…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.
