Yesterday evening (late night Israel time), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would not, after all, be attending next week's Nuclear Security Summit to be hosted by President Obama in Washington, DC.
Speaking to Republican party loyalists at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Liz Cheney in a manner that was not only very predictable but also as one imagines Netanyahu would have scripted her -- attacked the president of her own country for what she called his "shabby" and "disgraceful" treatment of Israel. The party faithful applauded.
The reasons cited by Israeli officials for their PM's Washington no-show were last-minute concerns that Israel's own nuclear program -- or in official lingua franca, non-NPT signatory status -- would be raised by certain summit attendees -- notably, Egypt and Turkey. It is an explanation that fails to meet even the lowest bar of plausibility -- unless Benjamin Netanyahu has been moonlighting as Sleeping Beauty for the last decade or more. It is a very long-standing tradition that at every possible international forum Egypt raises its concerns at Israel's nuclear program and non-NPT status, and it did so along with other Arab states and in Israel's presence when multilateral Arms Control and Regional Security talks took place throughout the 90's after the Madrid Conference.
Turkey too has been articulating its public support for a WMD-free Middle East for some time. So the concerns noted by the New York Times regarding Egypt and Turkey were hardly a new development necessitating any reassessment of a prime ministerial travel schedule. To be clear, Israel is not boycotting the summit and will in fact be represented by the most respected, talented, and all-together decent member of the government, Minister Dan Meridor. But that doesn't change the headline -- the Netanyahu no-show.
The concerns regarding Israel's nuclear posture, whether Netanyahu attends or not, will be raised, and canceling his participation focuses as much of a spotlight on this as his presence in the room would have done. Netanyahu's decision clearly has much more to do with the current status of U.S. efforts on Israeli-Palestinian peace and the posture that Israel's PM is choosing to adopt in response to that, as Glenn Kessler hints in today's Washington Post.
The Netanyahu team apparently decided that next week's visit was a lose-lose proposition. Canceling would raise eyebrows and questions, but showing up in DC would create more concrete challenges. Who would Netanyahu meet with and what messages would he be conveying regarding East Jerusalem settlement expansion and other issues?
Israel's current prime minister is acting like the apprehensive child who hopes that by closing his eyes and waiting the threatening thing will go away. The thing that Netanyahu hopes will go away is the need to make real decisions regarding peace, Israel's future, occupation, and the settlements, with President Obama simply playing the role of the latest guise in which that question comes.
The most revealing indication that Netanyahu was seeking to lessen the impact of this decision and avoid the issue was the timing of his announcement. It came at around 5pm EST on Thursday. That's midnight in Israel. The weekend papers had just been put to bed (the item just makes it into some, but was too late for splashy headlines or commentary). Friday and Saturday are dead news days in Israel (there are not even newspapers on the latter), and the news-cycle was anyway being dominated by the court's lifting of a gag order against a journalist and ex-soldier accused of leaking state secrets and the freedom of press repercussions of that story.
Substantively, Netanyahu should have every reason to positively RSVP to President Obama's invitation to attend next week's summit alongside over 40 heads of state. The summit is dedicated to the issue of nuclear terrorism, an area in which the U.S. and Israel share many challenges. The transfer of nuclear technology to non-state actors for terrorist purposes is a central and constant refrain of Israeli officials when urging action against Iran.
While it is true that the U.S. president's active pursuit of a non-proliferation agenda may lead some eyes to be cast in the direction of Jerusalem (or more precisely Dimona, the site of Israel's presumed nuclear program) Obama himself and his administration have been solid in reiterating the commitment to Israel's unique and protected nuclear status. This assurance was reissued to Israel by senior U.S. officials in the lead-up to next week's summit. This is hardly something to be sneezed at when nonproliferation is a centerpiece of your global agenda and when your position vis-a-vis Israel can so easily be portrayed as hypocritical.
Rather than welcome this latest American expression of fealty to the special relationship and accept the invitation, Netanyahu decided to poke the president in the eye yet again. One of the only articles that did manage to make Israel's Friday press deadline was a short piece in the Ma'ariv newspaper by Eli Bardenstein, "Unlike the past, this time Israeli officials fear that the Egyptian position will gain the ear of the American administration... and will harm Israel's policy of ambiguity."
Ever since Netanyahu's government took office, there has been a never-ending stream of stories from unnamed sources taking shots at the Obama administration, trying to undermine its standing with the Israeli public, and sending the signal to the Likud echo chamber stateside to swing into action. This would appear to be the latest example and who better today than Liz Cheney to be on the receiving end of the Netanyahu long ball.
In her speech last night, Liz Cheney repeated what has become something of a boilerplate GOP talking point in the last year -- that Obama is undermining America's most important relationship in the world. Although we're so used to hearing it, it's worth pausing for just a moment to ask why the GOP is so enthusiastically adopting this line.
From the Cheney clan and their school of militarist nationalism and projection of American hard power, protecting the profits of the defense, energy, and other sectors that benefit while piling up national debt and only recalling fiscal responsibility when it comes to paying for social domestic needs such as health care -- from them, it should come as no surprise. Likewise, from the Likudist wing of the neoconservative movement. As Elliott Abrams stunningly wrote in his 1997 book, How Jews can survive in Christian America, "Outside the land of Israel, there can be no doubt that Jews, faithful to the covenant between God and Abraham, are to stand apart from the nations in which they live." I actually hesitate to quote that, concerned as I am at the use it can be put to by people of ill-will. But Elliott Abrams is responsible for his writings and indeed for his life's opus of destruction and wrongdoing.
There are of course also the pro-settlement Evangelical Zionists with their not-so-happy dispensationalist vision for the future of the Holy Land and of the Jews (probably the only time I would ever share a fate with Elliott Abrams -- though he makes common cause with and encourages them while I do not). Yes, that's a not insignificant core of today's GOP, and the rest might think they can score cheap partisan political points against Obama and maybe even win over a few Jewish voters or donors by going along for the ride. It may be naive, but is that really a good enough reason to undermine American national security interests (and for anyone to undermine Israel's future as a democracy and future as a Jewish homeland)?
Wiser GOP heads-notably foreign policy realists-are no doubt exasperated and hoping that the words of the normally Republican-revered General Petraeus may have some impact. He told the Senate Armed Services committee last month [pdf] and indeed last year how debilitating this conflict is for the challenges the U.S. military faces throughout the region and suggested an urgency in its resolution.
Why Netanyahu should be playing this game is perhaps more obvious. The links between the Likud and settler community and the Republican right have been strengthening over the past two decades and now have real depth and sense of common purpose to them. Netanyahu appears to be playing the same mischievous game in American domestic politics today as he did in the 90's (although the upshot then was a fall-out with President Clinton which contributed greatly to Netanyahu's own coalition collapse and reelection failure in 1999). They also share some of the same sources of largess, notably Sheldon Adelson.
But this does not explain what is behind it for Netanyahu, what he hopes to achieve, his goals. This does: Netanyahu may be for a Greater Israel in which case he has to play for time; or he may not be for a Greater Israel but is unwilling to confront the settlers and their sympathizers and his own personal demons which that would entail, leading to the same conclusion. Play for time.
Playing for time though, is not pretty. In practice it entails entrenching an occupation/settlement reality which is unsustainable, just gets uglier, and has consequences. Those consequences include an increasingly undemocratic Israel, one that will have neither peace nor security, and an Israel that cannot work effectively with the region or even with its closest allies in facing the challenge of Iran. It also erodes Israel's standing even in the U.S. and allows it to increasingly become a partisan political plaything.
What all this means for President Obama and his administration is that their best option is to pursue the ideas already under consideration, and leaked this week by David Ignatius in The Washington Post and Helene Cooper in NYT, to advance it's own plan or terms of reference for a two-state deal and present these real and clear choices to the Israelis and Palestinians. If Netanyahu is able to do the right thing, it will only be under these circumstances, and if not Israelis have the chance to come to their own conclusion in their democracy.
Let's see Liz Cheney oppose President Obama, Secretary Gates, Admiral Mullen, and General Petraeus as they stand four-square behind a plan that delivers on the American national security interest.
Netanyahu doesn't need to visit DC next week, but once the preparations are made and the plan is ready, President Obama needs to go to Israel and to the pro-Israel community at home and make his case -- it would be an act of both courage and true friendship.
Edward Klein and Richard Z. Chesnoff: The Jewish Problem With Obama; Part One
Audio from Turkish Gaza flotilla to the Israeli navy
“You are approaching an area which is under a naval blockade,” a navy radio operator said in a message broadcast to the six protest ships.“Shut up. Go back to Auschwitz,” a male voice said in reply. The message was broadcast to the navy from one of the ships,“We’re helping the Arabs go against the US. Don’t forget 9/11, guys,” a man said later on during the radio exchange.
The Left fell out of love with Israel in the 1960's and now it is starting to get really ugly.
Wake up, liberal Jews !!!
Thank you, Liz Cheney.
hmmm
Their repsective peoples and the region deserve better.
On the other hand “Israel is drawing up plans to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and is prepared to launch a strike without backing from the US,” The Times Online reported in December, 2008. Ehud Olmert, then Israeli prime minister, reportedly asked the US for a green light to attack Iranian facilities as recently as May, 2008.
I agree Israel does not war with Iran, it wants to strike Iran without having to face the bad consequence involved in war. In an individual that would be called bullying.
We do not occupy any territory, we hold the West Bank and Jerusalem is our capital, Gaza is an Arab state run by thugs called Hamas.
On page 37 of the U.S. Joint Forces Command report(The Joint Operating Environment
Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2008/JOE2008.pdf), the Army includes Israel within "a growing arc of nuclear powers running from Israel in the west through an emerging Iran to Pakistan, India, and on to China, North Korea, and Russia in the east."
But, that is why the GOP applauds Netenyahu and his brand of obstruction.
Because that would be antisemitism.
The real truth is that the US give much more money to Arab countries than to Israel and that they don't even ask them anything in return, even to stop their rabid anti-American propaganda.
You just keep spewing and spewing and spewing...
But keep it up. Your posts, and the lies therein, represent the type of Israeli arrogance that will slowly melt all support for Israel in this country.
Then your nation will truly be alone.
"falsely presenting Arab terrorists as peaceful people"
Who are these Arab terrorists that we are supposed to hug?
Predictably the Republican party is seeing the nacient, toothless, ineffective attempts of the Obama administration to finally hold Israel to minimal account, as an opportunity for them (the Republicans) to gather in all the AIPAC money for the midterms. American interests, as always where Israel is concerned, be damned.
We should be extremely wary of ascribing a leftwing agenda to senior Israeli politicians who make use of the word “apartheid” in the Israeli-Palestinian context. Barak was not claiming that Israel is an apartheid state when he addressed the high-powered delegates at the Herzliya conference last month; he was warning the Netanyahu government that its approach to the two-state solution was endangering Israel’s legitimacy in the eyes of the world that would eventually lead to it being called an apartheid state. He was politicking. His goal was to intimidate Netanyahu into signing up to his, and the Israeli centre’s, long-standing agenda of “unilateral separation”: statehood imposed on the Palestinians as a series of bantustans (be sure, the irony is entirely lost on Barak and others). Barak knows that Netanyahu currently has no intention of creating any kind of Palestinian state, even a bogus one, despite his commitments to the US.
1. He has a country to run
2. Most international forums turn into Israel bashing sessions where the anti-Israel countries disproportionatley single out Israel and hold Israel to standards not imposed on any other country.
3. It is obvious to all that with Iran racing to nuclear weapons with multiple repeated overt and direct threats to wipe Israel off the map, Netanyahu is concerned with the promise of NEVER AGAIN - never again will the Holocaust repeat itself on the Jewish or Israeli people. Rather than having talks with other senior diplomats, he needs to be prepared to defend his country and its citizens.
He cannot start his Iran bashing when all fingers point to Israel a non-NPT signatory who has refused: (a) inspections by the IAEA; (b) refused to join the NPT; (c) refused a nuclear-free zone Middle East and (d) has an estimated 200 to 500 nuclear weapons.
And please do not keep repeating the favorite tag-line used by Israel about Iran being a threat. Ignorance is not a bliss
1- the other world leaders also "have a country to run".
Did feel like reading the rest after that failure...
Have a cigar.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/03/16/gordon-duff-u-s-tells-israel-you-are-undermining-america-endangering-troops/
Outrage in Gaza after group confiscates files, equipment.
06/04/2010 05:06
Hamas’s security forces on Monday and Tuesday raided the offices of several non-governmental organizations in the Gaza Strip and confiscated equipment and furniture, drawing sharp condemnations from human rights groups.
The sources said the raids were carried out by agents belonging to Hamas’s Internal Security apparatus without court permission.
Hamas spokesmen in the Gaza Strip on Thursday refused to comment on the raids.
After conducting a thorough search of the offices of the organizations, the Hamas security agents confiscated files, documents, computers, fax machines and other equipment.
The agents also informed the managers and workers of the organizations of the Hamas government’s decision to close them down indefinitely.
The Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights expressed outrage over the raids and called on the Hamas government to open an investigation.
“Al-Mezan condemns these assaults against NGOs and views them with much concern,” the center said. “Al-Mezan calls on the Gaza government to initiate an investigation into these acts, ensure full respect of the law, and protect the right of NGOs to work freely.”