This week is going to be the Week of Israel, with state visits by Shimon Peres and Binyamin Netanyahu, plus the annual AIPAC conference in Washington DC. There are plenty of articles on Israel appearing in today’s press. I actually think Joe Klein is making sense (more than Alan Keyes, anyway):
My guess is that Bibi’s real agenda is the slow annexation of the west bank via Israeli settlement. He will do anything to slow or avoid doing what has to be done: not just stopping the settlements, but rolling them back. His next step, I’m told, will be to make a show of opening negotiations with the Syrians, knowing that glaciers move faster than the Assad family does when it comes to diplomacy. The Obama Administration has made it clear that it wants the settlements stopped. But it may need to do more than make the sort of perfunctory statements that George W. Bush got away with. The President may risk the ire of America’s Professional Jews–the AIPAC and neoconservative gang–if he gets tougher with Israel. But those Jewish noisemakers, who represent a minority of American Jewish public opinion, will be taking a risk, too, if they oppose this very popular President who won the support of 78% of Jewish-American voters.
That’s pretty much my take on things. But it’s good to see a prominent Jewish columnist say these things in such an unapologetic manner. It’s also hard to absorb that Bibi selected a foreign minister who is a real-life West Bank settler. That’s not diplomacy. That’s a sick joke.
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Lieberman, who will also visit France, Germany and the Czech Republic in his first official trip as foreign minister, called Iran “a destabilizing factor for the whole world” and the main problem in the Middle East.
Netanyahu was to address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention from Jerusalem by video link later Monday. He was expected to concentrate on Iran, leaving the Palestinian issue as secondary.
Peres spoke at the AIPAC convention in person and is set to meet President Barack Obama on Tuesday, two weeks before Netanyahu’s first visit in a sequence seen by some as a mild slap at Netanyahu.
My recent diary: Prosecutors Back Down in AIPAC Spy Case
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
“The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives-people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary-plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel,” Klein wrote.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“‘ADL is extremely careful in making accusations about anti-Semitism and we spend every day in our work all over the country assessing the validity — or lack thereof — of such accusations,’ he wrote. ‘The notion you posited that ADL is looking to find anti-Semites everywhere in no way reflects the reality.’“
LOOOOOOOLOLOLOLOLOL! Oh, my god, THAT’s a good one!
Abe Foxman has a promising new career in comedy.
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By Michael B. Oren
“Israel, the Jewish State, is predicated on a decisive and stable Jewish majority of at least 70 percent. Any lower than that and Israel will have to decide between being a Jewish state and a democratic state. If it chooses democracy, then Israel as a Jewish state will cease to exist.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“It’s also hard to absorb that Bibi selected a foreign minister who is a real-life West Bank settler. That’s not diplomacy. That’s a sick joke.”
That’s an “In your face” attitude. Drizzled with a whole lot of “contempt.”
My guess is that Bibi’s real agenda is the slow annexation of the west bank via Israeli settlement.
It’s actually the agenda of the state of Israel and has been for decades, but Klein gets credit for being the general vicinity of the the truth.
Four decades plus two years, to be specific. 🙂
What gibberish. I swear I proofed that…
…Klein gets credit for being in the general vicinity of the truth.
AIPAC and it’s politically rewarded mouthpieces want to strangle Iran just as Iraq was suffocated for a decade before the US Invasion. Disband the Iraqi army, de-Baathify down to the lower ranks and foment civil war between the Sunni and Shia, with the ethnic cleansing and defacto Partitioning of Iraq as the ultimate goal.
Watch the BBC documentary “The War Party”, part 1 of 5
Listen to Philip Weiss discuss the War for Israel agenda on Antiwar Radio:
antiwar.com/radio/2008/07/12/philip-weiss/
antiwar.com/radio/2009/03/18/philip-weiss-2/
antiwar.com/radio/2009/04/30/philip-weiss-3/ <- Phil discusses the recent Harman espionage case
Philip Weiss is a self described anti-Zionist covering the AIPAC conference, check out his blog @ philipweiss.org
“My guess is that Bibi’s real agenda is the slow annexation of the west bank via Israeli settlement.“
LOL! BIBI’s real agenda?! That has been the real agenda of every single Israeli government since 1967, including the “saintly” Yitzhak Rabin. Oslo was little more than a means of buying time to sink Israel’s hooks more deeply into the occupied territories, most particularly the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as evidenced by the fact that the escalation of land confiscation, colonization, and creation of other “facts on th ground” was in the works DURING the negotiations (kind of like the plan for the murderous December-January attack on Gaza was in the works during – and before – the negotation of the 2008 ceasefire).
Colonization and exploitation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem (and the Golan Heights – but that is somewhat of a separate issue), not to mention the increased strangulation of the population there, has not stopped or appreciably slowed down at all since Oslo no matter what government was in power in Israel.
“His next step, I’m told, will be to make a show of opening negotiations with the Syrians“
Evidently Joe Klein is unaware that there have been reportedly pretty successful back-door negotiations going on with the Syrians over the Golan Heights for about a year now (NOT sponsored by the U.S., which is most likely at least part of the reason they have been as successful as they have been). It would not be so much a matter of Netanyahu opening negotiations, as, most likely, finding a way to scuttle the progress that has been made recently while claiming he had tried – REALLY tried – to come to some agreement with the recalcitrant, and “glacially slow” (see below) Asad.
“…knowing that glaciers move faster than the Assad family does when it comes to diplomacy.“
This is a deeply ignorant statement. Bashshar Al Asad has made numerous overtures to Israel during his presidency, most of which have been rebuffed out of hand. And as I mentioned in the previous paragraph, there HAVE been negotiations taking place in secret for some time, and which have reportedly led to pretty good progress.
Oh – and for the record, Assad is not the correct translitoration of the name, nor is AsSAHD the correct pronunciation. The name is Asad, with one S, and it is pronounced ESed (rhyming with led). It means lion.