Category Archives: Israel

Quote of the Day

An anonymous U. S. senior official, speaking about Israeli P. M. Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and Iran’s nuclear program,  quoted by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic:

“It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”

Not to be confused with another senior U. S. official who called Bibi “a chickenshit.”

I would say it wasn’t just our pressure on Bibi, but also our assurances, which today look pretty hollow.

To me, the scariest thing right now is not Ebola or ISIS, but that we seem to be on the verge of doing a disastrous deal with Iran.

Quote of the Day

“The Obama administration’s extraordinary commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is also difficult to justify.  Even before the recent breakdown in talks, the dispute didn’t appear ripe for resolution.  And it must be acknowledged that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute no longer occupies center stage in the Middle East.  The emergence of a separate Palestinian state wouldn’t affect the troubling events in Syria, Egypt or Iraq.”

Richard Haass, WSJ

Christie Steps in It

So Chris Christie went to Las Vegas to speak to the Republican Jewish Coalition and suck up to Sheldon Adelson, the biggest GOP donor in 2012.

It didn’t go well.  We’re talking Amateur Hour at the Bijou.  Adelson’s biggest cause is Israel, and Christie committed a shocking faux pas by referencing Israel’s “occupied territories” in his speech.  There was an audible gasp, people.  The politically correct term for the RJC and Adelson (and Christian Evangelicals who love them some Israel so Jesus will come back and send all the Jews to Hell and them to Heaven) is “disputed territories.”  Even Sarah Palin knows that, it’s probably written on one of her hands.  Christie could have just said the West Bank, and not gotten himself into trouble.

But to get Adelson to open his checkbook, Christie should have said the magic words “Judea and Samaria.”

Dear Mr. Bezos…

When Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post last August, the former ombudsman for the paper, Patrick Pexton, did an open letter to the new owner about what he considered “the good, the bad, and the ugly” at the paper.  The ugly was reserved for WaPo’s conservative political blogger, Jennifer Rubin.  Some excerpts:

“Have Fred Hiatt, your editorial page editor…fire opinion blogger Jennifer Rubin.  Not because she’s conservative, but because she’s just plain bad.  She doesn’t travel within a hundred miles of Post standards.  She parrots and peddles every silly right-wing theory to come down the pike in transparent attempts to get Web hits. …

“Rubin was the No. 1 source of complaint about any single Post staffer while I was ombudsman, and I’m leaving out the organized email campaigns against her by leftie groups like Media Matters.  Thinking conservatives didn’t like her, thinking moderates didn’t like her, government workers who knew her arguments to be unfair didn’t like her.  Dump her like a dull tome on the Amazon Bargain Books page.”

I too can’t stand the woman. During the 2012 campaign, Rubin was basically a Romney campaign staffer embedded at a major media outlet, writing gushing schoolgirl love letters to him.  She also focuses so much on Israel that she seems to think she works at the Jerusalem Post.

I’m citing the letter today because she has a post up at WaPo called “The scandal is MSNBC,” in which she says Chris Christie’s problems are all MSNBC’s fault.  She criticizes their allowing Hoboken’s mayor, Dawn Zimmer, to claim that her city was denied Sandy aid because she wasn’t playing ball on redevelopment for property belonging to Port Authority chairman David Samson’s law firm’s clients. 

The thing is, everyone is trying to figure out Chris Christie’s motivation for acts that seem punitive and retaliatory, like the Fort Lee lane closures.  That’s because the Governor himself isn’t offering an explanation beyond “mistakes were made.”  If he had wanted to come on the air before, during, or after Dawn Zimmer, or send a spokesman, MSNBC would have been delighted to have him.  Until he ‘splains in full, the non-Fox media are going to be searching for reasons.

In Rubin’s cock-eyed world, Watergate was the fault of her newspaper, not the Nixon administration.

Shhhhhh! We’re Suspending Aid to Egypt

Josh Rogin has an exclusive at The Daily Beast that Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) told him that President Obama has quietly suspended military aid to Egypt, although without finding that there was a coup.  But we are acting, at least temporarily, as if there was a coup.

I have no problem with sending a message by delaying aid briefly, just as we would send a message by recalling our ambassador temporarily.  But I think overall we should support the military.

Neither side reflects our values, so we need to go with the folks who represent our interests, and that is clearly the military.

Just as I oppose political Christianity here, I oppose political Islam there.  The Muslim Brotherhood is awful for the 10% of Egyptians who are Christian, awful for women’s rights, and awful for the many, many Egyptians who are Muslim, but want a modern, secular goverment.

After waiting for 85 years to take power, the Muslim Brotherhood did a miserable job.  Morsi refused to reach out and run an inclusive government that tried to represent all Egyptians, he refused to be bound by the Constitution, and basically steered the country more and more toward a theocracy.  I’m sure the military did all it could to “help” him fail, but he did a pretty spectacular job himself.

It would have been better to postpone elections until moderate, secular forces had an opportunity to organize, but that didn’t happen.  After Mubarak was overthrown, there was no Jeffersonian alternative waiting in the wings.  If the choice is between autocracies, and right now it is, I’ll go with the secular one, thank you very much.

It makes no sense that much of the GOP has been criticizing Obama, other than that whatever he does, they automatically feel obligated to oppose him.   I can’t help but believe that if Obama had immediately taken a hard line against the military and called for the reinstatement of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the right would have asked, “What do you expect from our Muslim, terrorist-supporting President?”  They would have been yelling and screaming about the threat to our fly-over rights, to our ability to jump the line at the Suez Canal, to Israel’s security.   Instead, you had the bizarre spectacle of John McCain and Lindsey (“Butters”) Graham defending Morsi against the military.  Do they really believe Egypt is better off in the seventh century?

Truest Headline of the Day

“Even Worse Odds Than in 2008 for Mideast Deal” — AP

One of the things I liked best about President Obama’s first term was his basically walking away from trying to broker a Mideast peace deal.  He seemed to have gotten the message that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  I’ve never been a fan of John Kerry’s, and these new talks aren’t make me feel more warm and fuzzy toward him.  I hate to think of my tax dollars spent on hosting yet another exercise in futility.

When the Israelis and the Arabs are ready to make peace, they will.  Until then, we should stay the hell out of it.

At the same time, I strongly believe that we should engage on our own behalf not just with our friends, but with our enemies and frenemies.  It drives me crazy that we haven’t had an ambassador to Iran since 1979.  I believe that when things are bad, you withdraw your ambassador for a time to express your displeasure, but you can’t do that unless you have an ambassador there to begin with.  I’d have an embassy in North Korea as well.

I believe in direct face-to-face talks between world leaders.  I hate this notion that you have to have some breakthrough or major deal to announce or talks can’t be held.  Presidents Obama and Putin should meet regularly to lay out their positions and simply discuss where we have common interests and where we don’t.  Even if they don’t change or resolve anything, they can at least make sure there are no misunderstandings and each side can explain its rationales.  That isn’t weakness, that’s wisdom.  I’m disappointed that Obama cancelled his meeting in Moscow with Putin.  If he’s schlepping all the way to St. Petersburg, he should make the short trip to Moscow and have a sit-down with Vlad.

Quote of the Day

“We have no interest because we have no ability to assess what is good for us regarding the future regime.”

Tzachi Hanegbi, prominent Israeli legislator, who is close to Netanyahu

Hanegbi was commenting that Israel’s airstrikes in Syria are intended to stop missile shipments from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon and are not intended to influence the ongoing Syrian civil war.

It seems to me that what’s true for Israel is also true for us — we can’t really support either side, given that Assad is a brutal dictator, but the leading rebels are Islamist extremists, some with ties to Al Qaeda.  We’d certainly like Assad to go, but not with the cast of characters who seem poised to replace him.