Israel Matzav

The New York Times' great black hope

The New York Times must figure that there are a lot of Jews who sit around their seder tables reading the newspaper. There is little else that can explain the obsessive coverage that Israel is receiving this weekend. This is the third post today that has come from the Times.

The Times does a fawning profile of Shaul Mofaz who defeated Tzipi Livni for leadership of the opposition Kadima party ten days or so ago. The profile must be music to the ears of Barack Hussein Obama.

He said Mr. Netanyahu’s focus on Iran’s nuclear program had distracted attention from more important priorities, like making peace with the Palestinians, ending settlement building in much of the West Bank and reducing the country’s socioeconomic inequality. Let President Obama handle Iran, he said. We can trust him.

“I intend to replace Netanyahu,” Mr. Mofaz, 63, said in the party chairman’s office, so new to him that behind his desk there was still a poster for Ms. Livni. “I will not join his government.”

Then: “The greatest threat to the state of Israel is not nuclear Iran,” but that Israel might one day cease to be a Jewish state, because it would have as many Palestinians as Jews. “So it is in Israel’s interest that a Palestinian state be created.”

Mr. Mofaz said that Israel’s alliance with Washington was its greatest strategic asset, and that aligning Israeli policy more with Washington was necessary. Also, he said, Mr. Netanyahu has been talking too much about Iran. If the time comes when only an attack can stop Iran’s nuclear program, and “God forbid the American president decides not to attack,” he will support Mr. Netanyahu in such a move, he said. But he does not expect that to happen.

Of course, there's one small problem. Most Israelis don't believe that Obama can be trusted, nor that the 'Palestinians' have any interest in real peace that might merit making them a priority.

And polls indicate that if elections were held now (they are not due before the fall of 2013), Mr. Netanyahu would crush him.

Aaron Lerner believes that Bronner is pitching Mofaz to American Jewish Leftists in the hope that they will contribute to his campaign - read his full comments here. But I believe that Bronner is pitching Mofa to the Obama administration in the hope that, if Obama is reelected, he will pull a Bill Clinton and send a James Carville here to hope Mofaz win.

Right now, that wouldn't work. It would require fooling too many people. But given this country's fractured politics, you never know whether it might work in the future.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Leftist Jews, Shaul Mofaz

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:42 PM