Obama and Netanyahu, September 21, 2011. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque/ Reuters)
Is our presidential election in November now being played by the Israelis and Netanyahu, who has called for Israeli elections in September? Well of course. But how is the question.
Here is Akiva Eldar in Haaretz predicting that Netanyahu will win, with Obama's help. Obama will be compelled to say over and over in the next few months that he stands by Israel and Netanyahu is a man of peace. Because Israelis actually want someone who will resolve the troubles. And if Obama does anything to question that narrative and undermine Netanyahu, the Israel lobby will go after Obama, as they went after Ehud Olmert and knocked him out of office.
And so, according to Eldar, Obama and Netanyahu will get reelected at the price of any movement on the alleged peace process.
According to surveys, if the public brings the right wing back into power, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be given free rein to forcibly destroy the Iranian nuclear program. He will however receive support for the other plan that Diskin hinted at - the plan to destroy Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas politically and to bury the two-state solution....
According to the surveys, the vast majority of the public that will vote in September believes Netanyahu is desperately interested in renewing the peace talks and that Abbas is the refusenik....
Netanyahu will win the elections in September because until November Obama will continue to recite what his election advisers write for him about America's commitment to Israel's security. There won't be a word about the Israeli government's violation of its commitment to present its position on the subject of borders and security. The settlements have also disappeared from Obama's speeches. Someone must surely have reminded him what the Jewish voters did to George Bush Snr., who on the eve of the 1992 elections dared to make economic aid to Israel conditional on freezing construction on the settlements.
It would be nice if we could have this conversation in the American press. The failure to have it out here will only make Eldar right.
The alternative scenario is my rosy-lens scenario that David Remnick can take down the Netanyahu prime ministership. That he and Peter Beinart, whose book is aimed at Netanyahu, arouse liberal elite opinion, with the result that our press starts to bash Israeli intransigence on the peace process, and Obama does so too, and this creates huge pressure in the Israeli system. Doubtful, but possible. Everything changes. Krugman is upset, so is Rick Perlstein-- all the Jewish journalists who avoided this issue and deferred to neoconservatives/rightwing Zionists are now anguished about the death of the two-state solution. There could be an Arab Spring in our media. Hey, Sarkozy is gone. Who will be next?
the whole ‘peace process’ is a dead issue for most israeli society and not really part of this election, according to an israeli i am in contact with.
just nothing, that’s what it counts for. one would think the inflammatory stuff going on in the court surrounding the recent retroactive legalization of the outposts and the refusal to dismantle ulpana even after the court order would be an issue. it isn’t.
we have to keep making it an issue and push it over and over and over so it becomes part of the regular discourse whenever israel is discussed. we have to.
great choice on graphic.
The occupation is behind a wall and Israel has won . Groupthink is deadly.
You’re right that it isn’t Annie. But the reason isn’t that no-one forces it onto the agenda, rather the opposite. For decades the Israel-Palestine issue was the defining line of division in Israeli politics. Eventually, the political left convinced a large majority of Israelis they had to end the occupation and make peace with a sovereign Palestine. A few years later, the right and the Palestinians themselves convinced a large majority of the Israelis that partition wouldn’t work. So, having spent decades (literally) focusing obsessively on the issue, the Israelis decided early in the previous decade that it was not possible to resolve it, and they moved on. No external pressure will force them to change their mind. Would you change your mind about an existential matter because someone on the other side of the world demanded it of you? Or would you write off that faraway foreigner as hopelessly confused?
So, having spent decades (literally) focusing obsessively on the issue, the Israelis decided early in the previous decade that it was not possible to resolve it, and they moved on.
how very apartheid of them! maybe instead of merely focusing on the issue (WHILE EXPANDING) they should have focused on RESOLVING is, sans expansion and appropriating more and more land.
you’re right it can’t be resolved while they are EXPANDING but it very much can be resolved if they wanted to resolve it. so your lame pathetic announcement they’ve “moved on” means zilch.
You only say that because we’ve never witnessed Israel under any real external pressure. When it has been pressured, or when the US has said no (as it did to Israel’s request to bomb Iran in 2008), Israel has buckled without resistance.
South Africa yielded to external pressure, yet it was far more self sufficient than Israel’s fragile economy. Israel would collapse overnight if it were pressured.
Pretty hard to write off that faraway foreigner as hopelessly confused when the welfare cheques stop comming in and no one is buying your products anymore.
If anyone is hopelessly confused, it’s you.
I’ll lay it out before you Annie.
The whole ‘peace process’ went on for 15 bloody years courtesy of our idiotic left( and right) these mere words cause puke reflex from most Israelis.
Right now there is almost no violence (a good thing) both sides yes yes both sides
like it just the way it is (Gaza is a different story i am talking about the PA)
All the peaceful protests that we get (Flytillas demonstrations etc.)
are annoying but just you compare that to suicide bombings .
So it’s really nothing
to worry about.
Most public thinks that we need a looooong freeze of the conflict since we aren’t gonna get the Peace Now that was promised for all those years.We just don’t believe in it.
What does interest us for now are internal issues like State and Religion
social justice economy , education crime rates etc.
Gaza is a nuisance but we know that we are not gonna deal with it again.
Another Cast Lead sure if they force our hand (which they are careful not to do)
but no occupation.It’s leaking slowly but surely towards Egypt as it well should.
“Right now there is almost no violence”
Except for all the violence inflicted on the Palestinians on a daily basis. But the Palestinians are unpeople to you people, so what the hell, right comrade?
“both sides yes yes both sides like it just the way it is”
You sound just like the slave owner circa 1858 talking about how his slaves really liked the current situation. You supremacists are all alike.
You know, woody, I wonder if you’ve ever met living Israelis, and made an honest effort to understand their relationship to Palestinians. And I wonder if you’ve ever met living Palestinians, beyond the ocasional activist who makes it out to wherever you are, and made an effort to understand their relationship to Israelis. Because there’s precious little hard evidence for the sort of sentiments you attribute to them so thoughtlessly, and mountains of contradictory evidence. This isn’t to say there isn’t a real conflict – of course there is. But it’s largely a conflict between two groups who recognize the other side as flesh-and-blood people, not cardboard images; and it’s a conflict populated by large numbers on both sides who recognize the complexity of the reality they live in, even as they firmly reject fundamental positions of the other side.
But it’s largely a conflict between two groups who recognize the other side as flesh-and-blood people
spare us!
Winnica,
I’ve met plenty of flesh-and-blood Israelis. The thing that most struck about many of them (excluding those who are devoted to human rights causes) is how they take their anti-Arab bigotry for granted. I’ve rarely seen anything similar outside of elderly bigots in the US. These Israelis do not, in my experience by and large, recognize the Palestinians as flesh-and-blood people, but rather as abstractions; as a “problem” that afflicts Israel and the Israelis. They appear to be incapable of extending empathy to the Palestinians or even considering how the Palestinians are deserving of the full plate of rights which the Israelis enjoy, as of right. They appear to sincerely believe that it is acceptable to dole out human rights, premised on the degree to which the Palestinian in question is useful or helpful or nonoffensive to the Israelis. They are the kind of people who do not have a problem putting other people in cages, and they simply ignore the fact that their state does so and has done so for decades. They also appear to lie to themselves about this with the same sort of “some of my friends are [insert minority here]” self delusion that is the stock in trade of bigots everywhere.
And the Palestinians I know are acutely aware of the condition they and their people are in and the possibilities of affecting change. They, by and large, simply wish to live in a condition whereby they can provide for themselves and their families in their homelands, as people throughout the world have wanted forever. They demand respect for themselves and their nation, as all people do. For their efforts, they are falsely painted as monsters by monsters and their children suffer for it.
And, this false equivalency garbage that you people try to shove down people’s throats is really distasteful. This is not a conflict where no one’s right and no one’s wrong, where both sides are equally to blame or any of the other nonsense that has been flung about regarding it. Here, you have a expansionist European imperial project — foreigner colonists and their offspring — given the fourth most powerful military in the world, and protected from the results of their crimes by the world’s only superpower, fighting against the native population and the rightful owners of the land, who are so disempowered that rocks and firecrackers are all they can muster. That’s the reality of what is going on here.
Until large numbers of Israelis recognize that “the complexity of the reality they live in” is that they have committed a centuries-long crime against the Palestinians in order to rob them of their land, and until the Israelis then humble themselves and beg forgiveness from those they have tortured and oppressed, and made penance for their crimes, your laments about the realities and complexities of the situation will be little more than the excuse-making it clearly is.
You really think that i don’t know that Palestininas are people as well as i am
Annie ?
OlegR, looks to me like the Israeli public and Bibi himself are most concerned about an issue you did not mention to Annie here: the unfairness of current Israeli conscription law (and the underlying philosophical premise which is a secular versus religious state):
Bibi calls 4 military-national service for religious Jews, Arabs:
link to news.xinhuanet.com
Bibi’s rationale for advancing the elections concerns a bill advocating mandatory military or national service for Jewish religious students, which is being pushed for a parliamentary vote.
link to news.xinhuanet.com
citizen, there were numerous reports on ulpana and the retro active legalization of the illegal outposts, prior to the announcement of the gov dissolving, claiming the act of following the courts ruling and demolishing the illegal settlement would bring down the gov.
then, when they announced the dissolution there was nothing in the news connecting them, nothing. well all that has changed now. i just wrote a post about it, not sure when/if it will be published..but this is breaking.
link to jpost.com
should make for a wild election season in israel. let’s see if the lobby succeeds in keeping it out of the election here.
i doubt it. i’m going to be doing my damnedest to keep it front and center and push the msm to keep writing about it!
should make for a wild election season in israel. let’s see if the lobby succeeds in keeping it out of the election here.
Haaretz, JPost, and Arutz Sheva are reporting that Kadima and Likud will form a unity government and have called-off the elections. Kadima was expected to loose a lot of its seats.
oh they have? i read something about that. that woman who threw water it MK tibi’s face said she’d join likud or something and another politician slammed her and said she knew nothing about running a government. that was the other day.
so that was fast.
Citizen
It’s a major part of the State Religion debate yes.
@ OlegR,
Q: these mere words cause puke reflex from most Israelis.
R: Haven’t you noticed how the word Israel causes gag reflexes in anyone [read non-Israelis] who’s listening these days? I’d be worried, very worried if I were you [thank whatever I'm not]. Ready to walk alone?
In the end we always walk alone Daniel.
It causes a puke reflex from most of those who realize the Israelis were never interested in peace.
Which goes to prove that Israel was lyign all along that there was no partner for peace or that the only thing standing in thew way of a settlement was violence.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to apartheid and practices ethnic cleansing and continued mass murder – nothing to worry about.
Yes, social justice economy , education crime rates that affects Jews. Not in the West Bank or Gaza of course.
Translation: Gaza is alwasy there every time an Israeli leader needs to bomb them to lift his opinion polls. Cast Lead was a perfect example of Olmert startign a war without reason to salvage his political survival – and it almost worked.
Yeah, except that I’ve recently found out that the outposts were authorized in the 80s and 90s and all that’s happened “retroactively” for two of them is the fixing of a paperwork snafu and other technical issues.
link to nytimes.com
HAHAHAHAHA
Well, I suppose if you can’t come up with a decent response once your mis-description of the facts is exposed, laughter is the next best thing. Go read the article. The settlements in question were previously authorized.
Hi Annie,
You’re only laughing because he’s a joke, no?
i’m laughing because he’s offering nothing in terms of source docs and just some allegation. as if fred here knows something no one else knows.
He must have read that on the back of a cubicle in a public latrine in Hebron.
But you should know, Annie, all his source docs went down with the Titanic and mending frozen water is a time consuming affliction, especially whilst combined with the production of horse manure at the same time. Give the poor boy a break.
Fredblogs the proper question is whether or not the Cabinet or government of Israel can retroactively legalize an outpost that was neither initiated nor planned by the military commander of the occupied area.
In the landmark Elon Moreh case, Supreme Court Justice Landau ruled that the Cabinet could not retroactively claim “military necessity” in accordance with Article 52 of the Hague Convention, when the military commander had not initiated or planned the settlement. link to books.google.com
The Sasson report contained many examples of outposts that had been improperly facilitated in one way or another by government and ministerial officials without the proper clearances from the military commander. The report explained that such an action could be considered a felony under the applicable laws of Israel. link to unispal.un.org
So it’s pretty irrelevant that the PM’s spokesman, Mark Regev, is telling the press that there were “government decisions” regarding the outposts that date back to 1983 or that no one can tell him what is illegal. Under the Basic Law: Judicature, when sitting as the High Court of Justice (HCJ) the Court is competent to order State and local authorities and the officials and bodies thereof, and other persons carrying out public functions under law, to do or refrain from doing any act.
“The settlements in question were previously authorized.”
Oh, well that clears it up. The theiving apartheid state AUTHORIZED the continuing land theft by this horde of locusts. Then it’s okay then.
RE: “Obama will be compelled to say over and over in the next few months that he stands by Israel and Netanyahu is a man of peace…And if Obama does anything to question that narrative and undermine Netanyahu, the Israel lobby will go after Obama” ~ Weiss
FOR INSTANCE, SEE: Barre Seid Plausibly Denies Funding ‘Obsession,’ All the While Doing Precisely That, by Richard Silverstein, Tikun Olam, 01/26/12
ENTIRE ARTICLE – link to richardsilverstein.com
P.S. For 2012 substitute “Iranium” for “Obsession” ! ! !
Why do you think that Israeli voters decide who to vote on based on any American figures, presidential or otherwise? And do you seriously think large numbers of American voters decide who to vote for based on what Israelis tell them?
I always thought the main issue for American voters is the economy, certainly in an election year such as this one; and the issues for Israelis are Israeli issues, not American ones. The fact that Israel’s economy sailed unscathed through the world’s economic crises is surely vastly more important to Israeli voters than anything Peter Beinart might have to say, no? Especially as almost no Israelis beyond the very small readership of Haaretz have ever even heard of Beinart, and Remnick or Perlman: who are they?
Finally, you seem to assume that the liberal elite in New York sees the situation in Israel with clearer eyes than the Israelis themselves. This is unlikely, but even were it true, it only reinforces the certainty that the Israelis (the ones who can vote for or against Netanyahu) will do so according to how they understand the world, not the way the outsiders see it.
I expect the same goes for American voters. They vote according to what they see and understand, not what outsiders tell them.
Correction, Winnica, the Americans vote according to what they are allowed to see and understand via the mainstream media when it comes to anything involving Israel. This needs to change.
Citizen -
Your opinion of the ability of more than 200,000,000 American voters to think for themselves – or rather, your conviction that they can’t – is offensive in the extreme.
@ Winnica,
Citizen points out how MSM hands out information. You thinking for Citizen how he thinks for Americans is quite offensive, I think, don’t you think?
For your entertainment link to youtube.com
Am I the only one who gets the impression that Winnica was giggling uncontrollably as he wrote this?
Yes, we know you don’t care about anything or anyone except your narcissistic selves and your obsessive need to deny the cruelty Israel inflicts through its occupation and dispossession, you don’t have to emphasise it quite so loudly.
Not at all. They were the ones booing Olmert after all, but they certainly have a say in what happens in Israeli politics.
Just as the Nazis did right?
/. There could be an Arab Spring in our media. Hey, Sarkozy is gone. Who will be next?/
The lobby threw out Olmert the lobby will throw out Obama
i wonder if the lobby can throw out Phillip Weiss ?
hmm, they could hijack the election perhaps. but the idea the majority of americans will vote for romney? not too likely imho.
Exactly. Romney is going to lose. Right now he has about 1/3 of the women’s vote and 13% of Hispanics.
I’m hopeful that Phillip can throw out the pernicious and seditious lobby.
i wonder if the lobby can throw out Phillip Weiss ?
I’d be willing to bet that there are already several Zionist apparatchiks who have job descriptions which cover that area of responsibility. I’d also be willing to wager that the Lobby doesn’t loose any sleep worrying about Obama vs Romney. It already owns their dead souls.
from eldar:
what does he mean by maneuvers like this ? that tape wasn’t released until 10 years later so israelis didn’t even know he hijacked oslo.
not so sure he’s moved any americans who were not already on his side. unless he’s eluding to the idea obama is on ‘his side’. maybe he’s not paid a political price because he’s kowtowed to the settlers time and again and placed likud in bed with shas and israel ‘moderates’ (as if apartheid societies could be construed as moderate) don’t seen too alarmed about it, in droves or anything.
i will have to read this article over a few times. not sure if i agree with some of these premises.
Annie, it gets worse. Take this part:
Someone must surely have reminded him what the Jewish voters did to George Bush Snr., who on the eve of the 1992 elections dared to make economic aid to Israel conditional on freezing construction on the settlements.Jewish voters? C’mon, the political firestorm resulted because of organized power, leveraged by the lobby. Eldar should know better than this.
Tape, Annie? Huh? Was there some evidence released in 2009 that suddenly clarified to the Israeli voters that Netanyahu had been fooling them back in 1999? I get the impression that you (and also Phil) think that Israeli voters gather their information about their own situation from the same sort of online sources (in English) that you like to visit. I assure you this is false. Israelis glean their information from the wide plethora of sources which present themselves to anyone who lives in their own society; online sources in a foreign language are way down at the bottom of the list.
The same is true of Palestinians, of course. And Russians. And Malaysians. This is one of the many reasons the readers at Mondoweiss have such an odd view of the situation, a view mostly unrecognizable to any of the locals.
winnie, the phrase “I actually stopped the Oslo Accords.”..was in the leaked tape from 2010 reported here:
link to mondoweiss.net
it was even covered by wapo, not exactly a secret. but it was in 99. so what were you saying about assuring me something is false?
Christ Winnica, have you been living under a rock for 2 years?
the tape was so damning he probably put his hands over his ears and repeated ‘i can’t hear you’ over and over and over until he forgot all about it.
leeedle cat out of the bag moment for bibicon.
Seafoid “Occupation is behind a wall and Israel has won” Jeff Halper in an interview with Frank Barat seems to agree with you.–
I wrote an article about this once “Despair as a policy”. The Zionists have always always said that once the Arabs despair, and Jabotinsky put it interestingly “despair of the land of Israel ever becoming Palestine” – that was the end, victory for them. Israel feels that it’s what we have got now. If you go today to the West Bank, Gaza might be different, you’ll hear the people say that they don’t care anymore, let me have a job, let me live my life and I’ll be happy. In a sense, Fayyad feels he can respond to that.
link to russelltribunalonpalestine.com
Tomorrow this bill will be voted upon in Congress:
Cantor the traitor to the United States has sponsored it and it is filled with the usual gifts to Israel to assure its own self destruction and ongoing war business. Most most grievous and far reaching is this clause:
(3) Actions to integrate Israel into the defense of the Eastern Mediterranean.
link to thomas.loc.gov:
This is really a disaster even for Israel.
It’s a “sense of congress” resolution. It has no legal, binding effect. It’s simply cantor paying back some political donations from AIPAC or simply letting his Israeli-first-ism fly. It’s meaningless in the sense that it doesn’t tell us anything about the puppets in our congress that we already didn’t know.
Does anyone play chess, poker or both?
I suck at them [big time], but I do detect a pattern here [or so I think]. Why would a PM cut his election cycle short by one year?
Logically [given any politician's mindset] you’d max out any time given you. With no effective government in place [Israel] who’s going to be held accountable for what, if something is about to ‘happen’ resulting in Israel ‘having no option but to ‘retaliate/defend’ itself as a victim? What’s Obama going to do? Show he can be tough on Israel during a US election cycle? Although I’m convinced this is BB Netanyahoo’s grandeur and posturing, I’ve got this little voice in the back of my head [not that of one of my imaginary friends] yakking on and on about BB wanting to settle the score [and only he knows what that is]. Deep down in my heart [as I have expressed a few times here] I know Israel will not attack Iran, but playing with fire can result in severe burns and after having watched my friend burn to death when I was six, I’m rather scared of what that might entail and/or result in.
The main reason most parliamentary democracies with variable timing on elections have elections early most of the time is that a few years into the cycle, with a forced election a year or so off, the PM looks at his (temporarily) high popularity ratings and decides to have the election before they go down for whatever reason. Think if Bush the Elder had been able to declare elections just after the Gulf War (when his approval rating was 90%) instead of in the middle of a recession a year and change later.
The only time a government with the potential for early elections goes the distance is when there is a long stretch of time where the PM is unpopular enough that he isn’t confident of winning, but not so unpopular that his governing coalition deserts him.
BTW, until another coalition government is formed, Netanyahu’s government remains the government in power, both actually and effectively.
not really. the elections are called off, the PM is forming a government with another coalition.
RE: “not really. the elections are called off, the PM is forming a government with another coalition.”
link to haaretz.com
So, now Bibi is king of Israeli politics?
link to haaretz.com
@Annie Robbins
In that case, either it was the first reason and interrupted by a better offer from Kadima, or it’s the 2nd most common reason why elections are called in a Parliamentary democracy: The PM isn’t happy with his coalition or vice versa. I guess in this case, the Kadima party realized that a coalition government with them in it was better for them than immediate elections. Encouraging news since this weakens the extreme right and religious parties. Who knows, it might even lead to peace.
I guess in this case, the Kadima party realized that a coalition government with them in it was better for them than immediate elections.
Kadima was set to loose a dramatic number of its seats in any election. Here’s Arutz Sheva’s take on the subject:
A unity government might help Kadima which, according to all polls, was set to suffer a dramatic blow in the early election, which would have been held before Mofaz had the chance to strenghthen the party. This move, however, may blur the differences between the two large parties, making Kadima’s existence irrelevant. link to israelnationalnews.com
“Who knows, it might even lead to peace.”
Gosh, whose word should I take? The “Zionist-American” Fredblogs or the Israeli Uri Avnery. Such a hard decision. And this column was written before the sabotaged elections.
This is a positive development. It is now clear that the Israeli public backs the settlements and the apartheid solution to their problem Palestinians. The three Zionists commenting here reinforces that conclusion. The reason this is a positive development because it was just a year or so back that progressive Zionists kept insisting that a majority of Israelis really really backed the two state solution and that a negotiated peace was possible. Now we can completely dismiss that nonsense.
This clarifies the political path that both the Palestinians and her international supporters should follow.
1) Given that a clear majority of Israelis support the status quo we can conclude that Israel cannot reform from within. They can be pressured through BDS. This will take some time. It is only human nature to circle the wagons when pressured from abroad. People will initially put up with a lowered standard of living and privations caused by an economic strangulation. But once the idea settles in that sanctions will not be removed without reform something will happen. Maybe an increase in emigration, especially among the higher middle classes or maybe outright capitulation.
2) The Palestinians can rally around Marwan Barghouti’s call for an immediate end to the “peace” process, dismantle the PA and reconstitute their movement into a non-violent civil rights campaign. This would mean and end to the $100s of millions dollars used to support the Palestinians and force Israel to assume financial responsibility of their occupation. This too will go far in economic pressure against Israel.
Marwan Barghouti’s call for an immediate end to the “peace” process, dismantle the PA and reconstitute their movement into a non-violent civil rights campaign.
According to Ma’an and Haaertz Barghouti actually commented on the Palestinian Authority’s efforts to be recognized at the United Nations Security Council. He said that if these efforts prove fruitless, “The PA must turn to the UN General Assembly and the rest of its agencies.” to further Palestine’s bid for statehood. So he isn’t calling for the PA to be dismantled.
link to haaretz.com
It’s actually the PLO/PA leadership that keeps making comments to the press about the need to dismantle the PA in response to massive expansion of the Israeli settlements. link to weekly.ahram.org.eg
Apparently Barghouti has never read Security Council resolution 1515 on the Quartet Road Map or UN General Assembly resolution ES-10/15. Until those resolutions are withdrawn, ending all economic and security coordination with Israel and launching a popular uprising will only be viewed as further provocation and incitement. It will also end all cooperation with the United Nations.
*http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/F3B95E613518A0AC85256EEB00683444
*http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/71B2C135FCA9D78A85256DE400530107
The UN has refused to enforce international law or impose any political sanctions on Israel. So it’s really very doubtful that switching to a Palestinian anti-apartheid campaign will yield results anything like the things that were achieved in the cases of South Africa, Namibia, Rhodesia, & etc. The US has successfully kept its own treatment of its so-called “domestic dependent nations” off the agenda of the primary UN organs for more than 60 years. There’s no reason to believe the Israelis won’t do exactly the same thing.