'I killed myself to give the 'Palestinians' a state'
For once I agree with Bill Clinton. Yes, he really did nearly kill himself to give the 'Palestinians' a state. And yes, he's telling the truth about the 'Palestinians.'
Let's go to the videotape.
Since I know you can't make out what the spectator is saying, there's a full transcript here.
But here's the problem. I don't like Bill Clinton, but I have serious doubts he would ever purposely destroy Israel. I don't have those doubts about Hillary. Here's why. Hillary has a long history of being anti-Israel.
It seems that in the Obama White House, the boss may not be the biggest
Israel hater. That title may well belong to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).
In his book American Evita, Christopher Anderson writes.
At
a time when elements of the American Left embraced the Palestinian
cause and condemned Israel, Hillary was telling friends that she was
"sympathetic" to the terrorist organization and admired its flamboyant
leader, Yasser Arafat. When Arafat made his famous appearance before the
UN General Assembly in November 1974 wearing his revolutionary uniform
and his holster on his hip, Bill "was outraged like everybody else,"
said a Yale Law School classmate. But not Hillary, who tried to convince
Bill that Arafat was a "freedom fighter" trying to free his people from
their Israeli "oppressors." (1)
Of course Hillary's
feelings about the PLO and Israel are only one aspect of her character,
often a person's true nature is more closely revealed in a more intimate
setting. In an early showcase of Hillary's diplomatic skills
Christopher Anderson relates an experience that she and her future
husband had during a trip to Arkansas in 1973.
It was
during this trip to his home state that Bill took Hillary to meet a
politically well connected friend. When they drove up to the house, Bill
and Hillary noticed that a menorah-the seven branched Hebrew
candelabrum (not to be confused with the more common and subtler
mezuzah)-has been affixed to the front door.
"My daddy was
half Jewish," explained Bill's friend. "One day when he came to visit ,
my daddy placed the menorah on my door because he wanted me to be proud
that we were part Jewish. And I wasn't about to say no to my daddy."
To his astonishment, as soon as Hillary saw the menorah, she refused
to get out of the car. "Bill walked up to me and said that she was hot
and tired, but later he explained the real reason." According to the
friend and another eyewitness, Bill said, "I'm sorry, but Hillary's
really tight with the people in the PLO in New York. They're friends of
hers, and she just doesn't feel right about the menorah." (2)
Read the whole thing. After that second story, anyone want to try to convince me that she 'only' hates Israel and not Jews?
The only time in her adult life that Hillary Clinton was pro-Israel was
when it was necessary to be elected as US Senator from the heavily
Jewish state of New York. I don't believe that Hillary Clinton is worthy
of Jewish support at all, but if American Jews are going to donate to
her campaign they should at least condition their support on a clear and
irreparable break with President Hussein Obama's policies on both the
Iranian nuclear file and the so-called 'peace process.'
In an article appearing in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, White House speechwriter Ben Rhodes (@rhodes44) admits what Israel supporters claimed all along: He lied to Congress in order to sell the nuclear sellout to Iran.
Rhodes’s innovative campaign
to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future
administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. The
way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal
presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with
Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new political
reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought
moderates to power in that country — was largely manufactured for the
purpose for selling the deal. Even where the particulars of that story
are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to
take away from those particulars are often misleading or false. Obama’s
closest advisers always understood him to be eager to do a deal with
Iran as far back as 2012, and even since the beginning of his
presidency. “It’s the center of the arc,” Rhodes explained to me two
days after the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action, was implemented. He then checked off the ways in which the
administration’s foreign-policy aims and priorities converged on Iran.
“We don’t have to kind of be in cycles of conflict if we can find other
ways to resolve these issues,” he said. “We can do things that challenge
the conventional thinking that, you know, ‘AIPAC doesn’t like this,’ or
‘the Israeli government doesn’t like this,’ or ‘the gulf countries
don’t like it.’ It’s the possibility of improved relations with
adversaries. It’s nonproliferation. So all these threads that the
president’s been spinning — and I mean that not in the press sense — for
almost a decade, they kind of all converged around Iran.”
In
the narrative that Rhodes shaped, the “story” of the Iran deal began in
2013, when a “moderate” faction inside the Iranian regime led by Hassan
Rouhani beat regime “hard-liners” in an election and then began to
pursue a policy of “openness,” which included a newfound willingness to
negotiate the dismantling of its illicit nuclear-weapons program. The
president set out the timeline himself in his speech announcing the
nuclear deal on July 14, 2015: “Today, after two years of negotiations,
the United States, together with our international partners, has
achieved something that decades of animosity has not.” While the
president’s statement was technically accurate — there had in fact been
two years of formal negotiations leading up to the signing of the
J.C.P.O.A. — it was also actively misleading, because the most
meaningful part of the negotiations with Iran had begun in mid-2012,
many months before Rouhani and the “moderate” camp were chosen in an
election among candidates handpicked by Iran’s supreme leader, the
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The idea that there was a new reality in Iran
was politically useful to the Obama administration. By obtaining broad
public currency for the thought that there was a significant split in
the regime, and that the administration was reaching out to
moderate-minded Iranians who wanted peaceful relations with their
neighbors and with America, Obama was able to evade what might have
otherwise been a divisive but clarifying debate over the actual policy
choices that his administration was making. By eliminating the fuss
about Iran’s nuclear program, the administration hoped to eliminate a
source of structural tension between the two countries, which would
create the space for America to disentangle itself from its established
system of alliances with countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel and
Turkey. With one bold move, the administration would effectively begin
the process of a large-scale disengagement from the Middle East.
...
The person whom Kreikemeier credits with running the digital side of the
campaign was Tanya Somanader, 31, the director of digital response for
the White House Office of Digital Strategy, who became known in the war
room and on Twitter as @TheIranDeal. Early on, Rhodes asked her to
create a rapid-response account that fact-checked everything related to
the Iran deal. “So, we developed a plan that was like: The Iran deal is
literally going to be the tip of everything that we stand up online,”
Somanader says. “And we’re going to map it onto what we know about the
different audiences we’re dealing with: the public, pundits, experts,
the right wing, Congress.” By applying 21st-century data and networking
tools to the white-glove world of foreign affairs, the White House was
able to track what United States senators and the people who worked for
them, and influenced them, were seeing online — and make sure that no
potential negative comment passed without a tweet.
...
When
I suggested that all this dark metafictional play seemed a bit removed
from rational debate over America’s future role in the world, Rhodes
nodded. “In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse
the [expletive] out of this,” he said. “We had test drives to know who
was going to be able to carry our message effectively, and how to use
outside groups like Ploughshares, the Iran Project and whomever else. So
we knew the tactics that worked.” He is proud of the way he sold the
Iran deal. “We drove them crazy,” he said of the deal’s opponents.
Yet
Rhodes bridled at the suggestion that there has been anything deceptive
about the way that the agreement itself was sold. “Look, with Iran, in a
weird way, these are state-to-state issues. They’re agreements between
governments. Yes, I would prefer that it turns out that Rouhani and
Zarif” — Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister — “are real
reformers who are going to be steering this country into the direction
that I believe it can go in, because their public is educated and, in
some respects, pro-American. But we are not betting on that.”
In
fact, Rhodes’s passion seems to derive not from any investment in the
technical specifics of sanctions or centrifuge arrays, or any particular
optimism about the future course of Iranian politics and society. Those
are matters for the negotiators and area specialists. Rather, it
derived from his own sense of the urgency of radically reorienting
American policy in the Middle East in order to make the prospect of
American involvement in the region’s future wars a lot less likely. When
I asked whether the prospect of this same kind of far-reaching spin
campaign being run by a different administration is something that
scares him, he admitted that it does. “I mean, I’d prefer a sober,
reasoned public debate, after which members of Congress reflect and take
a vote,” he said, shrugging. “But that’s impossible.”
But it wasn't just Congress that was told lies. So was Obama's Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta.
One
of the few charter members of the Blob willing to speak on the record
is Leon Panetta, who was Obama’s head of the C.I.A. and secretary of
defense and also enough of a product of a different culture to give
honest answers to what he understands to be questions of consequence. At
his institute at the old Fort Ord in Seaside, Calif., where, in the
days before he wore Mr. Rogers sweaters, he served as a young Army
intelligence officer, I ask him about a crucial component of the
administration’s public narrative on Iran: whether it was ever a salient
feature of the C.I.A.’s analysis when he ran the agency that the
Iranian regime was meaningfully divided between “hard-line” and
“moderate” camps.
“No,”
Panetta answers. “There was not much question that the Quds Force and
the supreme leader ran that country with a strong arm, and there was not
much question that this kind of opposing view could somehow gain any
traction.”
I
ask Panetta whether, as head of the C.I.A., or later on, as secretary
of defense, he ever saw the letters that Obama covertly sent to
Khamenei, in 2009 and in 2012, which were only reported on by the press
weeks later.
“No,”
he answers, before saying he would “like to believe” that Tom Donilon,
national security adviser since 2010, and Hillary Clinton, then
secretary of state, had a chance to work on the offer they presented.
As
secretary of defense, he tells me, one of his most important jobs was
keeping Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his defense
minister, Ehud Barak, from launching a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s
nuclear facilities. “They were both interested in the answer to the
question, ‘Is the president serious?’ ” Panetta recalls. “And you know
my view, talking with the president, was: If brought to the point where
we had evidence that they’re developing an atomic weapon, I think the
president is serious that he is not going to allow that to happen.”
Panetta stops.
“But would you make that same assessment now?” I ask him.
“Would I make that same assessment now?” he asks. “Probably not.”
So another victim of the lies was Israel - specifically Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. Except that in Panetta's telling the story, he didn't know he was lying to them. And Panetta now admits what everyone in Israel felt at the time: There was no way in the world Hussein Obama was going to use military force to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
PS I left this out, but it turns out that Laura Rozen - likely the biggest cheerleader for the Iran deal on Twitter, is described as the White House's RSS feed for the deal. Think about that the next time you read something in al-Monitor, which she edits.
New Barak leak: Netanyahu opposed 'terrorists for Gilad' deal
In yet another leak of the supposedly 'secret' tapes of Ehud Barak's autobiography, it was disclosed today that Prime Minister Netanyahu opposed the 'terrorists for Gilad' trade.
Speaking of the Shalit prisoner exchange,
Barak tells his interviewers — who are working on his biography — that
Netanyahu was opposed to the exchange of the captive IDF soldier for
1,027 Palestinian prisoners, but gave in after Barak pressured him.
“Bibi [Netanyahu] is forced into action, and
shows a side [to his personality] that is less elegant, less about
self-control, less pretty, when he’s in a personal crisis over
something,” Barak says in recordings he did not know would become
public.
“As much as he was opposed to [the] Gilad
Shalit [exchange], and I pressured him for months to do two things, to
do Gilad Shalit and immediately afterward to pass in the government [and
in] the Knesset [the recommendations of] the Shamgar Committee” that
recommended changing Israel’s prisoner exchange policy.
“In the end he was convinced he had to free
Shalit but wasn’t convinced to do the obvious next step [of passing
Shamgar], and that’s how he found himself in the [June 2014] kidnapping
of the three kids,” teenagers whose kidnapping by a Hamas-affiliated
cell in the West Bank triggered that summer’s Gaza war.
What he refers to as 'Shamgar' was a law that would prohibit Israel from trading terrorists for Israelis being held hostage. As if that would stop any Israeli government from doing exactly that....
As some of you might recall, I opposed the 'terrorists for Gilad' trade. And I still think it was the wrong thing to do.
Surprise: Ehud Barak tells biographers Israel canceled plans to attack Iran in 2010, 2011 and 2012
Israel's Channel 2 television obtained recordings of former Defense Minister (and Prime Minister and IDF Chief of Staff) Ehud Barak telling biographers that Israel planned to strike Iran in 2010, 2011 and 2012... and then called off the strikes because someone in the IDF (Gabi Ashkenazi) or the cabinet (Boogie Yaalon, Yuval Steinitz) objected . You can watch a CNN report about the recordings here.
Here in Israel, there is outrage over the report. Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman is accusing Barak of giving away state secrets.
Liberman told Army Radio that he was “more
than surprised” at Barak, and said statements such as those given by the
former minister would ultimately strengthen Iran.
“I think that when moves and discussions that
should have been closely guarded state secrets are discussed by the
press, it relays that you are a talker, that you aren’t serious, that
you’re unreliable,” he said.
“That is why, among other reasons, Iran is
being coddled by the international community, and we have been backed
into a corner… These things should only have been discussed in closed
forums.”
Asked whether he believed Barak was guilty of
revealing state secrets, Liberman responded that he had “no doubt” that
was the case.
And the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee is opening an investigation... into how the tapes got out.
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Tzahi Hanegbi (Likud) said on Sunday he intends to investigate whether information divulged by former Defense Minister Ehud Barak regarding a possible Iran strike was properly cleared for publication, and if so, why.
...
Speaking to Israel Radio on Sunday, Hanegbi said such publications do not serve Israel's security interests. When asked if Barak harmed Israel's security, Hanegbi refuse to answer, but said that as the head of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee he plans to summon officials from the censor's office and hear their explanation.
Barak spoke of the plans in conversations with his biographers, Dani Dor and Ilan Kfir. Excerpts from the recordings were aired on Israel Channel 2’s weekly news magazine on Friday.
Channel 2 said Barak did not want the material released, but the IDF military censor approved the publication.
Caspit: At the end of the day, Netanyahu to blame for failure to attack Iran
If I am to believe Ben Caspit, Binyamin Netanyahu was a gutsy soldier and is a yellow-bellied Prime Minister. Caspit looks at Caroline Glick's confrontation with Meir Dagan and Gabi Ashkenazi at the Jerusalem Post conference over the weekend, and argues that the real question is not why Israel did not attack Iran in 2010 (when Dagan was heading the Mossad and Ashkenazi the IDF), but rather why it did not attack in 2012.
This dialogue in New York, about five years after the fact,
reveals just the tip of the iceberg of what was taking place behind
closed doors during those long, tense months in the conference rooms of
Israel’s top defense leadership. All the heads of the various security
forces were unanimous in their opinion that an Israeli attack on Iran
would be a historic mistake that could result in disaster. At the same
time, however, decisions in Israel are made by the political leadership.
The defense establishment is then expected to carry them out without
hesitation. On the other hand, to follow through with a perilous,
strategically historic move such as attacking Iran, any Israeli prime
minister would want the support of his defense leadership, or at least
the chief of staff.
Netanyahu is an overly cautious prime minister with an
aversion to military adventurism, for reasons of personal
political survival. He knew that if something went wrong with the attack
and it then became public that he gave the order despite the
recommendations of all of the professionals in the security services, it
would be the end of his political career. At first, he invested
enormous energy in trying to convince some of the defense chiefs to
adopt his position. The event reported here occurred when he finally
gave up.
The question that the Israeli right should ask Netanyahu is
why he didn’t attack Iran in the summer of 2012. As far as Netanyahu
was concerned, that summer was seemingly the ultimate moment: The heads
of the security forces had left the IDF and were replaced with a new
crop of generals lacking experience, charisma or influence among the
public. At that time, Netanyahu had a weak and anonymous chief of staff
in the person of Benny Gantz, a novice director of the Mossad with Tamir
Pardo, a new chief of military intelligence and a new director of the
Shin Bet on the way. At the same time, the United States was caught up
in a bitter presidential election, in which President Barack Obama was
fighting for his second term. Netanyahu was seemingly free to act. There
was nothing to prevent him from attacking Iran in July, August or
September 2012, but he hesitated and eventually put his dream aside. At
the time, however, there was no one to interfere in any significant way.
So why didn’t he go through with it? First of all, because Netanyahu was afraid. Second, Barak made a sharp, last minute U-turn and switched to the opponents’ side. And there must be other reasons.
So why did Netanyahu back down? What are those 'other reasons'? Here are a couple that might have played a role:
1. The 'most pro-Israel administration evah' made very clear that it would not have Israel's back if Israel attacked Iran. One of the working assumptions to that point was that if Israel went ahead with the attack and found itself endangered in the aftermath, the United States would step in. In August 2012, we were told clearly that was not the case.
2. Those who were 'out of power' were not exactly without influence.
Caroline Glick confronts Meir Dagan and Gabi Ashkenazy over refusal to carry out order to bomb Iran (with video)
JPost columnist Caroline Glick confronted former Mossad Director Meir Dagan and former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazy at the newspaper's conference in New York on Sunday, and accused them of refusing to carry out an order to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.
Let's go to the videotape.
"In 2010, according to a report from 2012 on the Israeli news program
Uvda, we learned that two of the men on this panel were given an order
to prepare a strike against Iran's military installations and they
refused," Glick said.
"Because it was an illegal order," Dagan interjected.
"You were ordered by the security cabinet," Glick said.
"You don't know what happened there," Dagan answered.
"It
is not in your expert legal opinion to determine whether or not the
prime minister of Israel and defense minister of Israel have a right to
order Israel to take action in its national defense. We would not be
where we are today. We would not now be faced with a situation where no
international coalition will be built, where now we are seeing the
United States moving forward at the end of the month to conclude a
nuclear agreement with Tehran that will enable them to acquire the bomb.
We would be in a different position.," Glick charged.
Ashkenazi
said that what Glick was saying was "stupid," later apologizing and
saying he meant "insulting." He rejected the idea that the military
echelon could prevent the political echelon from attacking Iran.
Glick is 1000% correct. Too bad it won't help at all today.
I cannot think of any other country in the West where something like this could happen.
US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter agrees with Ehud Barak: 'Of course we can destroy Iran's nuclear capability'
Shavua tov v'kayitz bari - a good week and a healthy summer (although at 45 degrees and rain, it feels more like winter here in Jerusalem).
US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter told CNN on Friday that the United States has the capability of destroying Iran's nuclear capability - it just doesn't plan on doing so right now. You might recall former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak saying something similar before the holiday.
Carter said that the current framework for
a deal with Iran does not take the military option off the table but
added that it will currently not be used.
"We
have the capability to shut down, set back and destroy the Iranian
nuclear program and I believe the Iranians know that and understand
that," he said, referencing the military's most powerful
ground-penetrating bomb, the Massive Ordinance Penetrator (MOP).
The
MOP -- which can explode 200 feet underground and is designed to
destroy deeply buried and fortified targets -- is ready for use, Carter
said.
Carter added that the administration's objective is to stop Iran from
developing a nuclear weapon through negotiations, "rather than through
military action because military action is reversible overtime."
Military action is 'reversible over time'? Really? Funny that never happened in Nazi Germany or Japan. And instead you're going to worry that military action is 'reversible' and therefore make an agreement with a sunset clause that all but guarantees a nuclear weapon when the agreement is? I realize that Obama is a total non-believer in the use and usefulness of military force, but isn't Carter someone who spent a lot of time in the US Army? How come he doesn't get it?
Yes, "military action is reversible overtime", if an American operation -
of at most a few days - to "shut down, set back and destroy the Iranian
nuclear program" was followed by benign neglect on America's part.
But that's a profoundly absurd assumption.
So the next time you are being briefed by an American ask them the following
questions:
After the United States exercises its capability to shut down, set back and
destroy the Iranian nuclear program - as well as Iran's mid-range and
long-range missile program:
#1. Would it be possible for the U.S. to detect indications of Iranian
efforts to restore these programs?
#2. Would the United States have "the capability to shut down, set back
and destroy" these efforts to restore the destroyed programs?
#3. Is it reasonable to assume that the cost of this follow up "lawn
mowing" would be magnitudes less than that cost of the initial American
operation to destroy these programs?
I'd add another question: How much higher will the cost of shutting down an Iranian nuclear weapon be when this 'agreement' expires than it is now?
Israel's most decorated soldier: Wiping out Iran's nuclear capability would take one night
America's liberal media thought it had a good laugh on Wednesday when Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark) said that wiping out Iran's nuclear capability militarily would be a breeze. But here's the funny thing: Israel's former Defense Minister and most decorated soldier agrees. Ehud Barak compared an operation to wipe out Iran's nuclear capability to the operation that targeted Osama Bin Laden.
In an interview on CNBC, Barak said the operation would take only “a
fraction of one night” and added that “the Iranians can do nothing about
it, except for attacking Israel.”
“The administration uses the term ‘war,’” Barak said “and people are
thinking that probably it is something like a war on Iraq or a war on
Afghanistan, [but] that’s not the case. Technically speaking, the
Pentagon and the armed forces of America under the backing and probably
directive of the [US] president [could] create an extremely effective
means to destroy the Iranian nuclear military program over a fraction of
one night.”
Barak, who also served as Israel’s defense minister, said that on a
“spectrum between the War on Iraq and the killing of Osama bin Laden it
is much closer to killing Osama bin Laden.”
This “is something that should be understood” Barak added, “the Iranians can do nothing about it, except for attacking Israel.”
Barak’s assessment of what a military intervention against Iran’s
nuclear program might look like followed his advice that Iran should be
given a clear ultimatum to abandon its nuclear project “or else.” He
sharply criticized the White House’s negotiation strategy saying that US
concessions are far more entrenched than Iran’s because as a democracy
the US can’t shift its positions on a whim.
He said, “All of us prefer a solution that might be reached through
negotiations, but in order to negotiate, the other side should
understand and believe… that if they will not come to terms with the
real demands, to put all of the enriched material out of Iran, to close
Fordo, to stop all working on weaponization, on making the preparations
for weapons. If all this is not agreed right now, they face the
alternatives.”
The former prime minister’s comments serve as an indication of how
widespread the criticism of the recently announced framework agreement
is in Israel, spanning across the political spectrum.
Yes, across the political spectrum. You see, Ehud Barak's political party was the Labor party.
Here's the interview. Let's go to the videotape.
Barak was Prime Minister Netanyahu's commander in Sayeret Matkal, Israel's most elite army force. Why doesn't Obama get it? Maybe this is why:
In Washington, whether it’s an R or D administration, in fact, we
want Israeli leaders like Rabin, Peres, and Barak who see the world more
or less the way we do when it comes to the two-state peace process. We
have a much harder time with those Israeli leaders—Begin, Shamir,
Netanyahu—whose views on what to do about the Palestinians don’t
naturally accord with ours. (Sharon was a special case. He and George W.
Bush got along reasonably well because neither really cared about the
peace process and both were governing in an age of terror.)
But sometimes those initial judgments about who’s naughty or nice end up confounding.
Because U.S. administrations tend to divide the Israeli political
spectrum into two parts—the good Israelis who share our views and the
not so good ones who don’t—they’re not entirely sure what to do with the
fact that Israeli prime ministers of all political stripes have
continued Israeli settlement building on the West Bank and construction
in parts of east Jerusalem that we’d like to see become the capital of a
Palestinian state.
It’s an inconvenient but important reality to acknowledge that of the
three U.S.-orchestrated breakthroughs in the Middle East peace process,
two of them—the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and the Madrid peace
conference—came from hardline Likud prime ministers. The third—the three
disengagement agreements following the 1973 war —came courtesy of a
very tough Labor prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin.
But secretly rooting for the good Israelis and wishing them success
is one thing. What about actually doing things that help the good ones
succeed or alternatively weakening the Israelis we don’t want to see in
power?
I can recall at least three occasions when Republican and
Democratic administrations willfully picked Israeli favorites and tried
to shape election outcomes.
...
Now, as the clock ticks down on Israeli elections scheduled for March
2015, will the Obama administration play internal Israeli politics to
try to tip the election against Netanyahu?
Obama’s relationship with Bibi is perhaps the most dysfunctional of
any president-prime minister pair in the history of the U.S.-Israeli
relationship. Doubtless John Kerry, too, would like to see another
Israeli leader with whom he could dance a real peace process.
Yet constraints against U.S. meddling abound. First, there’s the
Republican-controlled Congress, which will be watching hawk-like for any
such funny business. Second, there’s the absence of a clear and
credible alternative to Bibi with whom the administration is close; and
then there’s the matter of the lack of a big issue for such lobbying.
The peace process is in a coma; and ISIS, Hamas, Assad, Hezbollah, and
the Iranian mullahs make Israel look like the good guys. Finally,
there’s Obama himself. He’s not Clinton. Does he really care? Do most
Israelis trust him? Could he get away with a campaign that makes clear
Bibi isn’t the right guy and candidate, but X is? I am betting on “no”
to all three questions. Don’t even think about it, Mr. President.
The last constraint is the most important one. Many Israelis saw Bush I as neutral at best and hostile at worst. But that didn't compare with what Israelis think of Obama. While we may differ on why, most Israelis agree that Obama is viscerally hostile to Israel. There is little that can be done to convince us otherwise (and with good reason).
If Obama tries to interfere (and with his arrogance I would say that there's a fair chance of that happening). it would likely backfire. That's what Miller is trying to prevent.
Keep writing Aaron. But don't expect Obama to listen.
Aaron David Miller: 'We always tried to influence the Israeli elections, but we never succeeded; Obama shouldn't even try'
Aaron David Miller, who was Dennis Ross' top assistant, has told YNet that the United States 'always' tried to interfere in Israeli elections, but never succeeded (Hat Tip: Red Tulips) (link in Hebrew).
According to Miller, the US gathered a lot of information about Prime Minister Netanyahu - including his activities while a student in the United States - but no one would listen.
Miller admits that the George HW Bush administration influenced the outcome of the 1992 election to bring Yitzchak Rabin to power over Yitzchak Shamir, but he claims that's because the US set up the environment for that election through the Bush-Baker controversies with Shamir. He admits that the Clinton administration also tried - unsuccessfully - to ensure Shimon Peres' election as Prime Minister in 1996. But Peres lost to Netanyahu.
Miller says that the Clinton administration gathered information on Netanyahu and leaked it to the Israeli media. The information included Netanyahu's activities as a student in Boston and Philadelphia, his name change to Nitai, his forfeiting of his American passport, and the failure of Netanyahu's first marriage. Miller claims that it caused a scandal but had no influence.
Miller advises President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry not to even try to influence March's elections. Clinton was a President who was beloved in Israel, says Miller, while Obama is extremely unpopular (you don't say...) and any attempt to influence the March elections would backfire.
Obama and Kerry are declining to comment on the upcoming elections, although Kerry has said that he hopes that a new government will be able to conduct a 'peace process.'
Funny how he doesn't mention the Americans' greatest success - the 1999 replacement of Netanyahu with Ehud Barak courtesy of Clinton.
Bill Clinton bashes Netanyahu on camera, says he has to be forced to make peace
Good morning from Boston.
Something tells me that Bill Clinton isn't too crazy about the idea of his wife Hillary becoming President. On Sunday, he based Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on camera, straying from his wife's false pro-Israel line.
It came at the end of a three-hour fifteen-minute C-Span coverage of Clinton's attendance at Sunday's Iowa steak fry with Senator Tom Harkin (D).
If we don’t force him to have peace, we won’t have peace … Netanyahu is not the guy,” a pro-'Palestinian' activist told the ex-president. I agree with that,” Clinton clearly replied, apparently unaware his remarks were being recorded. Then he bragged about getting Ehud Barak to give Arafat everything he wanted, including Jerusalem.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Jack W).
Much more from Yid with Lid (including a transcript if you, like me could not get the sound to work) here.
Flashback: [Then] Defense Minister Ehud Barak: 'Restraint is strength'
DM Ehud Barak told Israel Radio that restraint is strength and those
wanting absolute quiet should move to Finland. DM Barak said Israel
would act to bring down the Hamas regime in Gaza and when necessary and
such action would require retaking the Gaza Strip.
Let's go to the videotape.
Orwellian. How many Israelis do you think would prefer to retake Gaza over living under rocket fire? Sounds like an interesting poll question.
For those wondering, I took my 14-year old son on an all-day trip to northern Israel today. We came home around 9:00 and I immediately collapsed for a few hours....
With the 'peace process' officially over and done with for now, calls are growing within Israel's governing coalition to annex 'Area C,' the part of Judea and Samaria that includes the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria and the highways that Israelis use to traverse those areas. The latest minister to call for annexation is Gilad Erdan, who is the highest-ranking Likud functionary to issue such a call.
On Sunday morning the newly appointed Coordinator of Government
Activities in the Territories Brig. Gen. Yoav (Paulie) Mordechai
announced that approvals of master plans for 19 Palestinian villages in
Area C had been frozen.
He spoke at a Foreign Affairs and Defense sub-committee on Judea and
Samaria, which focused on the issue of illegal Palestinian construction.
His statement was unusual. Israel is often accused of imposing a
de-facto policy that prevents Palestinian development in Area C, but its
officials have rarely publicly articulately a policy to halt such
building, even temporarily.
His spokesman Guy Inbar explained that defense minister Ehud Barak gave
his initial approval to the plans. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon
advanced them during the last nine-months, when Israeli and Palestinian
teams were negotiating, Inbar said.
Europe and the United Nations have increasingly in the last few years
focused on shoring up Palestinian development in Area C, including with
financial assistance, because they view it as vital to the viability of
a future Palestinian state.
But as they increase their support for Palestinian development of Area
C, political voices in support of Israel's annexation of Area C have
grown stronger.
Communications Minister Gilad Erdan – a cabinet minister considered
close to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu – said that Israel should
also begin "preparing for the declaration of Israeli sovereignty" over
regions of Area C which have large Jewish populations, otherwise known
as the settlement blocs, and which it is "clear" will always remain a
part of Israel.
In the 1990s, the Oslo Accords divided the West Bank into three “areas:"
Area A, comprising some 18% of the territory, was transferred to the
Palestinian Authority, where it enjoys most governmental powers.
Area B, making up 22% of the territories, was divided between Israel and
the Palestinians, with Israel retaining security control, and civil
matters given to the Palestinian Authority.
Area C, the largest area comprising some 60% of the territory – including all the settlement lands – remained in Israeli hands.
Erdan told Israel Radio that as a result of the Fatah-Hamas unity plan,
Israel needed to send a "clear message" to the Palestinian leadership
and the Palestinian people that "they will lose with their unilateral
steps, which will be answered by unilateral steps on our part."
Erdan said that there were clear steps that he felt Israel should
already be taking, such as deducting debts the PA owes Israel – for
instance to the Israel Electric Company – from the duties and taxes
Israel collects for the PA and transfers to them each month.
"But if you ask me," he said, "we need to take more significant steps,
such as declaring Israeli sovereignty over Area C, where the Jewish
population lives, and is clear to us that they will [continue] to live
there."
While Erdan is not the first cabinet minister to suggest annexing parts
of Area C as a result of the Palestinian move – Economy Minister Naftali
Bennett has already made that suggestion – it has added significance
coming from Erdan because he is considered closely aligned to Netanyahu.
The 'Palestinians' have named a forest after Khalil al-Wazir, better known as Abu Jihad, Yasser Arafat's right-hand man.
The March 30 event at Martyr Khalil Al-Wazir
Forest was attended by dozens of officials, including Minister of
Agriculture Walid Assaf, District Governor of Hebron Kamel Hamid and
representatives of the PA Security Forces, as well as several mayors
from the Hebron district and relatives of Abu Jihad, Palestinian Media
Watch said in a bulletin Sunday.
Abu Jihad, also known as Khalid al-Wazir, was a
founding member of Fatah and a deputy to Yasser Arafat. He led the
PLO’s military wing, and was responsible for numerous terror attacks
that according to PA daily Al-Ayyam killed at least 125 Israelis. His
facilitation of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre — the hijacking of a bus
that resulted in 37 Israeli deaths, including 12 children — made him one
of the most wanted Palestinian terrorists in the world.
Abu Jihad’s son, Jihad Al-Wazir, told the
crowd, “All of you are martyr Abu Jihad’s children, and he is freedom in
the memories and hearts of every one of you.”
According to Palestinian Media Watch, PA
President Mahmoud Abbas also recently decorated Abu Jihad postumously
with “the highest order of the Star of Honor.”
Abu Jihad was allegedly assassinated by Israeli agents who included former Defense Minister Ehud Barak, dressed in drag.
When they got ashore, Mossad cars waited for them. Evidently the Mossad had had agents planted in Lebanon for some time before.
They
got in the cars and received a report that three Lebanese policemen
were unexpectedly patrolling the area in front of the apartments that
they were supposed to attack. Ehud Barak made a quick decision to
continue with the operation despite the obstacle. A call to headquarters
could have easily led to the cancellation of the whole operation.
When
they approached their target they got out of the cars and began walking
like lovers, as they had planned. No one suspected them for anything
else. As they passed the policemen, the policemen didn't even react to
them. They got to the apartments and didn't see any guards there. Muki
Betser's group went in, climbing the stairs at a half-run. They got to
the door of one of the PLO men and set the explosive fuses. They waited
for a signal from outside that the other two units had also set their
explosives and were ready to act. They got the go-ahead. They lit the
fuses and waited. When they would explode Ehud Barak would "report back
to the mother ship that the operation began, setting in motion the rest
of the IDF forces in Beirut that night."
Just before the fuse
went off shooting broke out in the street below. The three units about
ready to enter the rooms had no time to deal with that.
Muki
Betser describes his part in the raid: "Finally, the explosion blew open
the door in a blast of smoke. I burst in with Tzvika, instinctively
taking the left-hand turn into the main corridor of the apartment,
running down the hall I knew so well from my drills.
Four strides
and I reached my target's office. Half a dozen empty chairs faced the
desk. Behind it, filing cabinets reminded me that military intelligence
wanted any piece of paper we found. To my right, said the architectural
plans I memorized, was the master bedroom door. I swung in that
direction, just as the door flew open.
The face I knew from three
weeks of carrying his picture in my shirt pocket looked at me as I
raised my gun. He slammed the door. Bursts from my Uzi and Tzvika's
stitched the bedroom door. I rushed forward and kicked through the
remains of the door." The PLO man, who was responsible for the Munich
massacre of the Israeli athletes, was no more.
They ran quickly
down the stairs to deal with the shooting they had heard just before
they entered the rooms. The shooting outside was still going on.
The noise grew louder as they leaped, landing to landing, towards the bottom of the stairs and outside the building.
Muki
Betser recalls: "Out the front door, I ducked into the shadow of a
tree, scanning the intersection just as a burning Lebanese police Land
Rover rolled through the intersection. Straight ahead, Amiram Levine in a
blonde wig looked like a crazed dancer in the middle of the
intersection, his tiny powerful body swinging his Uzi back and forth
from target to target.
To my right, Ehud (Barak) stood in the
middle of the intersection, doing the same. I added my own fire at the
Land Rover, giving Amiram cover for him to run toward me. The Land Rover
crashed to a halt against a building. But a second vehicle, a jeep full
of reinforcements came screeching into the box of fire we created at
the intersection." They took out this jeep as well.
They could
hear explosions in the distance. It was, they assumed, Amnon Shahak's
paratrooper unit at George Habash's headquarters.
The Mossad cars
came screeching to a halt outside of the buildings and the fiery
intersection they were waiting at. The Sayeret Matkal units, missions
completed, jumped into the cars. Only two minutes had passed since they
hit their targets in the buildings. Ehud Barak checked with the other
Sayeret Matkal units. No one had been killed, but one commando had been
wounded. No news as of then was known of the paratroopers who had
attacked George Habash's six-storey building.
"Ehud cut off radio
contact and we rushed in a crazy race down the hills of Beirut. The
Mossad drivers knew the city and they knew the big American cars well
enough to make them slip and slide around the corners as we raced
through the city. No whooping and shouting broke out inside the getaway
car. Each man sat alone with his thoughts, alert for enemy forces taking
chase."
Outside of the neighborhood they had just wreaked havoc
in they slowed down. Soon, before they were to turn off the road leading
down to the beach, they saw a Lebanese Army troop carrier, scanning the
shore. The Sayeret Matkal commandos inside of the Mossad-rented cars
were tense as they waited for it to pass. The Lebanese didn't bother
with them.
The commandos jumped out of the cars when they got to
the beach. The operation had taken a little longer than expected - a
half-hour instead of the anticipated 20 minutes.
As they motored
out to sea, they found out what had happened. Three of the top PLO
leaders they had intended to assassinate were dead. And George Habash's
six-storey building was in rubble and ruins. In that raid, which Amnon
Shahak had led, two IDF soldiers were killed . Shahak won a medal of
valor as he saved the lives of wounded comrades under his command.
They didn't get Arafat, although they thought they might have gotten him there. But they had done what they set out to do.
Operation Spring of Youth is still known as one of the IDF's elite units' finest moments.
According to the contemporary newspaper headline, pictured above, the operation was over in five minutes.
Jews allowed to move into contested building in Hebron
Defense Minister Moshe "Boogie" Yaalon has allowed Jews to move into Hebron's Peace House, a building that was purchased on their behalf by an American Jew ten years ago. Israel's Far Left Meretz party is warning that the move will lead to violence, and its followers will do all they can to ensure that prediction comes true.
The move expands Jewish property-holding in the section of the city
under Israeli military and civil control. It is located in a
Palestinian neighborhood just outside the Kiryat Arba settlement, on the
major road that leads to the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Morris Abraham, a Jew from Brooklyn, had purchased the building from its Palestinian owners over a decade ago.
Claiming ownership, settlers initially moved into Beit Hashalom in
March 2007 even though the Defense Ministry had not authorized the
purchase or given them the permits to live there.
The Palestinian owners argued that the sale, in any event was fraudulent and turned to the courts.
In December 2008, when Ehud Barak was defense minister, he forcibly evacuated the building pending the completion of legal appeals. Some
600 Border Police officers and IDF soldiers participated in the
evacuation, in which four officers and 23 Jewish activists were lightly
to moderately injured. Additionally, at least 20 Palestinians were
injured in clashes with settlers in the area of the building.
In the weeks leading to the evacuation, extremist Jewish activists
vandalized the cemetery and the Palestinian homes next to Beit Hashalom.
In 2012, after initial court victories by settlers, Barak took the
first steps toward authorization of their purchase of the structure. He
halted those efforts, however, after Palestinian appeals returned the
matter to the court.
In March, the High Court of Justice ruled that the purchase of the
four story apartment building was legal, but only on Sunday, did
Ya'alon grant Jewish families from Hebron permission to move in.
Already on Sunday afternoon hours after receiving permission, did the families begin to move their things in.
...
Meretz faction chairman Ilan Gilon said Ya'alon may be responsible for bloodshed as a result of his decision.
Gilon criticized the defense minister's decision on Beit Hashalom,
saying its "more spit in the public's face from the extreme right-wing
government, which decides during a crisis in talks with the Palestinians
to strengthen settlers in Hebron."
Oh my: Shlomo Avineri admits Abu Mazen will never sign
Long-time 'peace' advocate Shlomo Avineri has written a piece in Israel's Hebrew 'Palestinian' daily acknowledging that 'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen will never sign a 'peace' deal (with thanks to Steve O).
But
what came out of all that? When Olmert proposed in dozens of meetings
that Abbas sign a document containing the Israeli concessions, he
refused. Olmert explains this by saying that Abbas did not say either
yes or no. This is patently ridiculous: By refusing to sign, Abbas
clearly said no.
Evidently,
Abbas was not ready to commit to anything, but he was able to get
Olmert to consent to far-reaching concessions, and then halted the
negotiations. The upshot is that when the negotiations resume, the
Palestinian side will insist that they must begin “where they left off” –
with the starting point being the Israeli positions as set forward in
Olmert’s generous proposal, with no concession having been made by the
other side.
Am
I misinterpreting things? This is exactly what happened in 1995 in
Yossi Beilin’s talks with Abbas. Then, too, the talks led to extensive
Israeli concessions; then, too, the Israeli side sought to put things
down on paper and fashion a final accord – and then, too, Mahmoud Abbas
refused to sign. There was never any Beilin-Abbas Agreement. There was
only a paper laying out Israeli concessions.
At
Camp David, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton became fed up with this
method and, as he ran out of patience, told Yasser Arafat that so far he
had rejected every offer. Perhaps you have a proposal of your own,
Clinton suggested to Arafat. But no such Palestinian proposal was ever
placed on the table.
The
Palestinians have never outlined their overall vision of an agreement,
except, of course, in regard to the territorial issue. But on matters of
crucial importance to Israel – forgoing the right of return, some form
of recognition of Israel as the Jewish nation-state – the Palestinian
leadership has clearly rejected the Israeli position. Though Abbas has
stated that he personally has no desire to return to Safed, he has also
declared that the Palestinians cannot give up the right of return,
saying it is an “individual right.” And both Abbas and Saeb Erekat, his
chief negotiator, have outright rejected all calls to accept Israel as
the Jewish nation-state, citing the basic Palestinian position that the
Jews are a religious community, not a nation.
Abbas’
refusal to sign a document with Olmert or Beilin has a clear
implication: not that he is no partner for talks, but that he is an
excellent partner for talks — as long as they are talks designed to lead
Israel to make more and more concessions, and to put them in writing.
Then, on one pretext or another, he is unwilling to sign and brings the
negotiations to a halt, so they can be restarted in the future “where
they left off”: with all the previous Israeli concessions included, and
no concessions having been put forward by the Palestinian side.
In
certain circles in Israel nowadays, having anything positive to say
about Ehud Barak is considered heresy. But he did reach the correct
conclusion from all this. His statement that he went to Camp David in
2000 to expose Arafat’s true face may be regarded with some skepticism.
He went to that summit in the honest belief that his readiness to make
major concessions, which endangered his political standing, would bear
fruit. But when he saw that the Palestinians were prepared to do nothing
but engage in negotiations that would squeeze more and more concessions
from Israel, without committing to anything in return, he drew the
proper conclusion.
The only downside to this article is the last paragraph, in which Avineri reaches the wrong conclusion.
If
a similar thing happens in the current negotiations as well, Israel
will have to prepare an alternative to the ever-elusive comprehensive
agreement: a serious proposal for interim or partial agreements,
unilateral moves, a halt to more construction in the territories, and a
willingness to acknowledge that even in the absence of a final agreement
that officially ends the conflict, there are things that can be done to
reduce the friction and bring about significant change – not only in
Israel but also among the mainstream of the Palestinian national
movement.
No. All those things do is ensure that the 'Palestinian' recalcitrance will continue. The thing to do if there is no agreement (and it should have been done a long time ago) is to get up, walk away and build everywhere, because it's our land. The only way that the 'Palestinians' might consider making a real peace (and I don't believe they ever will) is if they think they have something to lose by continuing to say no.
I don't recall seeing this reported elsewhere. If it's true - and I have no reason to believe it's not - it places an entirely different light on President Obama's treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu between 2009 and 2011. Additionally, if the claim below is true, it makes a farce of the complaint that Netanyahu favored Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 elections. If this is why Obama is spying on Israel, why shouldn't Netanyahu - even openly - favor Romney. Heck, if I'd known about this, I would have called on Netanyahu to endorse Romney publicly and damn the consequences (Hat Tip: IMRA).
Second, there is a matter of American interference in Israel’s
internal affairs. The eavesdropping wasn’t just about trying to
ascertain what Israeli leaders really think about the peace process and
how much they’re willing to give up to advance it. It wasn’t just about
getting an inside track on how Israel’s relations with China or Russia
are advancing, or about arms deals that involve U.S. technology.
It was, according to reports, an attempt to gather information on
politicians whose views aren’t in sync with those of the U.S.
administration. This information was to be leaked to the local media in
order to embarrass these figures and ruin their political careers.
It isn’t too hard to guess which politicians were being targeted. It
stands to reason that it was those pesky “radical” right-wingers who
oppose territorial compromise.
It's well known here that George H.W. Bush did all he could to help Yitzchak Rabin defeat Yitzchak Shamir in 1992, and that Bill Clinton did all he could to help Ehud Barak defeat Binyamin Netanyahu in 1999. But at least those actions were out in the open. Only Obama has hidden behind wiretaps and spying and intercepted phone calls and emails.
America ought to be ashamed. Your government has no integrity - and even releasing Jonathan Pollard (as the editorial above joins so many others in advocating) won't restore it.
We all know that Prime Minister Netanyahu has problems from the right side of his coalition. Now, it turns out, he has even bigger problems from the left of the coalition. No, not Tzipi Livni. That would have been expected. It's Yair Lapid.
In August 2013, Lapid, who seems to have an IQ somewhere in the 70's, undercut Israel's most basic position in the 'negotiations' with the 'Palestinians' by telling the New York Times' Roger Cohen (the one who thinks that Jews in Iran just love the Ayatollahs) that it doesn't matter whether the 'Palestinians' accept Israel as a Jewish state as part of a final agreement. That acceptance is code for "end of conflict." Lapid has completely undercut his Prime Minister's (and just about everyone else's) position on the issue. And Cohen has exposed that fact in a column published in Wednesday's New York Times - the day before US Secretary of State John FN Kerry's arrival.
Then there is the rebounding Israel-is-a-Jewish-state bugbear: Netanyahu
wants Palestinians to recognize his nation as such. He has recently
called it “the real key to peace.” His argument is that this is the
touchstone by which to judge whether Palestinians will accept “the
Jewish state in any border” — whether, in other words, the Palestinian
leadership would accept territorial compromise or is still set on
reversal of 1948 and mass return to Haifa.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, says no; this “nyet” will
endure. For Palestinians, such a form of recognition would amount to
explicit acquiescence to second-class citizenship for the 1.6 million
Arabs in Israel; undermine the rights of millions of Palestinian
refugees; upend a national narrative of mass expulsion from land that
was theirs; and demand of them something not demanded from Egypt or
Jordan in peace agreements, nor of the Palestine Liberation Organization
when, in 1993, Yasir Arafat wrote to Yitzhak Rabin that it “recognizes
the right of Israel to live in peace and security.”
This issue is a waste of time, a complicating diversion when none is
needed. As Shlomo Avineri, a leading Israeli political scientist, put it
to me, “It’s a tactical issue raised by Netanyahu in order to make
negotiations more difficult.”
Of course, any two-state peace agreement will have to be final and
irreversible; it must ensure there are no further Palestinian claims on a
secure Israel. It may well require some form of words saying the two
states are the homelands of their respective peoples, a formula used by
the Geneva Initiative. But that is for another day.
If Israel looks like a Jewish state and acts like a Jewish state, that
is good enough for me — as long as it gets out of the corrosive business
of occupation. Zionism, the one I identify with, forged a Jewish
homeland in the name of restored Jewish pride in a democratic state of
laws, not in the name of finicky insistence on a certain form of
recognition, nor in the name of messianic religious Greater Israel
nationalism.
When I spoke to him in Tel Aviv a few months ago, Yair Lapid, a top
government minister, said: “The fact that we demand from Palestinians a
declaration that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state, I just think
this is rubbish. I don’t need that. The whole point of Israel was we
came here saying we don’t need anyone else to recognize us anymore
because we can recognize ourselves. We are liberated.”
There are huge differences between Jordan and Egypt on the one hand, and the 'Palestinians' on the other, and there is every reason in the world why an agreement between Israel and the 'Palestinians' ought not to mimic the agreements that it made with those two countries. But let's leave that for a minute. How does Lapid come off contradicting his Prime Minister?
The answer is that it's not the first time, and since Netanyahu didn't act the first time Lapid shot off his mouth, Lapid went ahead and did it a second time.
"I
don't feel we we need a declaration from the Palestinians that they
recognize Israel as a Jewish state,” Lapid said. “My father [former
Justice Minister Yosef Lapid] didn’t come to Haifa from the Budapest
ghetto to get recognition from [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud
Abbas. The whole concept of the State of Israel is that we recognize
ourselves. After 2,000 years of being dependent on other people, we are
independent and make our own rules now.”
Is Lapid willing to sign an agreement without an end of conflict provision? Is he willing to let the 'Israeli Arabs' undermine a rump state that is left after an agreement?
One has to wonder - again - what Naftali Bennett was thinking when he entered into his agreement with Lapid, and what Netanyahu was thinking when he took the two of them into his government. Actually, I don't have to wonder about Netanyahu. At heart, he's Yitzchak Rabin and Ehud Barak.
You mean you didn't think you were voting for the Labor party in 2009 and 2013? Surprise, surprise, surprise....
Edward Snowden has arrived in Jerusalem, will Pollard be next?
The latest batch of leaked documents from the NSA whistleblower's
fountain were the talk of the Israeli weekly cabinet meeting. i24news
evening edition on the Israeli reactions to the latest espionage
revelations.
Let's go to the videotape.
The reaction should be 'private and mild' only if it results in Pollard's release.
I note that after 5-6 posts mentioning Pollard in the last few days, none of the regular commenters who oppose his release have come out of the woodwork. Is silence agreement? Does everyone now see what hypocrites lead the American government?
Israel has refused to issue an official reaction to the revelations made public by The Guardian
on Friday regarding American and British surveillance of former prime
minister Ehud Olmert and ex-defense minister Ehud Barak in 2009.
Unnamed officials in Jerusalem, however, told Channel 2 on Friday
that they “did not fall off their chairs” when hearing the news, which
was first reported by The Guardian and The New York Times, that British and American intelligence agents were tracking the emails of Olmert and Barak.
The
British and American newspapers reported that the Government
Communications Headquarters, working in concert with the US National
Security Agency, kept track of electronic mail records belonging to
Olmert in addition to an email account used to send messages between
Barak and one of his top aides.
The Guardian and the Times
cited a top-secret document produced by the GCHQ in January 2009. It is
one of a slew of documents leaked by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden.
If the allegations are true, it would be the latest in a string of
embarrassments for Washington, which was caught conducting espionage on
allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
...
According to The New York Times, which shared information revealed by Snowden with The Guardian as well as the prestigious Germany daily Der Spiegel, two Israeli embassies were also targeted for spying.
Olmert told The New York Times that the email which was hacked into just after Operation Cast Lead “was an unimpressive target.”
The former prime minister told the newspaper that the most sensitive
information that he shared with the Americans was revealed in private,
face-to-face conversations with then-president George W. Bush.
I wonder whether Ed Snowden would like to live in Israel.... In the meantime, Jonathan Pollard languishes in an American jail. The hypocrisy of it all....
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
