View Full Version : Binyamin Netanyahu humiliated after Barack Obama 'dumped him for dinner'
Looks like all those years of listening to Jeremiah Wright have taken root… :munchin
Binyamin Netanyahu humiliated after Barack Obama 'dumped him for dinner'
From The Times - March 26, 2010.
For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.
After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.
“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.
Left to talk among themselves Mr Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He spent a further half-hour with Mr Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks to try to restart peace negotiations. However, he left last night with no official statement from either side. He returned to Israel yesterday isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.
Sources said that Mr Netanyahu failed to impress Mr Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not responsible for the timing of announcements of new settlement projects in east Jerusalem. Mr Obama was said to be livid when such an announcement derailed the visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the Vice-President, this month and his anger towards Israel does not appear to have cooled….
Read it all:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7076431.ece
BrainStorm
03-26-2010, 08:44
I heard a news snippet while getting ready this morning that Obama may be moderating his position with respect to new housing in Jerusalem. I cannot find the story in my internet search.
Anyone else have a lead for me?
Dozer523
03-26-2010, 08:53
Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.
As if Israel doesn't have enough problems.
Now they go piss off Equatorial Guinea. That is going to leave a mark.
Looks like all those years of listening to Jeremiah Wright have taken root… :munchin
Read it all:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7076431.ece
Maybe Netenyahu should have thought about that before he decided to start building in East Jerusalem, knowing that it would once again derail the peace process. He is lucky Obama decided to sit down with him at all as far as I am concerened. He also should have thought about how our Secretary of State was treated while she was in Israel this past week. Slap to the face work both ways my friend.
greenberetTFS
03-26-2010, 12:28
Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.
As if Israel doesn't have enough problems.
Now they go piss off Equatorial Guinea. That is going to leave a mark.
Good Dozer.............;)
Big Teddy :munchin
Diplomacy aside, do you think Netenyahu actually wants to have dinner with Obama?
akv, it's hard to entice Netenyahu to sit down to a plate of pork and beans.
What a master of diplomacy BHO is proving to be. This would not have been imagined as a source of weakness in the McCain camp. No one would have thought even BHO would be this stupid.
He also should have thought about how our Secretary of State was treated while she was in Israel this past week. Slap to the face work both ways my friend.
Refusing a four-point ultimatum from Clinton is considered a slap in the face - I don’t get it :confused:
Why should Israel make some sort of good faith gesture to the Palestinians when all they’re seeking is the peace of “Saladin” ?
Land for peace is not what this has ever been about and the elected leadership of Gaza has yet to remove from its charter that it rejects Israel’s right to exist and remains doctrinally committed to its destruction, yet Israel should “make peace” with them? :confused:
BrainStorm
03-26-2010, 14:21
Maybe Netenyahu should have thought about that before he decided to start building in East Jerusalem, knowing that it would once again derail the peace process. He is lucky Obama decided to sit down with him at all as far as I am concerened. He also should have thought about how our Secretary of State was treated while she was in Israel this past week. Slap to the face work both ways my friend.
The last paragraph of the OP indicates that Netanyahu brought evidence that he was not in the loop about the announcement. There was an apology and Biden accepted it. Three days later Obama had Clinton call Netanyahu and create the current crisis. Furthermore, the area of Jerusalem where the houses were to be build were never in any of the agreements with the US where building was to be suspended. And these areas are not areas that would with any likelihood not be part of Israel in the future. Now Obama, unlike all previous presidents, wants Israel add these areas to the negotiations.
All the facts should inform whatever opinion you choose to hold.
TrapLine
03-26-2010, 14:29
To me this treatment of one of our allies, and the lone long standing democracy in the Middle East, is only amplified by the POTUS's apology tour through the region.
I don’t see why Israel would ever want to deal with the Palestinians as “peace partners” again - Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to withdraw from 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip in 2000 among a whole host of other radical concessions, and what did the Arabs do - suicide bombings of Israeli restaurants and buses, which resulted in over 1,000 Israelis killed, as well as 64 foreign citizens - they’d be crazy to agree with any more concessions…
Interesting to note that Reverend Wright’s Disciple is giving Israel an ultimatum on Shabbat Hagadol.
It’s similar to what he did with Poland regarding missile defense - He broke the news on Poland’s 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion…
Frogs are gonna fall from the sky :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7As_q6PSKSM
From The Economist. Source is here (http://www.economist.com/world/united-states/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=15721607).American-Israeli relations
Where did all the love go?
Mar 18th 2010 | JERUSALEM AND WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition
No crisis, says the White House, but American patience with Israel has run out
IT HAS been like a lovers’ tiff without the love—quickly tamped down but with none of the kissing and making up, and no soothing of the underlying rage. As Palestinian violence flared in Jerusalem, Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said through gritted teeth on March 16th that Israel and America enjoyed “a close, unshakable bond”. On the same day Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, said he had been misquoted in a widely leaked report that he had called the quarrel the worst crisis between the allies for 35 years. And on March 17th Mr Obama himself chimed in, denying any crisis but admitting that “friends are going to disagree sometimes.”
And how. The spark was the approval by Israel’s interior ministry of 1,600 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish suburb in East (Palestinian) Jerusalem. This coincided with a visit by Vice-President Joe Biden (above, left) and also with the eve of the “proximity talks” America had at last persuaded Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, to enter with Binyamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister (above, right). Mr Biden is known for his affection towards Israel but took the announcement as a gratuitous insult. So did Mrs Clinton, who on March 12th berated Mr Netanyahu for three-quarters of an hour on the phone. She reportedly told Mr Biden to “condemn” the announcement rather than merely “express concern”.
Friends have spats, but this seems to be more than that. America has not simply accepted Mr Netanyahu’s prompt apology. Opinion in the administration is said to be divided. Mr Biden himself and many State Department officials, together with George Mitchell, who was to have supervised the now-stalled proximity talks, advised cooling things down. But, whether out of rage or calculation, Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton preferred to escalate.
On television on March 14th David Axelrod, the president’s chief policy adviser, called Israel’s announcement an “affront” and an “insult”—extraordinary language in exchanges with an ally. And notwithstanding that “unshakable bond”, Mrs Clinton still insists that Mr Netanyahu must comply with a string of fresh demands. These reportedly include shelving the building plans, avoiding new provocations, agreeing to talk about “core issues” such as Jerusalem in the proximity talks, and offering a new concession, the details of which are not yet clear, to the Palestinian side.
In a confrontation with its superpower patron, must Israel blink first? Perhaps not. “No government of Israel for the last 40 years has agreed to place restrictions on building in Jerusalem,” Mr Netanyahu told the Knesset on March 15th, eliding the distinction between building in all-Jewish suburbs (albeit in territory internationally recognised as Palestinian) and inserting Jewish settlers into Palestinian suburbs, which he encourages or at least condones. Tensions spilled over on March 16th in a splurge of rioting. There are plans for more building projects in many of the Jewish suburbs. Mr Netanyahu would be hard put to stop them and survive politically.
As for Mr Obama, a president in a titanic struggle over health reform may find it dangerous to inflame the Israel lobby. By the time Israel’s ambassador at last denied having called this the worst crisis for 35 years, Israel’s friends had rallied to its side. The America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) called on the administration to handle differences with Israel privately, “in a manner befitting strategic allies”.
Many in Congress echoed the sentiment. Senator Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with the Democrats, said he found the public scolding “very troubling”. Mrs Clinton and Mr Netanyahu are due to attend AIPAC’s conference next week, as are nearly half the members of Congress. AIPAC, it is true, no longer has the field to itself. A newish and doveish pro-Israel lobby group with rising resonance, J Street, urged Mr Obama to push at once for redrawing Israel’s borders on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed land swaps. But the new organisation is still a tiddler, and the White House knows that more than six out of ten Americans sympathise more with Israel than with the Palestinians (see chart (http://www.economist.com/images/images-magazine/2010/12/us/201012usc154.gif)), a proportion that has risen sharply since the terror attacks on America of September 11th 2001.
How to handle Bibi?
Since becoming prime minister for a second time in 2009, Mr Netanyahu has struggled to befriend Mr Obama and enlist his help against Iran while presiding over a coalition dominated by ultranationalist and religious parties. One school of thought holds that Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton escalated their reaction in order to make Mr Netanyahu abandon his rightist allies and tread the American path to peace. Some even say the president was waiting for a chance to destabilise him and force his replacement by a more pliant Israeli leader. But a rival theory is that there is no plan: Ramat Shlomo simply ignited the rage that has smouldered in Mr Obama’s breast since Mr Netanyahu refused his call last year for a total freeze on settlement and forced Mr Mitchell to waste nearly a year niggling for a temporary compromise.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran diplomat now at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars, is one of those who suspect that the administration has been driven by anger rather than calculation and that its war of words could misfire. “If the president backs down, round two also goes to Netanyahu,” he says. “The administration has created a problem for itself and I’m not sure how they climb down unless Bibi himself helps them.” But patching over the tensions will be hard. General David Petraeus, hero of Iraq and America’s commander in the wider Middle East, told a Senate committee this week that the unresolved conflict in Palestine was fomenting anti-Americanism in the region. An obvious point, perhaps; but yet another reason why some of the love is draining out of a special relationship.
I'm a nationalist. To paraphrase my seventh grade home room teacher, the vice president may be a jack ass, but he's our jack ass.
If the leader of a foreign country deliberately embarrasses the vice president publicly (something Mr. Biden is fully capable of doing on his own), I'm going to be a little miffed.
My $0.02. YMMV.
If the leader of a foreign country deliberately embarrasses the vice president publicly (something Mr. Biden is fully capable of doing on his own), I'm going to be a little miffed.
It’s all part of the Zionist Conspiracy :D
6.8SPC_DUMP
03-26-2010, 16:03
It’s all part of the Zionist Conspiracy :D
Joe Biden (who was selected as VP in part for his foreign policy experience) said in April 2007:
"I'm a Zionist. You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist."
Link (http://www.jewishjournal.com/elections/article/video_joe_biden_tells_shalomtv_i_am_a_zionist_2008 0823/)
I think Biden should at least explain what interpretation of Zionism he believes in - seeing as there are more than one - and you may notice a gaff about battleships the interview linked above.
Also:
Nearly 300 members of Congress have signed on to a declaration reaffirming their commitment to "the unbreakable bond that exists between [U.S.] and the State of Israel", in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Link (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1159159.html)
American's who want to blame the Jews for everything are nutty. OTOH, excepting that "what's best for Israel is always what's best for America", doesn't seem sane either IMHO.
I'm fortunate to have close Jewish friends but that doesn't make me Israeli.
Just my .0000002
Dozer523
03-26-2010, 16:08
It’s all part of the Zionist Conspiracy :D
yeah. Looks like there will be some new neighborhoods in Equatorial Guinea. Oy Vey!
GratefulCitizen
03-26-2010, 18:51
Look at Netanyahu's background, experiences, and work history.
Look at the president's background, experiences, and work history.
Netanyahu is going to get something useful from these meeting/nonmeetings, the president's intentions notwithstanding.
Our president is way out of his league when dealing with Netanyahu.
craigepo
03-26-2010, 19:04
Look at Netanyahu's background, experiences, and work history.
Look at the president's background, experiences, and work history.
Netanyahu is going to get something useful from these meeting/nonmeetings, the president's intentions notwithstanding.
Our president is way out of his league when dealing with Netanyahu.
Kind of like Kennedy and Kruschev.
GratefulCitizen
03-26-2010, 19:18
Kind of like Kennedy and Kruschev.
<chuckle>
I'm just waiting for the president to personally guarantee a 7-year peace treaty between Israel and her enemies.
Definitely see some fur fly after that...
How amateurish can the "O" peeps be - looks like someone's holding a grudge - coincidence?
Click on Israel:
http://www.state.gov/misc/list/index.htm#i
"We’re sorry. That page can’t be found and may have moved"
:munchin
It appears it’s all fixed now…must have been an April fools joke gone awry or just another error under Hillary’s watch :-)
The old link:
http://www.state.gov/p/nea/ci/israel/
Updated link:
http://www.state.gov/p/nea/ci/is/index.htm
incarcerated
05-06-2010, 01:48
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=174821
'PA negotiating with US, not Israel'
By HERB KEINON AND KHALED ABU TOAMEH
06/05/2010 04:56
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met in his office for three hours on Wednesday with US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, but it will not be clear for a few days whether this was indeed the long-awaited start to US-mediated indirect talks.
While Israel has said it agreed to the indirect proximity talks as a corridor into direct talks later, the Palestinian Authority is waiting for final approval from the PLO’s Central Committee.
“Until now we can’t say whether there’s an agreement [to resume the talks] or not,” PA President Mahmoud Abbas said after meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Jordan on Wednesday.
"There’s an Arab League position which, of course, is very important. On Saturday, the Palestinian leadership will hold a meeting and then we will inform George Mitchell that we are to launch the negotiations and discuss the final-status issues,” Abbas said....
Meanwhile, a PA official in Ramallah told The Jerusalem Post that when and if the indirect talks were launched, the PA would be negotiating with the US and not with Israel, because it had no confidence in the Netanyahu government.
“Indirect talks mean that we will negotiate with the Americans, who, for their part, will be negotiating with Israel,” the official said. “It’s easier for us to negotiate with the Americans because they share most of our positions, especially on the issues of security and the future borders of the Palestinian state.”
The official said the Arab League’s decision to support the proximity talks came after the Palestinians and the Arab countries were “assured” that the US administration would exert “unprecedented pressure” on Israel to stop construction not only in the West Bank, but also in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.
“For the next four months, we will be negotiating with the Americans, and they will be negotiating with the Netanyahu government,” the PA official said of the indirect talks. “If after that period we and the Americans reach the conclusion that the Israeli government is just wasting our time, we will have to decide whether to proceed or not. The Americans have promised to be tough with Israel, and we expect them to fulfill their pledge.”
Abbas said on Wednesday after his meeting with Jordan’s Abdullah that the indirect talks would continue only for four months, after which the Palestinian leadership would once again seek the approval of the Arab League foreign ministers for moving on to the next phase....
“It’s easier for us to negotiate with the Americans because they share most of our positions, especially on the issues of security and the future borders of the Palestinian state.”
In direct violation of the 1993 Oslo accords, the PLO/PA move their offices to Israel's capital city with not a peep from the Obama Administration… (crickets)…is this a wink and a nod…another move to humiliate those “Evil Zionists” :munchin
The Palestinian Authority has decided to invest economic and other resources in various projects designed to Arabize Jerusalem. U.S. President Barack Obama did not respond that this would derail the "peace process."
The PA government also stated its intention of Arabizing the city, as well as "setting facts on the ground" that will have to be taken into consideration in all future negotiations with Israel. Special allocations will be made to schools, culture centers, health clinics and the like.
Hamas made a similar decision several weeks ago, allocating some $30 million towards various causes in eastern Jerusalem.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/137389
Meanwhile, Obama gets weekly tutorials in terrorism…
The president often raises questions about what causes someone to become a terrorist. That topic was especially relevant this week, with the news that a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Pakistan, with no previous history of extremist tendencies, was implicated in the Times Square incident.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/05/AR2010050505288.html?wprss=rss_nation/nationalsecurity
Watching the Obama administration negotiate with the PLO/PA is like watching an episode of the Keystone Kops… :(
BrainStorm
05-07-2010, 05:02
Watching the Obama administration negotiate with the PLO/PA is like watching an episode of the Keystone Kops… :(
I would gladly settle for funny. But this administration dangerous, not only to Israel, but to the Middle East and to our own national interests. I believe the administration now characterizes my remarks as seditious.
I don’t see why Israel would ever want to deal with the Palestinians as “peace partners” again - Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to withdraw from 97 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza Strip in 2000 among a whole host of other radical concessions, and what did the Arabs do - suicide bombings of Israeli restaurants and buses, which resulted in over 1,000 Israelis killed, as well as 64 foreign citizens - they’d be crazy to agree with any more concessions…
I miss the whole point of why this is a major problem in the first place. Since the beginning of time…if you get your ass handed to you on the battlefield you lose a couple of things…freedom, property, treasure, and land. Prior to 1942, Equador used to be 1/3 larger than it is today. Should Peru be required to give it back? Wasn’t Germany a little bigger prior to 1914? Where did we get Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico? And how in the hell did we acquire the Philippine Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam? I know the answer! Somebody got an ass-whoopin!
Once you own it…it is yours unconditionally. Build, settle, tax, and exploit it for your national interest …or….if you’re not into that kind of thing…give it back, nation build and provide protection to allow security for a new government to form. Whatever you like…there are no rules with what happens to conquered lands.
If Israel wants to build…so what? That’s their business. Better to develop it than let it lie and rot. Does anyone remember what happened after Israel returned land to the Palestinians a few years ago? A good portion of the infrastructure was destroyed by the Palestinians for the sake of destroying it. I see no benefit for Israel’s self-interest to acquiesce to anyone’s demands to give it back or stop building.
I would gladly settle for funny. But this administration dangerous, not only to Israel, but to the Middle East and to our own national interests. I believe the administration now characterizes my remarks as seditious.
With friends like Obama, who needs enemies…
Obama team plotting overthrow of Israel's Netanyahu
WASHINGTON — The administration of President Barack Obama has launched what officials termed a psychological warfare campaign meant to topple Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2010/ss_israel0350_04_28.asp
I think he’s playing with a very hot and consuming fire, if he wants to focus on overthrowing foreign governments, why not start with the Iranian mullah regime instead of Bibi’s :mad:
The notion that the Zionists rule the world can now be put to rest…
With friends like Obama, who needs enemies…
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2010/ss_israel0350_04_28.asp
I think he’s playing with a very hot and consuming fire, if he wants to focus on overthrowing foreign governments, why not start with the Iranian mullah regime instead of Bibi’s :mad:
The notion that the Zionists rule the world can now be put to rest…
I was reading this and remembered I had seen this sort of thing before. Back in the 90's Bill Clinton dispatched his goons to knock off Netanyaho... .
http://www.greenbergresearch.com/index.php?ID=1422
A Campaign Spin In Tel Aviv; American Consultants, Guns For Hire In Israel's Election Battles
April 7, 1999. James Carville is far from home, and he's a little amazed. The world, it turns out, is as screwy a place as America. Maybe screwier.
Carville did not cross the Atlantic until he was 45 years old. In the nine years since, he's had a whirlwind education, working for candidates in Greece:eek: and in Central and South America. But Israel, the latest installment in The Worldly Education of James Carville, is something else again -- a place where every election is a squeaker, media coverage is a blood sport that moves at warp speed and national campaigns make the American version look like finishing school.
"The intensity is just more than any place I've ever been," he said, sprawled on his hotel room bed, jet-lagged at the tail end of his latest slam-bang 48-hour trip here. "I'm told that like 25 percent of the country watches one television show. We don't have anything like that. I mean, barely 25 percent of our country even votes!…God only knows how many different countries we've worked in, but I have never seen anything this intense, not at this point in the game… I mean, anybody that thinks the American press, the New York press, is, you know, rough or shouts or that kinda stuff, come here!"
Along with President Clinton's former pollster Stanley Greenberg and veteran Democratic imagemaker Robert Shrum, Carville is an American consultant to Ehud Barak, the main challenger to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel's May 17 elections. He flies in every few weeks, reviews the troops in Barak's Labor Party campaign "war room," which he helped set up, coaches the locals on staying on message (it's about change, stupid) and spins like crazy.
I wonder the response in our country if Netanyaho sent over a team in 2014 to help the US Republican candidate:confused:
http://www.greenbergresearch.com/index.php?ID=1422
Thanks for the article Sir, hopefully the JINO’s (Jews In Name Only) have woken up, and “O”s efforts will be less successful this time around :munchin
BrainStorm
05-07-2010, 09:50
Thanks for the article Sir, hopefully the JINO’s (Jews In Name Only) have woken up, and “O”s efforts will be less successful this time around :munchin
Few in my circle will even entertain a discussion. I think they feel betrayed, but can't admit they were so easily fooled. Of course it could just be me as a politically conservative/libertarian Jew is never in the majority anywhere I've been.
incarcerated
05-10-2010, 09:23
http://www.haaretz.com/palestinians-report-first-israeli-violation-of-talks-to-u-s-1.289413
Palestinians report first Israeli violation of talks to U.S.
Just two days after peace talks resume, PA complains to American mediators, accusing Israel of breaching negotiation terms.
Published 11:27 10.05.10
Just two days after resuming peace talks with Israel, the Palestinian Authority has reported to the United States what it termed the first violation of negotiation terms, a senior Palestinian official said Monday.
Yasser Abed Rabbo said the construction of 14 housing units for Jewish settlers in an East Jerusalem neighbourhood, as reported by the Israeli Peace Now pressure group, violated the terms of new talks.
"This is the first violation and first breach of the terms to start the indirect negotiations," said Abed Rabbo, the secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee, which on Saturday voted in favor of indirect negotiations under U.S. mediation.
"We will act immediately to stop this, because we will not agree that negotiations will be used as a cover for settlement activities," he said.
He added: "The PA is following this situation on the ground with the U.S.A...."