I went to AIPAC two weeks back. The line was: Don't worry about the two-state solution; it's all about Iran. And duly the New York Times imbibed this line; it reported that the Obama-Netanyahu meeting on Monday was all about Iran. But it wasn't about Iran. My president set the agenda; and it was about the last chance for the two-state solution–as Gideon Levy in Haaretz and David Ignatius in the Washington Post both correctly report. While here on Mondo, and over at Huffpo, David Bromwich states that the Times "falsified" the Obama-Netanyahu meeting.
The Times did so by basically reflecting the Israel lobby's talking points.
Well today there is a strange/only slightly-helpful effort at correction in the Times titled, "Keeping Score on Obama vs. Netanyahu," notioning that Obama got "suckered" (Israel-lobbyist-who-has-awakened-lately Martin Indyk's word), but demonstrating that the paper continues to flub the story:
Mr. Netanyahu got his timetable. “We’re not going to have talks
forever,” Mr. Obama said of Iran, assuring Mr. Netanyahu that he
expected to know by the end of the year whether Iran was making “a
good-faith effort to resolve differences.”
Wait a second: there was no timetable. Obama wants to see progress by the end of the year. It wasn't any firm promise; and as I observed, and others have agreed, Obama was abrupt with Netanyahu. Then this:
But Mr. Obama did
not get his settlement freeze. In fact, Mr. Netanyahu told him it would
be politically difficult for him to halt the construction of
settlements. That is a hurdle to the administration’s broader peace
objectives because Israel’s Arab neighbors have characterized a freeze
as a precondition for them to establish normal relations.
This is true but absurd. Obama didn't get his settlement freeze? A superpower that gives $3 billion to a tiny country can't get what it wants on a colonial project that is destroying our image in the Middle East? Holy smoke. What other country pushes us around on a vital interest? If the Times had any intellectual honesty it would call John Mearsheimer to explain what's going on here. Because yes, it's about the Israel lobby in our public life. The Israel lobby that allows Netanyahu to get all that money even as he defies the president. And the Israel lobby that shapes the American discourse.
