What a photograph– from Netanyahu’s twitter feed this morning. Adam Horowitz asked for captions, on twitter.
oh god, don’t lecture me on #iran again
— Barbara Slavin (@barbaraslavin1) November 6, 2013
Or:
Unlike Obama, Kerry gives as good as he gets in passive aggressive digs. Read the transcript. — Ron Kampeas (@kampeas) November 6, 2013
Horowitz’s take:
@barbaraslavin1 I picture them sitting exactly like that for three hours in absolute silence. Total stare down.
— Mondoweiss (@Mondoweiss) November 6, 2013
The State Department sent out a much happier image:
Here’s the transcript. Netanyahu begins by talking all about Iran. The Palestinians are an afterthought, and they’re to blame. His manner is impatient: “I see the Palestinians continuing with incitement, continuing to create artificial crises, continuing to avoid, run away from the historic decisions that are needed to make a genuine peace…”
We seek peace with the Palestinians. We’ve spoken, John, many, many times about this, and because of your efforts, we launched several months ago an initiative to seek a peaceful agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. I want peace with the Palestinians; Israel wants peace with the Palestinians. We agreed three months ago on certain terms. We stand by those terms. We abide scrupulously by the terms of the agreement and the understanding on which we launched the negotiations.
I’m concerned about their progress because I see the Palestinians continuing with incitement, continuing to create artificial crises, continuing to avoid, run away from the historic decisions that are needed to make a genuine peace. I hope that your visit will help steer them back to a place where we could achieve the historical peace that we seek and that our people deserve.
Kerry begins his remarks by commenting on who Netanyahu’s not, Yitzhak Rabin:
We are in the Rabin Suite here, and last night I had the privilege of visiting the site where violence took the life of a great prime minister who was moving towards peace. And I’d often heard President Clinton talk about the meaning of that loss and that moment to the loss of an opportunity for peace.
So I’m honored to be in the Rabin Suite meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel at a moment where we are in critical talks with respect to the possibilities of a long, long sought goal here in the Middle East. Israel deserves security, deserves to live in peace. The Palestinians deserve a state and deserve to live in peace, and that is what we are working towards.
He touches on Iran but says that the peace process is the big enchilada, and that Israel too has to show good faith:
We are now three months into this negotiation. There are always difficulties, always tensions. I’m very confident of our ability to work through them. That’s why I’m here. We will spend serious time this morning. I will meet with President Abbas this afternoon. Again this evening, the Prime Minister and I and his team will share a working dinner, and we’ll work as late as it takes. And again tomorrow, I will be here in the region and working on this. So I hope that we will continue in the good faith that brought the parties together in the first place that this can be achieved. With good faith, with a serious effort on both sides to make real compromises and hard decisions, this can be achieved. President Obama sees the road ahead, as do I, and we share a belief in this process or we wouldn’t put this time into it.
P.S. From the Guardian, 2008:
Few of those who dealt with Netanyahu the prime minister have warm memories of him. “Who the fuck does he think he is, who’s the fucking superpower here?” an outraged Bill Clinton asked his aides after his first meeting with the new Israeli leader.
What is that blue statue thing behind Netanyahu?…..looks like a blue fist holding some object. My magnifier blurs too much to be able to read the plaque inscription on it.
The logs in the fireplace represent the destroyed careers of Jewish anti Zionists.
“We seek peace with the Palestinians. We’ve spoken, John, many, many times about this, and because of your efforts, we launched several months ago an initiative to seek a peaceful agreement between Israel and the Palestinians”
He really sounds like a child abuser explaining why the child wanted sex.
I wish Kerry would stop publicly addressing and referring to the Israeli PM as Bibi. It reminds everyone how special the US relationship is with this leader that President Obama called “a pain in the ass.”
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/.premium-1.556537
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/06/yasser-arafat-poisoned-polonium-tests-scientists
“The first forensic tests on remains from the exhumed corpse of Yasser Arafat have shown unexpectedly high levels of radioactive polonium-210, suggesting the Palestinian leader could have been poisoned with the rare and lethal substance.
The Swiss scientists who tested Arafat’s remains after the exhumation of his body in November discovered levels of polonium at least 18 times higher than the norm in Arafat’s ribs, pelvis and in soil that absorbed his leaked bodily fluids.”
I remember the hasbara at the time. Arafat was the obstacle between Israel and peace.
http://www.haaretz.com/survival-of-the-fittest-cont-1.61341
If that’s so, then the whole Oslo process was mistaken and there is a basic flaw in the entire worldview of the Israeli peace movement.
“Oslo had to be tried. But today it has to be clear that from the Palestinian point of view, Oslo was a deception. [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat did not change for the worse, Arafat simply defrauded us. He was never sincere in his readiness for compromise and conciliation.”
-Benny “Kill them all” Morris
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/mar/10/uselections2004.israel
“The Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, says he no longer considers the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to be a statesman, but rather “an outlaw to the peace process” in the Middle East who has been rightly shuffled aside. Mr Kerry said Mr Arafat “blew his opportunity” to be effective in 1999 and 2000. “He was [a statesman] in 1995,” Mr Kerry said, recalling meetings between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in search of peace in the Middle East. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s an outlaw to the peace process.” ”
Once he was gone they’d be able to deal with someone who could deliver peace. And here we are in 2013 and there are just more settlers.
But Judaism is in a big mess – I didn’t expect that in 2004. Zionism’s use of massive force- it didn’t always hit the expected targets.