Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
On Meet the Press just now, Netanyahu surely blundered by comparing the American faceoff with Iran to the U.S. faceoff with the Soviet Union over the Cuban missile crisis. Ron Paul made the same analogy during the Republican debates last spring and his point was that we could contain the Soviet Union.
David Gregory asked about containment, pointing out that experts in the U.S. and Israel favor containing Iran. About time, too. Netanyahu responded with alarmism. Iran is led by “religious zealots” who put their fanaticism over their own survival. They are on the same team as the “fanatics storming your embassies.”
“They have suicide bombers all over the place.” Proof?
Gregory later became impatient with Netanyahu for not repudiating the Romney statement that the U.S. has thrown Israel under the bus. Netanyahu kept saying he wasn’t getting into the American election, but Gregory didn’t buy it. “You say you don’t want to interfere in the U.S. election…. You are the leader of the Jewish people… You get billions of dollars in direct foreign investment…” from the U.S. government, from “Jews and Christians alike.” (Gregory is Jewish.) For you to remain silent on the claim that the U.S. is throwing Israel under the bus is “tantamount to agreeing with the sentiment.”
Netanyahu said, “There you go again.” Echoing Reagan.
Gregory: “Obama hasn’t thrown Israel under the bus?”
“There’s no bus and we’re not going to get into that discussion.” His only interest, Netanyahu said, is the “nuclear bus.”
Writes Yakov Hirsch:
The questions that were not asked by Gregory to Netanyahu. What is the point of you coming on this show? The United States government has said it will not give red lines to Iran. You think the U.S. should. That is something that you should take up with the Obama administration. What is the point of you coming on Meet the Press to say you disagree with the U.S. position? Haven’t you communicated your feeling to the administration? Are you trying to bypass Obama and speak to the American people? Are you giving republicans talking points?There is no innocent explanation for why he went on Meet the Press and said what he said. Why could he not wait 7 weeks until after the election to avoid even giving the appearance of interfering in the American election?
The thing I enjoyed most about the ensuing roundtable was Andrea Mitchell and Jeffrey Goldberg blasting Obama for his handling of the Israel/Palestine issue. A “legitimate criticism,” Mitchell said. “A disaster,” said Goldberg. They surely are referring to Obama’s statement in Cairo that the settlements must end and that Palestinians are humiliated.
You are the leader of the Jewish people
THE leader, no less. I must have missed the last world-wide pan-Jewish elections. I’ll bet my voter registration card “accidentally” got lost in the mail. Phil, did you get yours?
OH, Shmuel, enough with your excuses! I voted on-line, and if you can comment here, you could have easily done the same. You just forgot. Too busy studying or writing or working, probably.
And BTW, when it was all tallied, I got two or three other votes, too.
“And BTW, when it was all tallied, I got two or three other votes, too.”
And I willingly stipulate here and now that you probably did a lot better than me, no question about it. Did you even bother to look? You might be pleasantly surprised at your ranking.
I voted on-line
What? When did they get rid of the traditional, genuine fake-parchment voter registration cards with the Prague cemetery postmark?
When did they get rid of the traditional, genuine fake-parchment voter registration cards with the Prague cemetery postmark?
I heard it was a voice vote. And Netanyahu won it by a 2/3rds majority, in the opinion of the Chair.
“genuine fake-parchment voter registration cards”
Fake? It’s FAKE? For G-d’s sake, I’ve been sleeping with the damn thing over my face. I thought I was breathing the dust of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I even dreamed I was wrestling with an, a, well, something, all night (apparently, that’s not too uncommon.). And when I woke up, I had eaten it in my sleep. And now you say it’s fake? Man, I better get right over to Hophmi’s comment archive. You know what they say; AIPAC is better than ipecac.
So the Queen, the Governor General, and The Very Wonderful Julia Gillard are only the leaders of Australian goys? I must have another look at the constitution to find the bit where it says that.
Re: your registration card
Just wait. It will be coming soon…..
The Knesset legislation machinery is also seriously considering enlarging the Jewish electorate for the national elections.
After all, we have to maintain a majority against all the dangers of “Arab demographic bomb”!!!
i cancelled mu Hoff po ID last night cuz they wouldnt post my comments on this news …meet the press….ya right
I use to watch meet the press..face the nation and c-span…
but in the last ten years they have all taken an extremist right wing stand..
there is not one thing american about them anymore imo
on the yahoo boards israel is way behind….100- to 1…maybe higher..
When this is broadcast on Sunday September 16, 2012, it will be the 30th anniversary of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Will any of the “reporters” ask Netanyahu about that?
oh yea one of my comments at huffpo last nite was
boo
Gregory: “You are the leader of the Jewish people…”
Well, at least that is settled. It’s not a Pope, like I was hoping, but it will have to do.
@Mooser,
In case you missed this link on another thread and you have an hour to watch: Doug Stanhope – No Refunds. Addresses your concerns. ;-)
link to youtube.com
Thanks, MRW.
This is the NYT headline? Israeli Leader Says Iran Is ‘20 Yards’ From Nuclear Bomb
Netanyahu is off the rails.
Speaking of timelines, this is from Juan Cole:
Netanyahu in 1992: Iran close to having nuclear bomb
Posted on 09/16/2012 by Juan
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is trapped in reflection theory. He was allegedly himself involved in illegally smuggling nuclear triggers out of the US, and he assumes that Iran desperately wants a nuclear weapon as well. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has given a fatwa against nukes, and there is no solid intelligence pointing to an Iranian weapons program. Iran can’t be close to having a weapon if it doesn’t have a weapons program.
He has no credibility left on such warnings.
Reprint edn.:
Scott Peterson at the Christian Science Monitor did a useful timeline for dire Israeli and US predictions of an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon, beginning 20 years ago.
1992: Israeli member of parliament Binyamin Netanyahu predicts that Iran was “3 to 5 years” from having a nuclear weapon.
1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres predicts an Iranian nuclear warhead by 1999 to French TV.
1995: The New York Times quotes US and Israeli officials saying that Iran would have the bomb by 2000.
1998: Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress that Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the US by 2003.
link to juancole.com
Nuts
>> You are the leader of the Jewish people…
Congratulations, Bibi, you ol’ hateful and immoral Zio-supremacist, you! :-P
What am I hearing here?
@Gregory to Bibi: “You are the leader of the Jewish people”
@Phil: “(Gregory is Jewish.)”
Did Gregory just say to Bibi: “You are my leader?” Is this not a pledge of allegiance to Israel? To Zionism? To apartheid? Does this guy hold an American passport, or an Israeli passport?
Gregory and Andrea Mitchell are scary, and I’ll tell you why: When Bibi blows a nuke and kills hundreds of thousands or millions of innocent people and draws America into WW III and kills tens of thousands of American kids, American goyim (who out-number American Jews by about 50:1) are going to remember those high profile media Jews, like Gregory and Mitchell, who nightly pledged their allegiance to Israel, implicitly or explicitly. And the American goyim will over-generalize and demonize all American Jews, just as they demonized all Japanese in 1940, b/c most Americans don’t know about the millions of American Jews who are Americans and who are repulsed by Bibi, apartheid, and Israel’s nuclear threat to the world.
Of course, Gregory, Mitchell, Goldberg etc, etc, are successful in the MSM not b/c they are Jews, but b/c they are Jews who see Bibi as their leader. And so it goes …
While I agree with the gist of your comment Denis, your claim that “…millions of American Jews who are Americans and who are repulsed by Bibi, apartheid, and Israel’s nuclear threat to the world” seems to me wishful thinking.
I know dozens of quite sane and intelligent Jews and all of them have drunk deeply of the pro-Israel kool-aid. Many of them are non-religious but all feel a great kinship and almost child-like loyalty to Israel that they do not fee toward America
“I know dozens of quite sane and intelligent Jews and all of them have drunk deeply of the pro-Israel kool-aid.”
If anybody compiling a dictionary needs an example for “non sequitur” it’s hard to think of a better one. Thanks, Boston.
re Denis:
..”When Bibi blows a nuke and kills hundreds of thousands or millions of innocent people and draws America into WW III and kills tens of thousands of American kids, American goyim (who out-number American Jews by about 50:1)…”
Question: does anybody know what the American goyim – American Jews ratio is in the US Armed Forces???
Maybe 400 : 1?? or….?
“They have suicide bombers all over the place.”
If the ‘leader of the Jewish people’ bombs Iran, forcing an Iranian counter attack resulting in the destruction of Israel….
Who is the suicide bomber?
“They have suicide bombers…..”
Yes, they are ready to die for their beliefe, right or wrong.
However, we should not forget the jewish bombers of 1946 and following years, who bombed arab cafes, buses, post offices and even the Hotel David. They did kill thousands of others, but did not die for a cause.
By the way, the son of the most famous bomber, specializing on blowing up buses, is the mayor of Chicago today. If it is good for the goose, why not for the gander?
El Lider, Il Duce, Vozhd, Fuehrer, Cacique, King of Israel, I wonder how Gregory should address Netanyahu.
O Captain, my Captain! ???
“The thing I enjoyed most about the ensuing roundtable was Andrea Mitchell and Jeffrey Goldberg blasting Obama for his handling of the Israel/Palestine issue. A “legitimate criticism,” Mitchell said. “A disaster,” said Goldberg.” — Phil
If it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Jews.
—–
Although they did have Keith Ellison, as “The Muslim Piñata” (“Congressman Ellison, why are your Muslim Brothers so Kee-Ray-Zee?!). Fortunately, they restored the traditional MTP balance by booking Rep. Peter King, Leader of the Asshat People.
“If it’s Sunday, it’s Meet the Jews.”
Are you referring to ‘Meet the Prost‘?
If Netanyahu had even the slightest amount of class, he would have led off his remarks by offering his condolences to the US public for the death of the US ambassador and embassy staff in Benghazi, following it with his appreciation for Obama’s directly interventing to save Israeli embassy personnel in Cairo under similar circumstances.
So 60 Minutes replayed its interview of Meir Dagan tonight, almost as a response to Netanyahu’s interview on Meet the Press.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking some smart lawyers should get themselves retained by the actors in the Innocence of Muslims, to file a lawsuit against those who produced the thing, and who posted it on Youtube, for damages, and for an injunction to remove it from Youtube. Oh dear, they were misled, and now there lives are threatened. So sue the bastards! Google says the Youtube video doesn’t violate their policies. Well, fraudulent procurement of one’s image in a movie, to bait violent Muslims, violates those actors’ rights. And the producers should at least be held accountable for their fraud to those they lied to and endangered. And enjoined to pull it off of Youtube. Why we as a country have to sit idly by while this asinine and highly offensive video stimulates rage against our service men and women across the globe, because some anonymous fraudster, who is in hiding, wants to exercise his first amendment rights to express his racist anti-Muslim bile, and Google has its policies, is beyond me. And, while they’re at it, those lawyers should depose the s*** out of Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, under penalty of perjury, about everything and everyone involved in that obscenity. And they should depose those WSJ journalists about the initial interview with “Sam Bacile,” which “falsely” laid this all on the Israelis and the American Jews. There is blood on the hands of those responsible for this travesty, and the need for justice. Now.
Nini said: “don´t let these fanatics have nuclear weapons”.
Is he talking about the fanatics in Teheran or Tel Aviv, because those in Tel Aviv are much more dangerous and fanatic, have more blood on their hands and their plans are not peaceful co-existence, but Erez Israel. That means more wars, more territories conquered, more displaced persons.
Why do not a single politician or TV presenter in the USA, or as the matter in the whole west, have the guts to voice a question about the nuclear arsenal in Dimona?
In my simple opinion, should Iran have nuclear weapons, it will force peace in the ME, as it insured the same during 40 years of cold war. Israel would stop invading its neighbors and all other beligerent acts, because their superiority is matched by another land.
This Jewish person is getting rather tired of un-elected leaders for the Jewish people, beginning with Herzl, the Zionist Federation, the Jewish Agency, the Jewish People’s Council and every other delusional liar who has ever laid claim or ignorant nincompoop who’s ever said there was.
In fact we’ve NEVER had an elected representative. Our ‘Homeland State’ has never had a constitution, as legally required and promised and it has never had a legally elected govt (elected under a constitution).
All these so called representatives of the Jewish people have done more to drive a wedge between Jewish folk than at anything at any other time in our short history, (the Australian Aboriginals go back over 45,000 years). Top it off with a very young un-elected G-/od, who didn’t even bother showing up during the Holocaust, what’s to have faith in? More bullsh*te?
Maybe Bibi has already figured out that Obama will win, and he wants to push Obama in campaign mode, and so Bibi is talking directly to the American masses, setting up his strike on Iran, figuring Dick n Jane, coupled with the whole US Congress (except a handful, e.g., that crazy coot, Ron Paul) will ASAP resolve to join in Bibi’s attack?
Just got this forwarded to me by a Christian fundie–anti-Obama woman:
“Note: I just received this from a retired U.S. Navy friend Things are likely to get real hot very soon. C.B.
Something unusual is happening in Israel
> I got this from one of my employees who has a brother in Israel and believe it 100%. Something is coming.
>
> I don’t know if you follow such things but…
> My brother and his family live in Jerusalem – he is a minister – and a former Navy SEAL – his office is close to one of Israel ‘s largest underground military bases.
>
> He called me last night which is very unusual – usually it is email.
>
> He called to tell me that he is sending his family back to the US immediately due to what he is seeing happen within the last week and what he is being told by his military contacts in both the Israel and US military.
>
> He said he is seeing with his own eyes military movements the likes of which he has never seen in his 20+ years in Israel.
>
> What he called a massive redeployment and protective tactics of forces is underway.
>
> Over the last two days he has seen anti-aircraft missile deployments throughout the Jerusalem area including 3 mobile units that he can see from his office windows.
>
> In addition, he has seen very large Israeli armored columns moving fast toward the Sinai where Egypt has now moved in Armor.
>
> There are reports of the top military leaders meeting with Israel ‘s Sr. Rabi which is something that has happened preceding every prior military campaign.
> His admonition is to watch carefully and pray for Israel and its people.
>
> He is convinced that barring something extraordinary Israel will attack Iran – with or without the US – and very soon.
>
> It is the belief in Israel that Obama does not stand with Israel but with the Arab countries.
>
> He has told me before that Israel will saber rattle from time to time but that this time is very different from what he is seeing and hearing.
> He was at the Wailing Wall 2 days ago and there were hundreds of IDF soldiers there. As he was leaving he passed at least 20 military buses full of soldiers in route to the wall.
>
> He has never seen this before either.
>
> Just thought I would pass this along.
> My brother is not an alarmist by any means.
>
> When he talks like this it gets my attention for sure and usually I find he knows more than he shares.
>
> There are reports that Israel is asking Obama to come to Israel immediately but they are being answered with silence.
>
> My opinion is that I see the making of the perfect storm. “
citizen, a Christian fundie–anti-Obama woman claims to have an employee who claims to have a brother who claims to have written what sounds to be alarmist propaganda. and then there is this:
link to google.com
Thanks, Annie