Warm n fuzzy Netanyahu hugs Obama and peace, but nuthin about a Palestinian state

by on May 4, 2009 29

Short, very positive speech from Bibi Netanyahu, by video feed from Israel to the AIPAC policy conference. Seemed just a wee bit groggy, as though jarred from sleep at 3 a.m., but not at all scary. Warm, even fuzzy.
The Prime Minister began by embracing Obama and praising their "common quest for security, for prosperity, and for peace."
Iran was next, then the great peace process. Iran is now the common enemy of Israel and many Arab nations too. If he could sum up the threat in a sentence: "Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons."
Then a lot about a "peace" with the Palestinians. "We also want peace with the Palestinians." Said he was committed to political negotiations with the Palestinians, toward a real peace. But I didn't hear the words Palestinian state, let alone two-state solution. And security was the first condition.  "Peace will not come without security."
And the other condition:
"Palestinians must recognize Israel as the Jewish state.  They must recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people."

About Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in Israel Lobby, Israeli Government

{ 29 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. Michael LeFavour says:
    May 4, 2009 at 9:51 pm

    There already is a Palestinian Arab state. It's called Jordan and you will be delighted to hear that the Arabs groveling at the feet of the dictatorial monarch there do not have to interact with any of those hated Jews. None are allowed to live there.

  3. LD says:
    May 5, 2009 at 4:19 pm

    Poor kid. 12 years old and already indoctrinated with that 'Jews are returning to their home' garbage.

  4. Michael LeFavour says:
    May 6, 2009 at 9:07 am

    Poor LD. Stuck with a 12 year intellect and indoctrinated with that 'Jews stole someone else's land, al nakbah' garbage.

  5. dalybean says:
    May 5, 2009 at 12:52 am

    This is deja vu all over again. Netanyahu said the same thing about Iraq when he testified to Congress in 2002 and urged the United States to attack Iraq. http://www.netanyahu.org/con1.html

  6. Grumpy Old Man says:
    May 5, 2009 at 4:14 am

    Why isn't this man in prison?

  7. DICKERSON3870 says:
    May 5, 2009 at 5:54 am

    RE: "Warm n fuzzy Netanyahu hugs Obama and peace, but nuthin about a Palestinian state" I FEEL THE LOVE! (LOL)

  8. DICKERSON3870 says:
    May 5, 2009 at 5:58 am

    RE: "Warm n fuzzy Netanyahu hugs Obama and peace, but nuthin about a Palestinian state" NETANYAHU'S ÜBER RACIST FATHER: “The Bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases." ….. …."The two states solution doesn’t exist. There are no two people here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population… there is no Palestinian people, so you don’t create a state for an imaginary nation… they only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews." – Ben Zion Netanyahu SOURCE – http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2009...

  9. RowanBerkeley says:
    May 5, 2009 at 7:33 am

    The expression "the nation-state of the Jewish people" is a newer and more complex one than I recall previously. "Nation-state" is already a slightly mystified term, since it seems to me to have been coined deliberately to blur the distinction between a nation and a state. To then add "people" is to blur matters even more: the Jewish people are presumably a larger group than the Jewish nation, which in turn is larger than the Jewish state.

  10. David_F says:
    May 5, 2009 at 8:20 am

    A nation-state is a "state" (i.e. a self-governing territory) that is made of an entire "nation," i.e., a people with a common ethnicity or language. It is an important and pretty specific term in poltical science. I see your point, though. The term seems very forced here. Netanyahu sounds like a wimpy, wanna-be Otto von Bismark. Jews have not been a "nation" for millenia. I wish Israeli leaders would assert their own nationality as *Israelis*, rather than trying to drag the rest of the world's Jews into their Bismarkian fantasy world.

  11. RowanBerkeley says:
    May 5, 2009 at 8:26 am

    What does "a state made of an entire nation" mean (granting "ethnicity or language" as convenient specifers for "nation") ? Does it mean, dominated by, or solely composed of?

  12. Shirin says:
    May 5, 2009 at 8:55 am

    " Netanyahu hugs Obama" Ewwwwwww! I hope Obama took a shower right away after that.

  13. ellen says:
    May 5, 2009 at 9:42 am

    CODEPINK Interrupts Israeli President at AIPAC Conference During Israeli Pres. Shimon Peres' speech today at the annual AIPAC meeting, CODEPINK members raised banners saying "Want Peace? End the Occupation," "What About Gaza?," and "No Money for War Crimes." Includes photo of Coed Pink member Desiree Fairooz on the table as Peres speaks. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/42286

  14. Jim Haygood says:
    May 5, 2009 at 11:20 am

    "Palestinians must recognize Israel as the Jewish state. They must recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people." — Netanyahu' Let's translate this into a North American context: "African-Americans must recognize the U.S. as the white Europeans' state. They must recognize the U.S. as the nation-state of the white European people." Bibi Netanyahu, meet Dr. David Duke. I'm sure y'all will get along just fine. Well, on second thought … maybe not.

  15. Citizen says:
    May 5, 2009 at 12:00 pm

    Somebody speaking at AIPAC (via C-SPAN) yesterday–I think it was Kyle: "Every single rocket launched into Israel is a war crime against humanity." Another, I think Cohen: "Being for Israel is synonymous with being for America." Many speakers repeated: "Any threat to Israel is not just about the Jewish people, but is a threat against the American people." The notion explained: First they come for the Jews, then the Americans, etc." Whipping the audience up to give Iran only "until this summer" before springing the bill directed against Iran's Achilles heel, its dependence on import of refined oil. Force anybody or entity involved with selling Iran refined oil to stop via our banking system and tax system. (After the conference, spread out through the corridors of Congress and spread the word.) Israel only wants to be "a nation among nations, a nation like any other" albeit a "unique, very special one." Be on guard against ant-semites speaking about Israel. It's hard not to believe all the speakers believe being for Israel right or wrong is being a patriotic American. Yet many of those speakers have a history of not being in favor of everything any USA regime does or does not do… I.m reminded of the well know fact that the best sales people always convince themselves first before knocking on a customer's door. AIPAC is striving to close the deal, the equivalent of signing the contract & cashing the check will be: War on Iran. Who replaced Chas Freeman's candidate slot?

  16. 5 dancing shlomos says:
    May 5, 2009 at 2:34 pm

    i already recognize ersatz is RA el as a shitty entity, of, by, and for, diseased minds. what else does that pretend hebrew need?

  17. Sin Nombre says:
    May 5, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    Netanyahu said: "Palestinians must recognize Israel as the Jewish state. They must recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people." While I understand it, it's still kinda funny seeing the same exact citizens of the U.S. standing and cheering this on as would be the very first, loudest and most implacable ones to condemn it as being beyond evil if there was any movement in the U.S. to declare itself a "nation-state of the Christian people." (Or indeed any movement in *any* country to declare itself "the nation-state of the Christian people.") It's one thing to believe in a double standard, it's quite another to condemn as immoral anyone who doesn't share same.

  18. Ed says:
    May 5, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    Hence Rowan's left-wing perspective/fantasy that we should live in a world without borders. Unfortunately, due to human nature, houses must have doors and windows that lock. And unfortunately, polyglot towers of babel that are the result of nations without border cannot function as democracies. But most leftists aren't really interested in democracies. They're interested in authoritarian, top down, statist theocracies, where government hierarchies, government technocrats, government bureaucrats and government-connected cronies are the Gods. It really is true: inside every leftist ideologue is a little Lenin/Trotsky screaming to bestride the world like a colossus. It really is a toss-up as to whether staunch right-wingers or staunch left-wingers have the sicker minds and the bigger egos.

  19. RowanBerkeley says:
    May 5, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    You aren't answering the question, Ed: Does it mean, dominated by, or solely composed of?

  20. Citizen says:
    May 5, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    Obviously these are terms of art when used in conjunction. Like the word Jew or Jewish in any phrase, the answer is: dominated by Jews. In grammar-lexicon catalogue, a Jewish nation or ethnic group is solely composed of Jews, customarily nearly all Jews by birth, a token by intentionally difficult conversion. Same as the word "Jewish people". In short, by any definition, a tribe, with tribal beliefs (non-universal religion via religious principle and cemented by distinction of us not them). This leaves "state." In normal historical parlance, this means not a city-state, or polis (the only only one possibly left is the Vatican & it is a de facto religious enclave cloaked with official statehood due to the power of past Catholic religion). The concept of the "state" is of recent origin, and rooted in awarding the feudal mantle of sovereignty onto a self-governing people born onto land within defined physical borders. In this practical sense, Israel is not yet a real state, though those in power in 1948 pretended it was so and used their post WW2 reconstruction leverage to enforce this pretense. Hence recognition of Israel as the "state of the Jews is a real issue". It's a timing issue–Israel would never have been recognized by the great powers but for competing US & USSR domestic politics, especially since it was belated in terms of colonialism's heyday, and belated in terms of the principles of human conduct established ex post facto at Nuremberg. It all came down to Truman needing moneybags and MSM support. It comes down to this with Obama, yet again. AIPAC is the fulcrum of our future, world. At some point you have to pick a side. The tilt of world politics is that insane. Fear rules. Normal means nothing anymore.

  21. Saul of Parseus says:
    May 5, 2009 at 7:31 pm

    In a way this is a back-handed compliment to Christians, whether deists, agnostics, or church-goers. No historian would deny that the vast majority of USA citizens from the time of Columbus until even now, were born Christians, that is, into a family that was guided by Christian principles. And that our form and spirit of government was dictated by those principles in conjunction with those of the Western Enlightenment, which applied them as assumptions, merely elevating Reason as the cogent flag-banner. It's too bad modern-day Western gentiles do not grasp this historical fact. Instead, they get to be the only group practically vulnerable to the charge of racism–by those deploying Western gentile principles of universal morality, ethics, justice, and fair governance against them, while ID politics is applauded. The irony is terminal. But only for the official PC out group. If the white people (that's how they are regarded by the others around the world, no matter rhetoric of individuality–itself a white people's creation) cannot ask "If I am not for myself , who will be for me, and if I am only for myself what am I, and if not now, when?" what does this mean? Merely that power is virtue. Not to worry, the evil whites are committing suicide by lack of regeneration– the difference is, they do not have a safe have furnished by any other group. The white goy needs a land other than Heaven no less than the Jew. "On Earth, as it is in Heaven."

  22. Mooser says:
    May 5, 2009 at 9:33 pm

    "You aren't answering the question, Ed:" Rowan, you old left-wing trokstky-Lenninist, you spaketh quite truly, there. And he never does. Saul, I garauntee you will feel completely different about all this in just a little while. In the meantime, shouldn't you be on your way to Damascus?

  23. Citizen says:
    May 5, 2009 at 10:38 pm

    Actually, Mooser, you are the one ripe for epiphany on the road to Damascus. Lose your ego, and keep up your logic.

  24. David_F says:
    May 5, 2009 at 10:47 pm

    Usually nation-states are formed from pre-existing smaller states, or chunks of a disintegrating empire. Ideally, the peoples involved already see themselves as a nation (i.e. German, French, American). Nation building requires force (Lincoln, Bismark, Hitler, Ben-Gurion), since dialects and laws must be standardized, authority centralized, and minorities assimilated or expelled. The process might be as easy as the Anschluss or as painful as the Civil War, depending how much the peoples in question really want to be unified under one government. Nation-states created out of peoples who do not already see themselves as sufficiently related by culture, language, ethnicity, religion, etc. tend to be unstable. Most of the artificial nation-states drawn up by the great powers after WW I and II subsequently broke up along ethnic lines.

  25. Chrisberel says:
    May 5, 2009 at 10:51 pm

    Another series of Nazi flame wars between ED, Mooser the looser, Rowan and Citz.

  26. RowanBerkeley says:
    May 6, 2009 at 6:36 am

    Yes — and once you've admitted all that, you can see why I regard the term itself as tendentious. It assumes what has been repeatedly disproved: that a 'nation' can possess a state, unproblematically. My sense about this is that during the highly orchestrated Europe-wide right-wing reaction against Napoleon, around the Congress of Vienna period, one of the gimmicks used was the 'springtime of the nations,' a romantic and basically racist attempt to encourage archaic ethnicities to claim national rights, and then manipulate the outcomes, in a divide-and-rule sort of way. I might add that there have been Jewish political adventurers (or 'idealists') involved in a number of 'spiringtime of the nations' agitations. Sometiimes they have taken their identification with the nations concerned so far that they have forgotten they were Jewish.

  27. Margaret599 says:
    May 6, 2009 at 1:37 pm

    Israel only wants to be "a nation among nations, a nation like any other" albeit a "unique, very special one." Too funny! Reading your comments, it appears there might be a general tendency to translate the idea of a Jewish Israel almost entirely in non-religious terms. Which would bring a bit of logic into what people in the US think they are doing when they support Israel, even if it fails to provide a basis for privileging some over others. But perhaps that is not so difficult to overlook, since according of privilege remains common within our own society, if one can get away with it.

  28. Margaret599 says:
    May 6, 2009 at 1:40 pm

    follow-up comments via email

  29. Sniffy says:
    May 6, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    Ah, ChrisBerel–we were all waiting for you to fart out of your mouth.

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