…belongs to Phil Weiss of Mondoweiss with help from Max Blumenthal, who has followed Reverend Hagee and his pro-Israel group, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), or simply the Christian Zionists, for years. Hagee and CUFI were conferencing in Jerusalem just before the arrival of Vice President Biden, where Netanyahu addressed them.
Israel’s insult to Biden should have been no surprise.
Max Blumenthal puts the lie to the claim that the interior minister surprised Netanyahu with his announcement of further settlements with this report on a hoedown with John Hagee and Netanyahu on the eve of Biden’s visit, in which there was endless talk of further settlements:
Quoting Max Blumenthal:
Vice President Joe Biden was greeted in Jerusalem with the announcement that the Israeli Interior Ministry approved the construction of 1600 new homes in Occupied East Jerusalem contrary to U.S. wishes and complicating Biden’s mission to help jump start the peace process. But Biden should have known that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu intended to upset his plans by Netanyahu’s appearance with John Hagee.
The day after a series of talks between US Special Envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell and Netanyahu, and a day before Biden’s arrival, Netanyahu appeared onstage with Pastor John Hagee in Jerusalem. The occasion was Hagee’s Night To Honor Israel, an event the far-right Texas-based preacher arranged to tout his ministry’s millions in donations to Israeli organizations and to level bellicose rhetoric against Israel’s perceived enemies…
Hagee’s ceremony featured a 15-minute film highlighting the recipients of donations from John Hagee Ministries that totaled $58 million since 2001. The recipients included Jewish settlements from the West Bank like Gush Etzion and Shomron, which was involved in promoting an “Obama Hilltop project” that promoted more settlement building and compared Obama to Pharoah.
Jewish settlers launch ‘Obama Hilltop project’
Tel Aviv – Radical Jewish settlers overnight vowed to respond to US President Barack Obama’s stance against Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian areas, by rebuilding one in the northern West Bank, evacuated in 2005. Homesh was one of four West Bank settlements uprooted by former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon as part of his unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip and a small area in the northern West Bank.
Settler leaders published a message to Obama, slamming him for his pressure against Israel on the issue of settlement construction.
“Mr. President, your policy that aims to destroy the Jewish communities of Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem will no longer go unchallenged,” said the message, using the Jewish Biblical names for the southern and northern West Bank.
It called Obama’s objection to Israeli construction in these areas “an affront” to history and the Jewish religion.
Imagine a perspective that puts Ariel Sharon too far left in the minds of the religious settlers, Netanyahu’s constituency.
As a side note, it should be mentioned that romancing the Religious Right in America was part of ‘A Clean Break,’ the policy document created by a group right wing American Neocons for the Likud party in 1996. Netanyahu has never veered from those policies.
A few more last words from Amy Kaufman, writing in Huffington Post: By George, I Think the Palestinians Have Got It!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ami-kaufman/by-george-i-think-the-pal_b_494497.html
The article itself is really good. One important message it carries: don’t rely on the Americans.
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First comment reads:
1. 1600 housing units is a message to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. (End)
Erastus CoupeDeVille , Ong’s Hat, NJ USA (03.11.10)
‘EU may push Israel into peace talks’
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Read Amy Kaufman’s article quoted above. There is some support apparently from the French and Spanish foreign ministries to take up Fayyad’s intent to declare Palestinian independence in the summer, 2011. The ministers place the declaration in October, 2011.
Although Netanyuhu warned against such an action, which he believed would interfere with the peace process, any idiot can look out of his front door, and ask, what peace process? It is just more bobbing and weaving, stall, incessant talks to no where, while further colonization takes place. That is an old trick, incessant talking, suggested by Shamir and Sharon in days past, and apparently being taken up by Netanyahu.
The big question is: will the Obama administration counter the Palestinian independence plan on Israel’s behalf. By contrast, I have no doubt that AIPAC will write up some legislation, that will pass unanimously in the House and Senate, condemning such a declaration on the part of the Palestinians.
This must be the answer to Obama for not bombing Iran. It’s been all IRAN for 4-5 years non-stop. Israel’s not too happy with us.
Here’s another last word, from PM’s office in Israel: US is to blame for the present crisis in Israeli-US relations.
Last paragraph from a Haaretz article this morning,
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The last word has not been spoken …
(Haaretz) – Washington delivered its rebuke to Netanyahu through a number of channels. There was the extended censure by telephone from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a phone call from Biden, the summoning of Israel’s ambassador to Washington to the office of Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, the condemnation from the Quartet and, perhaps most important, a media briefing Clinton delivered during a CNN interview which escalated private rebukes into a full-blown public reprimand.
The reproofs were reminiscent of the “low chair diplomacy” the Turkish ambassador to Jerusalem was subjected to by the Israeli Foreign Ministry at the beginning of the year. The media was informed that the conversation between Clinton and Netanyahu lasted 43 minutes, “rather than 10 minutes as usual,” and that the prime minister barely uttered a word.
Israel's diplomatic flap with Turkey. (Photo: Globe and Mail)Obama himself reportedly worded the message to be delivered to Netanyahu during his weekly Thursday meeting with Clinton, lest the argument be made that it was merely the secretary of state scolding the Israeli leader, and not the U.S. president himself.
A State Department spokesman described the conversation using phrases which bring to mind a teacher castigating a student, not a working discussion with the leader of a friendly country and ally.
The substance was no less damning than the form – Clinton spoke of an “insult” to the United States and of “harming bilateral ties.” She could not understand, she said, how such a thing could have been done in light of America’s strong obligation to Israel’s security. U.S. media interpreted these remarks as suggesting that Washington’s military support for Israel is hardly unconditional.
Clinton dismissed Netanyahu’s explanation that the decision to approve the housing plan was made without his knowledge, reminding him that as prime minister he is responsible for his government’s actions.
The statements from the United States were publicized Friday evening – Shabbat – while Israel was officially unable to respond, therefore affording the White House a media exclusive. The instinctive reaction from Netanyahu and his associates was to accuse Washington of a diplomatic ambush, to simply rely on the support of his backers in the United States. Indeed, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, was the first to charge the White House with “humiliating” the Israeli prime minister.
Benjamin Netanyahu at CUFI summit in Jerusalem
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."In other words, you can do whatever you like to the Palestinians and to your neighbors, including illegally colonizing their land, but don’t you dare insult the United States.
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I liked the straightforward question by Helen Thomas at the White House press conference:
HELEN THOMAS: I’m sure the President is aware that it’s against international law to annex occupied land. Why do we keep giving, as Vice President Biden did, iron-clad commitments to Israel when it violates international law? And the President says that our relationship is unshakable. How can that be?
GIBBS: Well, we enjoy a strong and important relationship with the country and the people of Israel. And we are –
HELEN THOMAS: Even when it violates the law? I mean, you go into this whole thing — why should they be — get this reprieve?
GIBBS: Well, again, we enjoy a strong relationship with the country and the people. We are committed to their security in a very important and dangerous –
HELEN THOMAS: How about the Palestinian security?
h/t Mattes
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."HELEN THOMAS: How about the Palestinian security?
GIBBS: Well, once again, we enjoy a strong and important relationship with the country and the people of Israel. We are committed to their security blahdeblahdeblahdeblahdeblah………
GIBBS SUBTEXT: We couldn’t care less what happens to the so-called Palestinians as long as Netanyahu doesn’t humiliate the United States.
So Netanyahu won again. Amazing. He apologized for the timing, and the Knesset I understand passed a law that would prevent the Interior Minister from acting without consent,
BUT THE DAMNED 1,600 HOUSING WILL GO AHEAD AS PLANNED.
Is anyone really believe that there will some change in this Likud government as a consequence of this so-called crisis?
Did anyone really believe there would be some change in what Israel has always been, and what ever Israeli government has done as a result of this so-called crisis?
Israel is what it is, and what it has been from the very beginning.
There goes Australia.
From Antony Loewenstein’s blog:
Australian mainstream newspaper dares to say a few things about East Jerusalem
Recommended list entries in orange, one, and two. Both today, which seems rather a high density for orange to be covering this topic.
Lot of activity over there, and we seem to be seeing a lot of members out of the closet in support. And only one blogger called the first diarist, Calchala, an anti-Semite.
seems to be a ringer. do you mean that one, or another?
I think it was someone else who HR’d the tipjar.