Binyamin Netanyahu is Sheldon Adelson's puppet

Adelson and Netanyahu

There is a lot of talk about Binyamin Netanyahu these days, but Bibi is just a figurehead, the real operator in this whole story is the American casino billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, who is going about proving beyond any reasonable doubt (if anybody still doubted it) that the American political system is for sale. In fact, he has been doing the same thing in Israel.

Since in his mind, Israel and the USA seem to be of one flesh, it might be interesting to visit Sheldon Adelson's view of democracy in Israel:

“I don’t think the Bible says anything about democracy. I think God didn’t say anything about democracy,” Adelson said. “God talked about all the good things in life. He didn’t talk about Israel remaining as a democratic state, otherwise Israel isn’t going to be a democratic state — so what?” The Jewish Daily Forward

What does Adelson's money buy for Israel in Washington? Nothing but the best.

Among foreign leaders, nobody has been invited to address Congress more often than Netanyahu. He now stands equal at the top of the table along with Winston Churchill. Behind Netanyahu trail Nelson Mandela and Yitzhak Rabin. That’s a pretty devastating commentary on the state of contemporary American political culture and the very notion of leadership. Roger Cohen - New York Times

The results of Adelson's meddling could have disastrous results for both Israel and the USA and many Israelis are fully aware of this and very disturbed by the prospect and so are many American Jewish people too.

If anyone ever decides to make a movie of 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' the opening scene is already done. An Israeli prime minister bewitching hundreds of American Congress members who cheer him on as if he is their Caesar and they are his legions; a few short miles away, meanwhile, the leader of the free world and sole superpower sits in the White House, helplessly seething, pretending to be otherwise engaged, while his aides studiously ignore his very public humiliation.(...) They see a brash Jewish leader, backed by battalions of loyal AIPAC lobbyists and one casino magnate with billions of dollars to spare, thumbing his nose at the U.S. president and openly trying to derail his efforts to achieve a nuclear deal with Tehran, which most of the world supports. Netanyahu’s success, the conventional wisdom goes, could ultimately lead to war.  (...) And if the U.S. and Iran find themselves in an escalating conflict that leads to armed confrontation, Netanyahu, Israel and the Jewish people will find themselves in the dock, cast in a central role in a new chapter in the Protocols of the elders of Zion, but one which will be much harder to refute. As a student of Jewish history, this seems to be Netanyahu’s most reckless gamble of all.  Chemi Shalev - Haaretz

Iran may or may not be the existential threat to Israel that Netanyahu insists it is. But a lessening of U.S. support for Israel certainly would be. With an indifferent America, Israel would become a lonely, frightening place. Its chief export would not be high tech, but people looking to get out — Jews once more on the go. This is hardly the settlements policy that Netanyahu intends. Richard Cohen - Washington Post

Alas, Bibi is Churchill when it comes to isolating Iran, but he is AWOL when it comes to risking his own political future to make it happen. I have a problem with that. I still don’t know if I will support this Iran deal, but I also have a problem with my own Congress howling in support of a flawed foreign leader trying to scuttle the negotiations by my own government before they’re done. Rubs me the wrong way. Thomas Friedman - New York Times

How are Adelson's obsessions, vanity and dollars potentially more even harmful than, say, the Koch brothers' obsessions, vanity and dollars?

The answer is ISIS.

Everything is building up to this: ISIS's greatest wish is too draw the US armed forces back into a ground war in the Middle East. The ISIS is mobilizing, radicalizing and even more important, giving military training to hundreds of citizens of the European Union (who can enter the USA without a visa) and dozens of American citizens too. This means that within months, weeks, days, hours, anyone of these men or women could walk into a shopping mall  or Wal-Mart in the deepest flyover America and blow him or herself up, along with dozens of peaceful shoppers... And there might be several such instances in the space of a few hours in different regions. It is not difficult to imagine the ensuing paranoia, rage and hostility. 

Hysteria is modern America's default reaction to almost anything, it is hard to imagine how a series of well executed suicide bombings would play out and what lasting effect they might have on American life and institutions... any country seen to have brought it on in any way might face the full force of all the hysterical, paranoia, rage and hostility that might be out of control for quite some time.

Obviously in any US ground war against ISIS, any Israeli intervention against the jihadis would be worse than useless, just as it would have been in the first Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq. If Israel intervened militarily to help the USA kill Sunni Muslims, it would instantly turn the ISIS into heroes for most of the world's Sunni Muslims. The only country that could reliably help the USA with the heavy lifting would be, (some say already is) Shiite Iran.

Sheldon Adelson and his puppet Netanyahu are simply playing with fire. DS

Another good reason to vote for Obama

David Seaton's News Links

Mitt's friend, Bibi

The ties between Mr. Romney and Mr. Netanyahu stand out because there is little precedent for two politicians of their stature to have such a history together that predates their entry into government. And that history could well influence decision-making at a time when the United States may face crucial questions about whether to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities or support Israel in such an action. Mr. Romney has suggested that he would not make any significant policy decisions about Israel without consulting Mr. Netanyahu — a level of deference that could raise eyebrows given Mr. Netanyahu’s polarizing reputation, even as it appeals to the neoconservatives and evangelical Christians who are fiercely protective of Israel. In a telling exchange during a debate in December, Mr. Romney criticized Mr. Gingrich for making a disparaging remark about Palestinians, declaring: “Before I made a statement of that nature, I’d get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: ‘Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?’“ Martin S. Indyk, a United States ambassador to Israel in the Clinton administration, said that whether intentional or not, Mr. Romney’s statement implied that he would “subcontract Middle East policy to Israel.” “That, of course, would be inappropriate,” he added. Mr. Netanyahu insists that he is neutral in the presidential election, but he has at best a fraught relationship with President Obama. For years, the prime minister has skillfully mobilized many Jewish groups and Congressional Republicans to pressure the Obama administration into taking a more confrontational approach against Iran. “To the extent that their personal relationship would give Netanyahu entree to the Romney White House in a way that he doesn’t now have to the Obama White House,” Mr. Indyk said, “the prime minister would certainly consider that to be a significant advantage.” New York Times

Something I’ve been meaning to do — and still don’t have the time to do properly — is say something about Peter Beinart’s brave book The Crisis of Zionism. The truth is that like many liberal American Jews — and most American Jews are still liberal — I basically avoid thinking about where Israel is going. It seems obvious from here that the narrow-minded policies of the current government are basically a gradual, long-run form of national suicide — and that’s bad for Jews everywhere, not to mention the world. But I have other battles to fight, and to say anything to that effect is to bring yourself under intense attack from organized groups that try to make any criticism of Israeli policies tantamount to anti-Semitism. But it’s only right to say something on behalf of Beinart, who has predictably run into that buzzsaw. As I said, a brave man, and he deserves better. Paul Krugman

Krugman’s unusually harsh critique of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is sure to elicit howls of protest from Israeli spokespersons and American Jewish organizations – more so, perhaps, as they come on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day. It is also sure to further inflame the continuously deteriorating relationship between the Israeli government and the New York Times, considered by many to be the most important newspaper in the world. Last December, Netanyahu declined an offer by the Times’ to pen an article for the paper’s opinion pages, citing the newspaper’s alleged anti-Israel bias. Haaretz

As you may have noticed the Middle East is on the boil, and how to stabilize the most important oil and gas producing region on earth is a  priority for everybody, everywhere, now, with the world economy teetering on the brink of a great depression. 

After supporting tyrannical Arab regimes for decades, invading Iraq and botching up the occupation and never missing a chance to kowtow to the Israelis, America's credibility at present is as low as a snake's abdomen. Except for killing people and blowing things up, nobody is expecting much from the USA these days in the Middle East.

There is one thing that has worldwide support and universal approval,  something, which would at least give the USA a minimum of credibility and that something would be to finally "solve" the Palestinian problem and give them a state of their own... and the six and seventh year of a second term American president would make that something look doable

Now cynics among you will point out that all the versions of that proposed state that the USA has ever put forward added up to miserable little unarmed bantustans cut up by Israeli security roads, without control over the water under them and without sovereignty over the airspace above them... And I doubt if even the most "liberated" version of Barack Obama would ask for much more than that. And even something that mild and decaffeinated would probably justify his heretofore absurd Nobel Peace Prize and refurbish his tattered image as "The One".

Why should this be such a huge problem?

Because, even such a pitiful, Swiss cheese, scrap of a state would finally and unambiguously establish the frontiers of Israel and put paid to the dream of Eretz Yisrael Ha-Shlema  (greater Israel).

And in my humble opinion, it is the fear of that, and not the fear of a nuclear Holocaust that is behind Netanyahu's hysterical push toward war. He is trying to create a damned if you do and damned if you don't scenario for Barack Obama to see if he can derail his reelection and get himself another first term president to manipulate at will. 

From the point of anyone who influences politics by funding politician's election campaigns, first term presidents are to be greatly preferred to second term presidents who wont need any more funding. Obvious, right? 

All of this is as good reason as any not to vote for Mitt Romney and to give Barack Obama a second term. DS

Netanyahu's target is Obama, not Iran

David Seaton's News Links

It cannot be denied that the Holocaust theme has served Netanyahu well politically. As many commentators have pointed out, Netanyahu has succeeded in reframing political discourse on the Middle East: this visit to the U.S. was the first in a long time in which the Palestinian issue was completely off the table. Nobody even raised the question of settlement construction or the old question how to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiation table. Instead of being on the defensive on the Palestinian issue, Netanyahu is now on the offensive on Iran. By invoking the allied power’s failure to disrupt the Nazis sending millions to concentration camps in 1944, he is reminding the Free World of a horrible mistake, and demanding that this mistake not be repeated. Carlo Strenger - Haaretz

Observing Netanyahu's continuous invocation of the Holocaust and the imminent threat of Iran annihilating the Jewish people, it is passing curious to note that much of the most qualified Israeli military and intelligence community is openly against attacking Iran and neither are most Israelis.

Most Israelis believe that if the United States does not attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Israel must no try to do so alone, according to a Haaretz poll.

This lack of enthusiasm by informed Israelis and the Israeli street at such a moment of declared existential threat,  makes me suspect that Iran is not really Bibi's true objective, that is to say, this hysterical lead up to war is merely a tactical "feint" to distract world attention from his true strategic objective.

I believe that the prime strategic objective of Netanyahu, and the hard Israeli right wing that he represents, is to prevent, at any cost, the  final delimitation of Israel's borders. Because any "two state" solution of the Palestinian problem, however modest and fudged it might be, would create a Palestinian state in "Judea" and "Samaria", whose boundaries would be sanctioned by the United Nations. This would mean kissing goodbye, or putting on ice, any hope of finally creating the ultra-right dream of "Greater Israel".

What is Greater Israel? Lets look at this map from Wikipedia Commons:

"Greater Israel" - Wikipedia Commons

As you can see from the map or from the Wikipedia article, we are talking here about "Biblical" Israel.

The Bible contains three geographical definitions of the Land of Israel. The first, found in Genesis 15:18-21, is vague. It describes a large territory, "from the brook of Egypt to the Euphrates", comprising all of modern-day Israel, the Palestinian Territories, and Lebanon, as well as large parts of Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. The proportion of current Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey included in this territory is debatable. The other two definitions are found in Numbers 34:1-15 and Ezekiel 47:13-20 and describe a smaller territory

Now, polls usually show that most Israelis would accept, perhaps welcome, a two state solution, based on the 1967 frontiers, with "minor adjustments"(the devil being in the details). That being so, it isn't difficult to see that a lot of the pressure to keep a settlement of the Palestinian problem from being solved is coming from outside Israel. In fact, much of the sound and fury is coming from right wing, American, Jewish people, who are doubly adamant supporters, having, as many Israelis note, no actual skin in the game. This reminds me of how rich Irish-Americans used to raise money to finance and arm the IRA.

A prime example of this group of "more Zionist than thou" Americans would be casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who someone no less than George W. Bush, described as a "crazy Jewish billionaire". Adelson, the third richest man in the USA, who according to The New Yorker, "is fiercely opposed to a two-state solution", is bankrolling the campaign of Newt Gingrich to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars, in order to have him describe the Palestinians as an "invented people". Gingrich is not going to be the Republican candidate, but he is setting the tone: no Republican would like to appear less pro-Israel than Newt Gingrich in an election year, all of them are accusing Obama of selling out Israel. With Netanyahu feeding the hysteria these attacks and calls for war with Iran, will become even more shrill.

Well, obviously the President of the United States, today Barack Obama, is going to come into any issue touching foreign affairs, but why would the Israel Lobby and Netanyahu have any beef with such a malleable pragmatist as Barack Obama, someone who is easily as adept as any other American politician in swearing eternal fealty to Israel?

The first reason is that he is on track to win a second and final term as president.

The first two years of any US president's second term of office is famously/notoriously the only time when he is free to lead, or get anything important done. In his first term, he spends four years running for reelection and during the last two years of a hypothetical second term he is considered a "lame duck" who becomes daily more irrelevant as the excruciatingly, interminable American presidential cycle kicks in once more and begins to dilute and drain out his power and relevance. The sixth and seventh year of a US presidency are the dangerous years, this is when a president might actually do something in the genuine public interest. Some of these people even begin to think about their "legacy", like an aging lady of the evening who begins going to church, presidents suddenly aspire to virtue... Very dangerous that legacy stuff.

So from the point of anyone who influences politics by funding politician's election campaigns, first term presidents are to be greatly preferred to second term presidents. Obvious, right? So Obama, despite all his professed love for Israel, has that against him from get-go this year.

This takes us back to the Middle East and the second reason for trying to derail Obama.

As you may have noticed the Middle East is on the boil, and how to stabilize the most important oil and gas producing region on earth is a  priority for everybody, everywhere, now, with the world economy teetering on the brink of a great depression. 

After, supporting tyrannical Arab regimes for decades, invading Iraq and botching up the occupation and never missing a chance to kowtow to the Israelis, America's credibility at present is as low as a snake's abdomen. Except for killing people and blowing things up, nobody is expecting much from the USA these days in the Middle East.

There is one thing that has worldwide support and universal approval,  something, which would at least give the USA a minimum of credibility and that something would be to finally "solve" the Palestinian problem and give them a state of their own... and the six and seventh year of a second term American president would make that something look doable

Now cynics among you will point out that all the versions of that proposed state that the USA has ever put forward added up to miserable little unarmed bantustans cut up by Israeli security roads, without control over the water under them and without sovereignty over the airspace above them... And I doubt if even the most "liberated" version of Barack Obama would ask for much more than that. And even something that mild and decaffeinated would probably justify his heretofore absurd Nobel Peace Prize and refurbish his tattered image as "The One".

Why should this be such a huge problem?

Because, even such a pitiful, Swiss cheese, scrap of a state would finally and unambiguously establish the frontiers of Israel and put paid to the dream of Eretz Yisrael Ha-Shlema  (greater Israel).

And in my humble opinion, it is the fear of that, and not the fear of a nuclear Holocaust that is behind Netanyahu's hysterical push toward war. He is trying to create a damned if you do and damned if you don't scenario for Barack Obama to see if he can derail his reelection and get himself another first term president to manipulate at will. DS

Oakland and OWS... an inch ahead lies darkness

"An inch ahead lies darkness"

Japanese proverb

David Seaton's News Links

Many people are making facile comparisons between today's OWS movement and the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era. A major difference between what happened then and what is happening today is that the 60's anti-war movement occurred in the context of great prosperity and full employment, was led by middle class students anxious to avoid the draft, was not seconded by labor and  in the context of a foreign war was often opposed by the "silent majority" on patriotic grounds.

None of this applies today. Now we are seeing students, organized labor and even war veterans arm in arm lined up against the "one percent" and it is also significant that they are ignoring Washington and concentrating their actions directly on the economic powers themselves, occupying Wall Street and now paralyzing America's most important sea port, Oakland California. 

In other places and other eras, both these actions would have been considered pre-revolutionary.

Copyright D. Seaton

Thousands of anti-corporate greed demonstrators have closed one of America's busiest ports. The authorities at the Port of Oakland in California said maritime operations had effectively halted. The shutdown capped a day in which hundreds of city workers, including teachers, joined the call for a strike.The crowds also stopped traffic at a junction where a military veteran was seriously injured last week as protesters clashed with police. (...) That incident catapulted Oakland, which is on San Francisco Bay, to the centre of the national Occupy Wall Street movement and has spurred fresh demonstrations across the US.(...) The demonstration, which included students, families with young children and union members, began with a rally outside city hall. One large protest banner read: "Occupy Everything, death to capitalism." - BBC

Karl Marx oversold socialism, but he was right in claiming that globalization, unfettered financial capitalism, and redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital could lead capitalism to self-destruct. As he argued, unregulated capitalism can lead to regular bouts of over-capacity, under-consumption, and the recurrence of destructive financial crises, fueled by credit bubbles and asset-price booms and busts.(...) Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. Unless the relative economic roles of the market and the state are rebalanced, the protests of 2011 will become more severe, with social and political instability eventually harming long-term economic growth and welfare. Nouriel Roubini

54 percent of Americans support OWS, with only 23 percent opposed—but because the system is corrupted beyond repair. This slowly dawning realization is both invigorating—an invitation to engage in the kind of bold, blue-sky strategic thinking that leftists have not entertained for decades—and disturbing, a harbinger of just how nasty the future may get. Gordon Lafer - The Nation

The one place the protestors are not occupying is Washington D.C., they have given Washington up as useless. The idea being that Washington's political class only represents the rich and powerful and not the people who are asked to vote for them. In short they are merely the punks, lapdogs, errand boys, (lackeys? running dogs? :^)) of those entrenched and manipulative economic powers. this is a strategy that might be expressed as "kill the head and you kill the snake".

Certainly from a classic left wing point of view, what is happening spontaneously today is much more interesting then what happened in the 1960s. However, the right's classic answer to this level of domestic unrest and system questioning is to start a foreign war to create a spirit of national unity as an answer to fear...

And what do you know, right on schedule, as Wall Street is being occupied by angry American citizens, we are hearing rumors that Bibi Netanyahu, to the apparent horror of Israel's general staff, the intelligence establishment, and a majority of his country's already angry citizens, is preparing to start a war with Iran. This is something that would probably put oil at an unimaginable price and trigger a worldwide depression, but certainly would take peoples minds off of OWS, cottage cheese and the Palestinians bid to join the UN. Who knows who might be egging him on in this, the candidates are too numerous.

Certainly the Japanese proverb, "an inch ahead lies darkness" is especially appropriate nowadays. DS

The Middle East made simple(r)

David Seaton's News Links

When very complex situations become very simple is when they become most dangerous. The situation that America finds itself in today's Middle East is such a situation: simple and potentially deadly for American prestige and power, two things which feed off each other, and in passing feed the American people.

The endless Palestinian question is a bone in the throat of an Arab and Muslim world that sits astride some of the world's most essential commodities, notably oil. The United States is seen as the only country that could possibly have enough influence over Israel to solve it.

The perception the world has is that Israel has more influence over the USA than the USA has over Israel, this is very bad for America's worldwide reputation and influence. In a great extent the prosperity, the "way of life" of the American people depends on that power and influence.

Perhaps for the senators and congressmen in Washington, Israel is the measure of all things, but this is not true for the rest of the world, and every day there are relevant, new players to take into account. AIPAC works tirelessly to insure that Americans' notorious love of cheap gasoline doesn't trump their legendary love of Israel. Unfortunately for Israel there is no such thing as a CHIPAC (China Israel Public Affairs Committee) or much less a BRICIPAC or a even a European EUIPAC... so Obama is left holding the bag.

The "solving" of the Palestinian question is the Saudi Peace Initiative, which would fully integrate Israel into the Middle East, economically and diplomatically, in exchange for Israel returning to its 1967 frontiers. Israel wants no part of the Saudi plan. My private hypothesis is that they are merely playing for time, thinking that sooner or later a great war will break out involving the entire Middle East, and under the cover of that chaos, they will be able to ethnically cleanse the occupied (sorry, "disputed") territories.  With the entire region in ferment, the possibility of such a conflict and the opportunities it would present, multiply exponentially.

Truly the "Arab Spring" complicates the situation wonderfully. Let me quote president Obama on this one:

(...) a new generation of Arabs is reshaping the region. A just and lasting peace can no longer be forged with one or two Arab leaders. Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.

The rest of oil-consuming world is also running out of patience: they are suffering from (to coin a phrase) "Israel fatigue". Again Obama:

And just as the context has changed in the Middle East, so too has it been changing in the international community over the last several years. There's a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process, or the absence of one, not just in the Arab World -- in Latin America, in Asia, and in Europe. And that impatience is growing, and it's already manifesting itself in capitals around the world.

America is trying to end two wars of its own and cut its gargantuan defense budget, this is urgent because the American debt is causing great concern everywhere, the dollar, the basis of international commodity trading, is no longer seen as a uniquely reliable store of value and the Middle East, where the oil on which the world runs is concentrated -- democratic and otherwise -- is growing more volatile with every passing day.

Ending the Palestinian problem is an essential component in pacifying the Middle East. If the USA is incapable of doing so the rest of the world is going to give it a try.  They  have no other choice. "Ein brera" as the Israelis say. DS

"Obama's war on Israel?", so says Caroline Glick

David Seaton's News Link

Caroline Glick is the number one op-ed columnist of English language, Israeli newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, which could be credibly linked to both The Wall Street Journal and the neocon faction in the USA. Here is how Wikipedia describes her:

Glick was born in Chicago and graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. She immigrated to Israel in 1991 and joined the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). She worked in the IDF's Judge Advocate General division during the First Intifada in 1992, and while there edited and co-authored an IDF-published book, Israel, the Intifada and the Rule of Law. Following the Oslo Accords, she worked as coordinator of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. She retired from the military with the rank of captain at the end of 1996. In 1997 and 1998 she served as assistant foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She returned to the US to get her Master of Arts in Public Policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, in 2000. Upon her return to Israel, she became, and remains, the chief diplomatic correspondent for Makor Rishon newspaper, for which she writes a weekly column in Hebrew. She is also the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post for which she writes two weekly syndicated columns. Her writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Times, Maariv and major Jewish newspapers worldwide. She has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News Channel, Sky News, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and all of Israel's major television networks. She also makes frequent radio appearances both in the US and Israel.

Without getting into touchy themes like "dual loyalty", I think it might be fair to say that Ms. Glick keeps a foot in both camps and has a finger in several pies. In many ways she could be held up as an example of what a strange path right-wing American Zionism has taken since the 1980s in evaluating what the United States of America is, what Americans are and what America's role in the world should be.

This is Caroline Glick on Barack Obama and the "crisis" in US-Israeli relations. (I have emphasized some of the juicy parts for lazier readers)

(I)nstead of acting like his predecessors, Obama has behaved like the Palestinians. Rather than reward Netanyahu for taking a risk for peace, Obama has, in the model of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, pocketed Netanyahu's concessions and escalated his demands. This is not the behavior of a mediator. This is the behavior of an adversary. (...) And so, in the wake of Obama's onslaught on Israel's right to Jerusalem, Palestinian incitement against Israel and Jews has risen to levels not seen since the outbreak of the last terror war in September 2000. And just as night follows day, that incitement has led to violence. This week's Arab riots from Jerusalem to Jaffa, and the renewed rocket offensive from Gaza are directly related to Obama's malicious attacks on Israel.(...)  Obama's assault on Israel is likely related to the failure of his Iran policy. Over the past week, senior administration officials including Gen. David Petraeus have made viciously defamatory attacks on Israel, insinuating that the construction of homes for Jews in Jerusalem is a primary cause for bad behavior on the part of Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza.(...) he may be attacking Israel in a bid to coerce Netanyahu into agreeing to give Obama veto power over any Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations.(...) Obama's advisers told friendly reporters that Obama wants to bring down Netanyahu's government. By making demands Netanyahu and his coalition partners cannot accept, Obama hopes to either bring down the government and replace Netanyahu and Likud with the far-leftist Tzipi Livni and Kadima, or force Israel Beiteinu and Shas to bolt the coalition and compel Netanyahu to accept Livni as a co-prime minister.(...) (H)e seeks to realign US foreign policy away from Israel. Obama's constant attempts to cultivate relations with Iran's unelected president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad's Arab lackey Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, and Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan make clear that he views developing US relations with these anti-American regimes as a primary foreign policy goal.(...) His consistent castigation of Israel as obstructionist and defiant has led some surveys to claim that over the past year US popular support for Israel has dropped from 77 to 58 percent. The more Obama fills newspaper headlines with allegations that Israel is responsible for everything from US combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan to Iran's nuclear program, the lower those numbers can be expected to fall. And the more popular American support for Israel falls, the easier it will be for Obama to engineer an open breach with the Jewish state.(...)  Likewise, the crisis Obama has manufactured with Israel could pave the way for him to recognize a Palestinian state if the Palestinians follow through on their threat to unilaterally declare statehood next year regardless of the status of negotiations with Israel. Such a US move could in turn lead to the deployment of US forces in Judea and Samaria to "protect" the unilaterally declared Palestinian state from Israel.(...) The question is, what should Netanyahu do? One front in the war Obama has started is at home. Netanyahu must ensure that he maintains popular domestic support for his government to scuttle Obama's plan to overthrow his government. So far, in large part due to Obama's unprecedented nastiness, Netanyahu's domestic support has held steady.(...) Netanyahu has to keep two issues in mind. First, no foreign leader can win a popularity contest against a sitting US president. Therefore, Netanyahu must continue to avoid any personal attacks on Obama.(...) Netanyahu must remember that Obama's hostility toward Israel is not shared by the majority of Americans.(...) While in Washington, Netanyahu should meet with every Congressman and Senator who wishes to meet with him as well as every administration member who seeks him out. (...) Obama has made clear that he is not Israel's ally. And for the remainder of his term, he will do everything he can to downgrade US relations with Israel while maintaining his constant genuflection to the likes of Iran, Syria, the Palestinians and Turkey. 

Whew! That's about as rough as it comes.

Anybody that reads my stuff knows that I have yet to be converted to Obamism and they probably know that I think that taking on Israel before getting health care or moving decisively to create more jobs is a strategic error of a certain magnitude (as we can see in Glick's advice as to what Netanyahu should do while in Washington.) I also have a certain suspicion that this all might be a "bad cop, good cop" routine in which the Palestinians get screwed for the umpteenth time.

However....

If half of what Ms. Glick says is true, and Barack Obama has actually got the nads to use nothing less than the US Army to turn all America's rednecks, who love Jesus almost as much as they love the US Army and the US Marines, against Israel, because they are endangering "our troops" and thus make the Israelis comply with the letter and the spirit of UN-242, then, brothers and sisters, verily shall I fall down upon my knees and bathe Obama's feet with my tears and dry them with what is left of my hair and consider myself as truly one of his flock. DS

Between the rock (Petraeus) and a hard place (AIPAC)

It doesn't come much clearer than this:

John Podhoretz commenting on the Obama administration's criticism of Israel
"It's hard right now to see any benefits that will accrue from it, especially this week, when he needs every ounce of his own political strength to get the House to act as he wishes on health care; and this year, when he will need every ounce of financial and political support he can squeeze out of his party's core voters and donors to mitigate the effects of a looming political disaster." 

Or this:

On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel (...) Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus's Mullen briefing: "This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace." (...) The message couldn't be plainer: Israel's intransigence could cost American lives. " Mark Perry - Foreign Policy

David Seaton's News Links

That is the situation: the United States armed forces want a viable Palestinian state soon...  Yesterday if possible, so that they can withdraw as bloodlessly and with as much of their honor intact as possible from Iraq and Afghanistan. But, if Obama tries to force the Israelis to do that, he may very well lose most of his Jewish votes and financing and media support coming into the fall elections and beyond.

Well, that's easy for a politician you'll say, just fudge it, because every president that has tried to rein in the Israelis beginning with Gerald Ford, has come to grief. However, this is the first time that the US armed forces have ever been bogged down in the Middle East, taking casualties and stressing their capabilities to the utmost. You may have forgotten that the USA is supposedly ruled by a military-industrial complex, the Israelis sure seem to have.

Perry finishes his piece with the following:

There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers -- and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military. While commentators and pundits might reflect that Joe Biden's trip to Israel has forever shifted America's relationship with its erstwhile ally in the region, the real break came in January, when David Petraeus sent a briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark warning: America's relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America's soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now.

So you can see that POTUS is caught between a rock and a hard place. It will be interesting to see how, or if,  he can get out of this trap.

Among the many questions I ask myself is why it took the US military so long to connect the dots?

The neocons have really screwed it up good. Their idea was to draw the US military into a war in the Middle East and by having them break Iraq and then Iran, with Egypt already neutralized,  this would allow the Israelis to deal with the Palestinian "problem" at their leisure. The exact opposite has happened. Now the US armed forces are putting pressure on the Israelis. It wasn't supposed to be like that!

In the coming days we are going to get all sorts of spin and pleading in the coming days and weeks and very little of it will have the tone of The New York Times' Roger Cohen:

Peace is a vital American interest for many reasons, including its inalienable commitment to Israel’s long-term security, but the most pressing is that the conflict is a jihadist recruitment tool that feeds the wars in which young Americans die.

However, I'm afraid a great deal of it will take the tone that John Podhoretz takes in Commentary:

Hillary Clinton called up Bibi Netanyahu on Friday and, if one reads between the lines in the reporting on their conversation, basically screamed at him for 45 minutes. Then her spokesman went out and told the world she had done so, and used startlingly violent language — calling the announcement a "deeply negative signal." That is the kind of talk a country uses against an enemy, and that is why the reaction to it from the Jewish community has been so stark. AIPAC issued a statement the likes of which I'm not sure we've ever seen before, a directly confrontational take on the administration: "The Obama Administration’s recent statements regarding the U.S. relationship with Israel are a matter of serious concern. AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State." Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who doesn't usually speak so directly, especially to Democratic presidents, said, "We are shocked and stunned at the Administration’s tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem. We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States.”

The fat is in the fire, from here on out, there will be many very articulate and sophisticated arguments and great financial and political pressure employed trying to refute this very simple and powerful message: The lives of young American men and women serving in uniform are in jeopardy because of Israeli intransigence.

It will be interesting to see how it all plays out and how Obama manages to talk his way out of this fix. DS

Who are they trying to kid? Just about everyone I think.

Netanyahu avoided publicly committing himself to accepting an independent Palestinian state as the outcome of peace negotiations. Instead, he spoke of “self-government” for the Palestinians and laid down what sounded like a new precondition: The Palestinians would have to “allow Israel the means to defend itself.”

What Netanyahu apparently means by that is a Palestinian state minus the means to defend itself, or to control its airspace, or its international passageways. Not unreasonable concerns given Israel’s experience with Gaza, but to put forward such requirements at the outset looks more like a well-practiced Netanyahu negotiating tactic: Raise the bar as high as possible and require the United States to lift the Palestinians over it before he has to make any concessions. Martin Indyk - The Daily Beast

David Seaton's News Links
It would seem that the Obama administration's goal is to create a "Palestinian State" that would be a giant Gaza: an Israeli prison camp, where the inmates would run the day to day affairs of the camp. In exchange for this Israel would have friendly relations with the Arab world and all of the mad mullahs of Iran's evil schemes would be forever foiled. We are led to believe that to achieve this wonderland Israel would have to make many of what Ariel Sharon used to call, "painful concessions".

Just as a hypothesis, mind you, let us assume for a minute that all of this is just so much bullshit, a good cop, bad cop pantomime.

I am playing with the possibility that not only is Barack Obama much more intelligent than George W. Bush, he may even be much more cynical than Bill Clinton, if this is possible. If you except that as a hypothesis then everything else falls neatly into place pretty fast.

Because if Barack Obama and Netanyahu had quickly emerged from the White House arm in arm and had announced that they had just agreed to a token settlement freeze, (not a dismantling) followed by the creation of this concentration camp cum Bantustan, without control of its borders or its airspace, then I think people might have noticed what a shafting the Palestinians. were getting. Something even more humiliating than Clinton's Camp David, Teba farce of 2000. If that was painting lipstick on a pig this would be a full porcine rhytidectomy.

Of course now Obama will have to be seen twisting Bibi's arm and Bibi will be pounding the mat in pain... just like the wrestlers on "Friday Night SmackDown".

If this live action has its desired effect, the "international community" will hurry to stiffen the sanctions on Iran and cease the UN investigation of Israeli war crimes in Gaza and put even more pressure on the Palestinians and eliminate further speculation on a "one state solution" and the end of apartheid.

Of course this farce could be dismantled by only one woman wearing an explosive belt in an Israeli supermarket, bus or movie theater... or something worse... and then everyone would understand that Israel doesn't have a "partner for peace," thus letting Israel play for more time and Obama receive full points for trying so hard.

There are no lack of willing young ladies and laddies ready to try this sort of thing, and all it takes for one of them to get through is for someone previously informed to look the other way. Oh and if Iran could be linked to it even better.

My bullshit meter's needle is really pushing off the dial on this one. DS

Olmert's drums of war - Aluf Benn - Haaretz

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The flow of play in the Middle East is running strongly against Israel at this moment. Bush and Blair are a pair of stumbling lame ducks and Iran is taking the diplomatic initiative. Spain, France and Italy have troops on the ground in Lebanon and thus the EU really has its "foot in the door" in the Middle East for the first time. When a game of chess or checkers is going badly sometimes the loser will knock over the table to halt the game and re-arrange the pieces more to his liking. That is the danger now. DS

Abstract: In his address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Communities of North America in Los Angeles earlier this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made it clear that Israel and Iran were headed down a road of confrontation. It is hard to interpret his message any differently: "We have reached the pivotal moment of truth regarding Iran... Our integrity will remain intact only if we prevent Iran's devious goals, not if we try our best but fail."(...) The problem is that the international community hears the threats of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to destroy Israel, and his declarations that Iran will soon celebrate "the manifestation of its nuclear right," and is not really bothered. Members of the UN Security Council are still talking about imposing ridiculous sanctions that will have little effect on Iran, and an international military operation against the Iranian nuclear installations is highly unrealistic. The Democrat's victory in midterm elections in the United States also lessened the likelihood that Bush will bomb Iran. Israel, it seems, is facing Ahmadinejad alone. Olmert stepped up his attacks on Iran's nuclear program without consulting any professionals. His declarations last month have broken his "low profile" policy on Iran that Israel adopted in its effort to present Tehran's bomb as an international problem. As late as last month, Olmert held talks in Israel on the Iranian nuclear program, and decided to stick with the low-profile approach. So what happened to change his position? "A weak prime minister who is dropping in the opinion polls suddenly found himself faced with Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and Effi Eitam, who are politicizing the issue, and with a public that does not have faith in the prime minister due to his lack of security experience," senior officials in Jerusalem explained. (...)Therein lies Olmert's problem: After he made his bold statements, Netanyahu's warnings that Israel is faced with a situation similar to that faced by European Jewry when threatened by Hitler in 1938, and Shimon Peres' description of Ahmadinejad as "a Farsi-speaking Hitler," the moment of truth for Israel's political leadership is nearing. The public will justifiably want to know what has been done to prevent the threat to its existence posed by Iran, and to stop the possible mass exodus of Jews from Israel, as described by Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh. Domestic pressure calling for military action will intensify. However, experts on strategy have voiced doubts regarding Israel's ability to carry out an effective aerial attack on Iran's nuclear installations, similar to the raid that destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.(...) The U.S. forces in the region could become targets of Iranian retaliation, just like Israel, and therefore there is no way that an independent Israeli action can take place without authorization from Bush. Did Olmert get such a go-ahead and is this why he was pleased with his visit to the White House?(...) The challenge Olmert has set for himself is not a simple one. But the more his warnings intensify, the more difficult he will find it to back down and convince the public that we can live with an Iranian bomb. Therefore, we can assume that the confrontation is moving closer. READ IT ALL