the US ( Getty )

Uri Avnery is without doubt the most intellectual, philosophical, prescient leftist Israeli seer I have ever met. Like TS Eliot, he has a habit of using the fewest words to tell the greatest truth. Every essay he writes, this reader always says the same thing: Exactly! Yet, for the first time in 40 years, I disagree with the great man.

He has just suggested that Benjamin Netanyahu’s agreement to address the US Congress at the invitation of Republicans tomorrow – two weeks before an Israeli general election – and Barack Obama’s decision not to see the old rogue, has destroyed Israel’s bipartisan support in America. For the first time, says Uri, Democratic politicians are allowed to criticise Israel.

Absolute Tosh.

Congressmen of both parties have grovelled and fainted and shrieked their support for Bibi and his predecessors with more enthusiasm that the Roman hordes in the Colosseum. Last time Bibi turned up on the Hill, he received literally dozens of standing ovations from the sheep-like representatives of the American people, whose uncritical adoration of the Israeli state – and their abject fear of uttering the most faint-hearted criticism lest they be called anti-Semites – suggest that Bibi would be a far more popular US president than Barack. And Bibi’s impeccable American accent doesn’t hurt.

And his aim – to earn votes for himself and to destroy the one foreign policy achievement within Obama’s grasp – will have absolutely no effect at all on Israeli-US relations. When Bibi made himself the laughing stock of the UN Security Council – by producing an infantile cartoon of an Iranian bomb with a red line in the middle, indicating that Iran could build nuclear weapons by the end of 2013 – his charade was treated with indulgence by the American media. These mythical deadlines have been expiring regularly for more than a decade, yet still we are supposed to take them seriously. Obama is struggling to reach an agreement with Iran which would protect the world from any nuclear weapon production by the Islamic Republic.

READ MORE
Bibi wants to destroy this opportunity. He wants more sanctions. He wants to win the Israeli elections on 17 March. He might even bomb Iran – which would bring an immediate military response against the United States. But he’s going to be telling Congress that the entire existence of Israel is at stake. According to Uri, Bibi will be spitting in the face of President Obama. “I don’t think there was ever anything like it,” Uri Avnery wrote this weekend. “The Prime Minister of a small vassal country, dependent on the US for practically everything, comes to the US to openly challenge its President, in effect branding him a cheat and a liar… 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.”

I don’t wish to exonerate Bibi’s cynicism. Even Uri admits that he cannot imagine any more effective election ploy. “Using the Congress of the United States of America as a propaganda prop is a stroke of genius,” he says. But the Prime Minister of Israel knows he can get away with anything in America – with the same confidence that he can support his army when they slaughter hundreds of children in Gaza in the “self-defence” of Israel. Bibi’s speech to Congress will be as disproportionate as his soldiers’ bombardment of the world’s mightiest slum.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after an adress to a joint session of Congress in the US

And he’ll do just fine. We’re told the Democrats are upset. We are informed that Obama is very, very – really – very angry. But the Democrat presidentess-in-waiting is no problem for Bibi. It was Hillary, remember, who told us last summer that she wasn’t sure it was “possible to parcel out blame” for the Gaza slaughter “because it’s impossible to know what happens in the fog of war”. The media stories may have obscured what was happening. “I do think oftentimes that the anguish you are privy to because of the coverage, and the women and children and all the rest of that [sic], makes it very difficult to sort through to get to the truth.” So the fewer reporters, the closer to the truth about the dead women and children and “all the rest of that”, we’ll all get. No wonder liberal Zionists, according to The New York Times, are worried that Hillary is getting too close to Bibi.

As for the Republicans, well take a look at ‘ol Jeb Bush, promising that all will be a clean sweep if he becomes the US commander-in-chief. There’ll be no focus, understandably, on “the past” – Daddy George and Big Bro George W. But his probable advisers in a future presidency include Paul Wolfowitz, John Hannah (Cheney’s old “national security adviser”), Michael Hayden (who misled Congress about torture) and Condi Rice, after whom an entire oil tanker was once named and then un-named – in other words, the same mangy crew who produced “weapons of mass destruction”, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, trillions of dollars in debt, torture and that infamous “mushroom cloud” (a real “fog of war”, if ever there was one). Columnist Maureen Dowd says that Jeb Bush should be holding to account those who inflicted “deep scars on America”. But why should he? The only thing unmentioned by Jeb is that in 2003, Israel was also producing the same scams about WMD and Saddam’s links to “world terror”.

Bibi won’t be reminding Congress of this on Tuesday, of course. It will be Iran’s WMD and the Islamic State’s links to “world terror” which will have Congress on its feet. It’s a pity Bibi wasn’t born in New York. Then we could have US President Netanyahu – and stop pretending there’s any difference between the Israeli and American governments.

President Barack Obama Humiliates Benjamin Netanyahu

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