Netanyahu
David Gregory has walked back his jarring statement, on twitter.
This am I called Israeli PM the leader of the jewish ppl. Better to say he’s leader of jewish state.
Gregory had gotten hammered. By Scott Roth: you made a serious mistake in referring to the Israeli PM as the “leader of the Jewish People.” Josh Marshall doesn’t like it either. The underlying question is, Why did he say it? David Gregory is Jewish; does he believe at any level that Netanyahu is his leader?
Let’s unpack this some more. Netanyahu at the General Assembly a year ago said he was the leader of the Jewish people:
On behalf of Israel and the Jewish people, I extend that hand again today…
As the prime minister of Israel, I speak for a hundred generations of Jews who were dispersed throughout the lands, who suffered every evil under the Sun, but who never gave up hope of restoring their national life in the one and only Jewish state.
But I guess you are the leader of the Jewish people if Israel is declared the nation of the “Jewish people.” Netanyahu to Congress:
President Obama rightly referred to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people…
The idea of Israel as “the national home of the Jewish people” was at the center of modern Zionism, which emerged in the late 19th century in response to centuries of often virulent anti-Semitism and emerging nationalism in central and eastern Europe. Jews would never have a secure place in the nation states of the West and East, the argument went, because anti-Semitism was immutable and inevitable whenever Jews lived among non-Jews. Thus the need to create an ethnic-Jewish nation state in Palestine, into which Jews could be “ingathered” from their “exile” in the Diaspora.
But then, as now, the majority of the world’s Jews did not imagine themselves in “exile” from an ancestral homeland. Most chose to live elsewhere and to — naively in the minds of the Zionists — integrate themselves into other nationalities. Only a couple of hundred thousand moved to Palestine to help build a Jewish homeland.
plus, the interview was pre recorded. they could have cut it, they didn’t. oversite? i doubt it.
I’m not a fan of Gregory, and think he dropped the ball on this interview in other ways. But in his defense, I suspect that he never planned to say that phrase, and it came out wrong. If it were in writing, rather than spoken extemporaneously, I would have a different opinion. He was trying to goad Bibi into responding to his question, and he went a little overboard.
Also, in one respect, Bibi could make a claim to be the leader of the Jewish people. Israel purports to be the State of the Jewish people, and Bibi is the leader of the State. Of course, that says more about the perverse conception of Israel as the State of the Jewish people than it does about Bibi actually being the leader of Jews worldwide.
For David Gregory to claim (and this is obviously what he really believes) that Benjamin Netanyahu is “the leader of the Jewish people” opens the door to legitimate speculation about whether Diaspora Jews owe greater loyalty to Israel than to their respective nations of citizenship and residence.
No wonder Gregory is now trying to walk back his incredibly inflammatory statement. But he can’t walk it back. He said it and he meant it. And he has managed to richly entangle his Judaism with his Zionism — a political blunder of the highest order which has also been made by the worldwide Jewish establishment.
By silencing all dissenting voices the mainstream media is really missing the story, which is a general disapproval across the country for a third round of these wars of choice. I would say that the President’s stance is a pretty accurate reading of where the country (outside Washington) is on more war. The analysis is pretty simple, and involves our doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Most Americans have clued in that more war will not reverse the damage done to our reputation. We are not winning hearts and minds.
$3 Tril later, this is how the world sees us http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/09/map-muslim-protests-around-world/56865/
Romney’s numbers have not recovered from his trip to Israel. Nobody says it out loud, though. Funny how that works. Mr. Romney is proving an inadequate messenger and the PM is looking a bit desperate.
Was Cathy Crowley’s interview with Netanyahu on CNN the most important American news footage in the history of American foreign policy in the Middle East?
Here’s a must-see exchange Cathy Crowley and Netanyahu on Face the Nation – there are a set of 4 questions that Cathy Crowley where Cathy refuses to be cowed by the Israeli Lobby-mafia rules of the game with Israel and smokes these critical followups right by Netanyahu – his decompensation and his shock over having to defend any of his lies at all is palpable.
This is a liar scrambling cover up having been outed for his lies –
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/category/cnn/state-of-the-union-with-candy-crowley/
~ the set really gets going at about 4:10 on the tape but watch the whole thing
[Here is where Cathy Crowley won’t put up with the lies has told innumerable times on the American news networks and talks shows:]
CathyCrowley Followup: Do you mean you (Israel) and the US know that? Because from what I read and what I hear I don’t get the sense that the US has the certainty that you do or the urgency that you seem to have – is there a disconnect there?
[Watch Netanyahu decompensate and try to cover his lies –
he immediately loses his balance and tries to backtrack on his lies because he could see the headlines:]
CC Followup: Do you mean you (Israel) and the US know that? Because from what I read and what I hear I don’t get the sense that the US has the certainty that you do or the urgency that you seem to have – is there a disconnect there?
CC Followup: I get the sense that your hour long phone consveration with President Obama did not get you where you wanted to go insofar as US unwillingness to set this red line – is that correct?
CC Followup: Is the answer then that ‘NO’ you don’t’have the red line you would like to have from the US – can you at least tell me that?
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In my opinion this is some of the most important exposure of Netanyahu and Israel in the modern history of the conflict