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(Haaretz) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a planned trip to Washington, where he was scheduled to participate in a nuclear security summit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama, government officials said.
Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor will take Netanyahu’s place in the nuclear summit.
Obama has invited more than 40 countries to the summit, which will deal with preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to terrorist groups.
Netanyahu was due to arrive in Washington on Monday evening and was set to take part in three or four conference sessions the following day, before returning to Israel on Wednesday.
Officials said the PM canceled the trip over fears that a group of Muslim states, led by Egypt and Turkey, would demand that Israel sign up to the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT.
Israel and U.S. signed nuclear cooperation agreement under Bush in 2008 (Getty Images)
[Netanyahu just wanted to talk about “terror” and rogue states… the opposing foes of Israel – Oui]
Why does Judith Miller hate Israel? Read on …
For the past 4 months, a radical anti-Zionist activist named Anat Kamm has been under house arrest suspected of serious acts of treason.
To get ahead of the story before it comes out that it [Haaretz] hired an alleged traitor that it allegedly collaborated with, Ha’aretz turned to foreign journalists and claimed that Israel is “disappearing” journalists. The foreign press, and most destructively, Judith Miller swallowed the tale whole. Miller wrote up the story on the Daily Beast and then had this interview with Shepherd Smith — who apparently really doesn’t have much use for Israel or Jewish Americans who support Israel — yesterday on Fox News.
What this story shows is how destructive the Israeli media’s contempt for their own country can be for Israel not only at home, but abroad as well.
(Haaretz) Jan. 14, 2010 – Israel sparked outrage when envoy Ahmet Oguz Celikkol, summoned by Ayalon over an anti-Israeli television show aired in Turkey, was made to sit in a chair lower than that of Ayalon, while the Turkish flag was deliberately not put on display
« click for reaction Erdogan
Deputy FM Daniel Ayalon humiliates Turkish ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol in Jerusalem
What a conundrum. With its persistent browbeating of Iran for entertaining nuclear ambitions, Israel cannot refuse to attend a nuclear nonproliferation conference. Yet, it wishes to maintain ambiguity and silence about its own nuclear arsenal.
Obama should have a good talk with Gorbachev about the principle of glasnost. As long as Israeli exceptionalism continues to flourish, it is unlikely that Israel will ever achieve peace. But then again, as Jeff Halper once contended, Israel perfers “managed conflict” over peace, which it uses to support the continuation of its colonialism. Likewise, we are unlikely to hear any talk about Israel’s nuclear capability and its role in stimulating nuclear arms development in Iran and other Middle East countries.
Obama has done three things in the face of Netanyahu’s intransigence.
Thus Bibi’s sending his deputy and Liz Cheney’s attack on Obama for not supporting Israel.
All that of course is top secret. In spite of not trusting Netanyahu, however, Obama is likely to continue playing a traditional cover role for Israel’s nuclear capability. And whatever the Turkish and Egyptian participants at the nuclear conference claim regarding it, the American press will just ignore.
Juan Cole has a few words to say about the conference.
envoy Ahmet Oguz Celikkol … was made to sit in a chair lower than that of Ayalon, while the Turkish flag was deliberately not put on display
The current Israeli government is in full-on self-destruct mode. It makes no sense for Israel to irritate its one non-bribed regional ally.
Officials said the PM canceled the trip over fears that a group of Muslim states, led by Egypt and Turkey, would demand that Israel sign up to the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT.
I can’t think of a better way for Israel to confirm its status as a rogue nation than this little stunt
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Just read this opinion piece in The Forward –
(The Forward) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is often accused of achieving nothing since taking office beyond his own political survival. Yet when faced with a major crisis, navigating it is itself a major accomplishment. Netanyahu has indeed faced such a crisis: a hostile American administration that has made no secret of its intention to put “daylight” between Israel and its principal ally. But by combining calibrated concessions with well-chosen battles, Netanyahu has successfully mobilized Israeli public opinion and used it to force Washington to accommodate Israeli concerns.
Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University last June exemplifies his technique … [Haaretz: The speech of our lives]
A poll taken the next day found that 71% of Israelis agreed — a stunning level of consensus in Israel’s fractured society.
… Because America is Israel’s main ally, ensuring that it takes Israel’s concerns into account is critical. To have achieved this with an administration fundamentally hostile to these concerns is thus no mean accomplishment.
The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies [pdf]
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Just goes to show all those liberals in Tel Aviv don’t give a shit about anything but their own skins.
Can’t disagree more with the idea that Netanyahu is not succeeding with his right wing agenda. He has dictated the conditions of peace with the Palestinians which pretty much implements the Likud Charter. Netanyahu’s problem is that he is taking Israel into Apartheid formally, yet seem oblivious to its implications. Perhaps he sees that as someone else’s problem, so long as Greater Israel is a fact and he helped create it.
Rogue nation is right, and now all their dirty little secrets are coming out:
Israel police uncovers organ trafficking ring in north
By Eli Ashkenazi and Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondents
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ABU DHABI, UAE (The National) – The summit is being convened in order to attempt to determine effective ways for countries to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and lessen the danger of nuclear terrorism.
Israel has traditionally pursued an aggressive policy to ensure that any country it saw as a rival in the Middle East did not acquire nuclear weapons, and unilaterally bombed a nuclear enrichment plant in Iraq in the 1980s and another suspected nuclear site in Syria in 2007.
In addition, in the past few years, political and military leaders in Israel have been in constant consultation about whether to strike at Iranian nuclear targets, and a US-hosted summit to address the danger of the spread of nuclear weapons would therefore seem to have been an important event for Israel.
But the decision not to attend was reportedly taken in anticipation of an attempt by Arab countries and Turkey to demand, at the summit, that Israel sign up to the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT.
Israel has for years followed a policy of ambiguity with regards to its own nuclear programme, but is widely understood to have had nuclear weapons since the 1960s, reportedly developed with French help. As a result, Israel is one of only four countries that have not signed the NPT. The others are India, Pakistan and North Korea, all of whom have openly tested nuclear weapons.
Iran, whose nuclear programme is under intense scrutiny at the moment, is a signatory and has been the subject of international inspection.
Arab countries have openly expressed their dismay at the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the region.
Israel began its search for nuclear weapons at the inception of the state in 1948. As payment for Israeli participation in the Suez Crisis of 1956, France provided nuclear expertise and constructed a reactor complex for Israel at Dimona capable of large-scale plutonium production and reprocessing. The United States discovered the facility by 1958 and it was a subject of continual discussions between American presidents and Israeli prime ministers. Israel used delay and deception to at first keep the United States at bay, and later used the nuclear option as a bargaining chip for a consistent American conventional arms supply.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."