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Reading the papers, Netanyahu is taking a beating over this in Israel. They say this is damaging the US-Israeli relations by this stunt. Israelis also say the last time US interfered with Israeli elections was in 1992 when George H.W. Bush suspended loan guarantees to Israel to protest settlement expansion. That was done in order to help Rabin win the elections.
Ironically Netanyahu has said this in the past: “I can’t find an example of any previous Israeli government whose prime minister, on the eve of elections, made a cynical attempt to use relations between Israel and the United States as a party advertisement,’’
LOL.
Politicians will be politicians.
I am pro-Israel, and always will be, but US needs to realize then we are being played.
Quote:
What I said (twice) was very clear: US does not typically invite heads of state on the eve of their elections, because it makes it look like US is trying to influence the outcome of those elections.
Can you name the last time we did that?
Sure - No problem. Why does TeamObam a think nobody is going to check this stuff? What do they continue to pretend the Internet does not exist? Why is it OK for John Kerry to be meeting right now in Africa before an election with 2 of 12 candidates? Why cause an international incident that can easily come back and bite them in the rear end? It's mind boggling.
Obama met with Angela Merkel about 2 months before her election (she won) and with Nicholas Sarkozy less than two weeks before his loss, that was via Video conference. The most interesting visit right before an election was in 1996, when Clinton hosted Peres right before the elections in Israel - Peres lost to ...... (you guessed it) Netanyahu.
Peres’s substantial lead, in the aftermath of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, was crumbling due to a series of suicide bombings in early spring. In town for the AIPAC annual conference, as Netanyahu will be, Peres met with Clinton in ostensible preparation for additional work on peace agreements with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. In the wake of the March 1996 bombing spree that killed 62 Israelis, Peres and Clinton signed an anti-terrorism agreement at a ceremony – one of three separate meetings that Peres held with Clinton that week amid myriad photo-ops.
Despite Clinton’s attempts to shore-up Peres’s claim that he could offer Israelis security as well as peace, Netanyahu – who ran promising exactly that – narrowly defeated Peres. Still, Clinton’s first move after the elections was to reach out to Netanyahu and invite him to the White House.
Bill Clinton was one of the best Politicians we ever had as President - he knew when to Hold 'em & when to Fold 'em.
This is what prompted the statement you quoted and laughed at. In that case - Clinton invited him to the meetings. In this case, it was John Boehner who issued an invite to Netanyahu to brief Congress. David Cameron did his own Lobby of Congress a week ago, taking the opposite viewpoint. Are we now only allowing ONE viewpoint in this country? The viewpoint of the President?
This sort of garbage is all "unforced errors" - it's Jr High School type 'tit for tat', school yard bully stuff. How many people would have really paid that much attention? Now it will be a major story with a LOT of press and it's interesting that when Obama starts being rude and threatening the Prime Minister of Israel, the Israeli's generally back their PM.
Netanyahu is not a very popular Prime Minister - either in Israel or in the USA by the American Jews who are mostly Left leaning and Democrats. I don't think he was expected to win in either 2009 or in 2012 - he's not expected to win in 2015 either ..... but I bet he does. Every time Obama goes after Netanyahu and Iran/Syria/Hezbollah go on the attack - the Israelis vote for the strongest Leader they can find. When they are under threat - they look for strength and like him or not - he is a fierce and strong leader. It's always interesting to watch, it's a hobby of mine to watch all these Mid-East Countries.
Politicians in Israel are very like here - they have a Left, Far Left, Center Left, Center, Center Right, Right, Far Right. It can be difficult to tell the players AND the News Media that represent those players - not to mention that they shuffle the deck on a regular basis to jockey for position. The Parliamentary System they use forces them to reach more consensus. None of this "I will VETO" garbage before Legislation is even debated.
I agree with Jon Huntsman on this one. He says this was a very bad move by Boehner, and he cannot remeber anything like this ever happening before. The GOP has brought partisan politics into foreign policy, and there is absolutely nothing to gain by doing this. Netanuahu is a smart guy, and I have always respected him, but I simply cannot understand why he would play alnong in this stunt, other than he thinks is will improve his chances in the upcoming Israeli elections.
Here is a comment from an excellent article this morning by Michael Goodwin:
“He spat in our face publicly, and that’s no way to behave,” one Obama aide told an Israeli newspaper. “Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price.”
It is pointless to say petty threats do not become the Oval Office. Trying to instruct this White House on manners recalls what Mark Twain said about trying to teach a pig to sing: It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Still, the fury is telling. It reminds, as if we could forget, that everything is always about Obama.
How dare Israel be more concerned with the existential threat of Iranian nukes than with Obama’s feelings? And what do members of Congress think they are, a separate branch of government or something?
Michael Goodwin is right on of course. The existential threat that Israel faces from Iran's nukes is much more important than Obama or his feelings. Anyone who somehow does not understand that might want to consider the possibility that you need psychiatric assistance.
To the hard core left/obama drones, its a stunt - to those with historical knowledge and facts, it has a long precedent going back almost 200 years.
No, people like Jon Huntsman, and former Israeli ambassador to US are not obama drones. The way it is being done is a stunt, and such stunt has never been seen before in US. It;s not about Iran, it's about partisan politics (on US side) and Israeli elections (on Netanyahu side). If it was about Iran, this would be done like it has always been done, and it would happen after the elections, not on the eve of the elections. The former Israeli ambassador to US told Netanyahu to call the whole thing off.
The former Israeli ambassador to US told Netanyahu to call the whole thing off.
The "former Israeli Ambassador to the US" has joined a new political party in Israel and is running against Netanyahu and his party. He did all this just 10 days after he claimed he was not going to join another party. I believe Michael Oren might have his own axe to grind. Apparently he wanted to enter Politics and run for the Knesset - he would have to work his way up the list in the Likud Party. Now he can just start at the top of a list in a new Left leaning party. It smacks a bit of opportunism to jump from the Right to the Left .... just to get elected.
This new Party that Oren & Kahlon have started should be called the Flip-Flop Party - it's anybody's guess which way they will jump on any given day.
Kahlon and Oren, in the past, have expressed different views on diplomatic issues: Kahlon fiercely opposed withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and once supported annexing much of the West Bank, but lately he has expressed support for territorial concessions.
Oren, meanwhile, has spoken in favor of Israel withdrawing unilaterally from much of the West Bank and criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not being bold enough on diplomatic issues.
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Apparently he wanted to enter Politics and run for the Knesset - he would have to work his way up the list in the Likud Party. Now he can just start at the top of a list in a new Left leaning party. It smacks a bit of opportunism to jump from the Right to the Left .... just to get elected.
