Bibi’s Speech In 90 Seconds

6 Comments

1. 

   Marie2 on March 5, 2015 at 4:15 pm

   Guiliani: noun, verb, 9/11.  And Obama doesn’t love America because (mumble, mumble, he’s a foreigner.)

   Netanyahu: Iran, Iran, Iran, (stand, sit, stand, sit) Iran, Iran, Iran.  And Obama, “we’re better off without him” because this foreigner is an honorary American and Obama (mumble, mumble) refuses to obey my commands that he stand and sit when I tell him to do so.  (Me loves the US Congress of Israeli servants.)  

2. 

   Oui on March 7, 2015 at 4:03 am

   I certeinly do hope the Israeli voters agree and vote Netanyahu OUT of office!!

   UK Jewish leaders fall out over Netanyahu’s speech | Haaretz |

   In an exchange of emails, seen by the Jewish Chronicle, Board of Deputies vice-president Jonathan Arkush and Laurence Brass, its treasurer, disagreed over Benjamin Netanyahu’s appearance in Washington on Tuesday.

   During the exchange, Mr Brass said the Israeli premier led a “dishonoured administration”.

   Mr Brass, who is stepping down as treasurer in May, who has said he has been “bursting” to criticise Israeli policy, retweeted a message from lawyer Adam Cannon that read: “Netanyahu boards plane for Washington: ‘I go as an emissary of the entire Jewish people’… you are not my emissary.”

   In response, Mr Arkush, who is standing for presidency of the Board, emailed Mr Brass: “Netanyahu is going to the USA as the democratically elected Prime Minister of Israel…He is warning of Iran’s nuclear determination which poses a mortal threat to Israel (and the west).

   “I feel desperately sad to see you disrespecting that. I know you are ‘bursting’ to criticise the government of Israel but surely you can wait until you are no longer an officer of the Board.”

   In response Mr Brass emailed: “Netanyahu has absolutely no right to say that he speaks for the entire Jewish people. He certainly doesn’t. He speaks for his own dishonoured administration which hopefully will cease in 16 days’ time.

   “In the meantime, he is wrecking Israel/US relations and my friends in the Democratic Party in the US tell me that they are exasperated at his behaviour this week.”

   Envoys support Laurence Brass in Israel criticism row

   ○ BBC journalist’s tweet on Netanyahu speech labelled anti-Semitism

   ○ Netanyahu resent journalistic independence, prefers billionaire and buddy Adelson’s private Israel Hayom and free distribution

   • 

     Marie2 on March 7, 2015 at 9:18 am

     Like the odious Scott Walker in WI, Bibi’s unlikely to go down.

3. 

   Oui on March 8, 2015 at 5:07 am

   Update on Bibi-Boehner Fallout | The Lobe Blog |

   But, as widely predicted, the invitation made it clearer than ever that Boehner’s–and Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY)–stunt was fundamentally a partisan maneuver designed to embarrass and undermine the president. This point was underlined by the praise it immediately elicited from the Sheldon Adelson -chaired Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and the boast a few hours later by Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI)–a Republican operation through and through–that it would host a reception for Netanyahu after his address to Congress.

   “It is our impression that these people’s support for the speech stems from their identification with, and admiration for, a move to defy and humiliate President Obama, more than from the importance they attribute to the Iranian issue, which should be the center of the speech,” noted Yaron Seidman, Israel’s consul general in Philadelphia, in a cable to his superiors in the Foreign Ministry.

    « click for more info
   ZOA Critical Of Congressional Dems Who Boycotted Israeli PM's Address To Congress

   Seidman, who previously served as the Israeli embassy’s main liaison to Congress, was referring specifically to the RJC, the ultra-right Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), and various Christian Zionist evangelical figures, Haaretz reported.

   ○ Waiting for the Messiah: Netanyahu addresses Evangelical Christian gathering in Jerusalem
4. 

   Oui on March 8, 2015 at 5:32 am

   Links added are mine – Oui.

   Benjamin Netanyahu, John Boehner and America’s Evangelicals | NY Times |

   Yes, Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu, rendered independently of the White House, was a way to get under President Obama’s skin and in President Obama’s way. And, yes, that provocation was manna to the most conservative House Republicans, who sometimes chafe under Boehner’s leadership.

   But they loved what Boehner did for an additional reason: It catered to the evangelical Christians who are an integral part of the party’s base, especially for lawmakers from the reddest states or districts. In fact, as Ashley Parker reported in The Times, Boehner’s caucus gave him a standing ovation last week even though he was bucking them by linking arms with Nancy Pelosi to pass a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security.
   …
   Jews in the Democratic Party are more divided on the actions that conservative Israeli leaders like Netanyahu have taken in defense of Israel than evangelical Christians in the Republican Party are. And that helps to explain the tightened bond between Israel and Republicans over the last few decades.

   We in the media often look past that to focus on the influence of a handful of rich Jewish Republican donors for whom Israel is a priority. Foremost among them is Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate. He almost single-handedly kept Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination financed and alive.

   And a year ago, when Chris Christie joined other potential Republican presidential candidates to give speeches to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he had to ask Adelson’s forgiveness after using the phrase “occupied territories” in reference to land where Palestinians live but Israel maintains a military presence.

   But the bigger story is Israel’s importance to evangelical Christians.

   “Christian Zionism as a sentiment is not new,” said Dan Senor, a Republican foreign policy adviser who has traveled to Israel with Mitt Romney, Chris Christie and other Republican candidates. “But as a movement, it has grown exponentially in size and political sophistication over the past 15 years.”

   In early 2013, when Obama nominated Chuck Hagel, a Republican, to become the next defense secretary, and Hagel’s support for Israel was called into question, one of the groups lobbying against him in greatest number and at greatest volume was Christians United for Israel (CUFI).

   Its founder and chairman, John Hagee, was in Washington, D.C., with his wife last week at Netanyahu’s speech. They were Adelson’s guests.

   Senor told me that in 2009, when he was promoting a book that he co-wrote, “Start-Up Nation,” about the modern Israeli economy, Christian radio shows extended as many invitations to him as Jewish groups did.

   Some evangelical Christians’ interest in Israel reflects an interpretation of the Bible’s prophetic passages that’s known as premillennial dispensationalism. It maintains that the End of Days can play out as God intends only if Jews govern Israel and have reconstructed a temple on the Temple Mount, where there’s now a mosque.

   But just a subset of evangelicals subscribe to that. Others are motivated by their belief, rooted in scripture, that God always intended Israel for Jews and that honoring that and keeping Israel safe is a way of honoring God. God’s blessing of America, they feel, cannot be divorced from America’s backing of Israel.

   The conservative Christian television preacher Pat Robertson once publicly suggested that Ariel Sharon had suffered a stroke and that Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated because both of these former Israeli prime ministers had pursued policies of “dividing God’s land.”

   “There are evangelical connections to the land,” said Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  

   See my earlier diary – Jewish State of Israel Run by Islamophobes.

5. 

   Oui on March 8, 2015 at 6:47 pm

   More Likud election chatter …

   ○ Netanyahu says Israel won’t cede land to Palestinians due to Iran fears!