A Clean Break - TTG

WASHINGTON — President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu had a poisonous relationship long before Mr. Netanyahu swept to victory on Tuesday night in elections watched minute-by-minute at the White House. But now that Mr. Netanyahu has won after aggressively campaigning against a Palestinian state and Mr. Obama’s potential nuclear deal with Iran, the question is whether the president and prime minister can ever repair their relationship — and whether Mr. Obama will even try.

On Wednesday, part of the answer seemed to be that the president would not make the effort. In strikingly strong criticism, the White House called Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign rhetoric, in which he railed against Israeli Arabs because they went out to vote, an attempt to “marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens” and inconsistent with the values that bind Israel and the United States. The White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, told reporters traveling with Mr. Obama on Air Force One on Wednesday that Mr. Netanyahu’s statement was “deeply concerning and it is divisive and I can tell you that these are views the administration intends to communicate directly to the Israelis.”

And with Mr. Netanyahu’s last-minute turnaround against a Palestinian state alongside Israel, several administration officials said that the Obama administration may now agree to passage of a UN Security Council resolution embodying principles of a two-state solution that would be based on the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip and mutually agreed swaps. Most foreign policy experts say that Israel would have to cede territory to the Palestinians in exchange for holding on to major Jewish settlement blocks in the West Bank. (NYT) 

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Perhaps it is a good thing that Bibi won the election. It’s time for a dose of reality. His official declaration that there will be no Palestinian state finally rips the tattered fig leaf off the failed peace process. No one has to keep up that silly and futile facade any longer. Of course now he claims he never really meant that. Yeah, that’s the ticket. He knows we’re easy to manipulate. We’re just foolish simpletons  who’ll believe anything he says. Well it’s time to call bullshit on Bibi. Benjamin Netanyahu is a man void of all truth.  

Now that Bibi’s true nature is apparent to all willing to see, it’s an opportunity to try a different approach… like the UNSC. Just stop our slavish support of Israel through our veto. Obama can just tell Samantha Power to sit down and shut up. Our Administration could call it leading from behind. Whatever. Maybe the prospect of the UNSC vigorously pursuing a two state solution and right of return would take Bibi’s mind off of Iran. How will Bibi’s electorate react to sanctions over new settlements? Will they continue to buy whatever line Bibi cooks up next? While we’re at it, how about shining a little light on  Israel’s support of Jabhat al-Nusra or reminding the electorate of the USS Liberty? 

TTG

Comments

[toto]

Passing such a resolution, with unambiguous terms, would be a sea change in US foreign relations.

The question is whether the next US president, whoever they are, would be bound by these terms. Certainly Republican candidates will deny it vehemently all the way to the election.

[turcopolier]

All

it was amusing tonight to watch David Brooks (My son is in the IDF!) do his very best to twist the meaning of Bibi's racist statements to something more acceptable. Tapper and "Chuck" Todd had a go at it earlier today. pl

[Cee]

TTG,

Amen, amen! Since you titled your article A Clean Break I think people should go back and read what their plans are.
I hold the likes of Bibi responsible for the things you mentioned and every single person that died as a result of their desire for "transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change"

http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/02/clean-break.html

[BabelFish]

34 sailors killed on the Liberty, 174 wounded. All by the IDF, with malice a forethought. I have not forgotten and the Navy's position is that it was a deliberate attack. We thought that way back when I served. I was in the reserves when this happened, to be inducted a few months later. We had journalists back then who actually had no intellectual issues with understanding that they were capable of doing such things.

[optimax]

It looks like you can read the book MRW mentioned online here:

Ah Eye For An Eye

https://archive.org/details/AnEyeForAnEye

[turcopolier]

optimax

This is all a bit much. As I understand this you are talking about Soviet labor camps run by the NKVD. pl

[optimax]

PL

It probably is. I haven't read it yet. The book was mentioned on another post. Sorry if it's misleading.

[robt willmann]

Here is an article by Robert Parry that "Netanyahu Unmasks Israel"--

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/18/netanyahu-unmasks-israel/

Parry was an inside player in the establishment media before splitting the sheets with them because he wanted to continue reporting and not shift to being a hack and a fake. He now reports on an Internet website and writes books.

He updated on 14 March the shootdown of the Malaysian flight MH17 over Ukraine, with the angle in the lead paragraph being that the U.S. has not updated its assessment of what happened since 22 July 2014, five days after the crash--

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/14/us-intel-stands-pat-on-mh-17-shoot-down/

In a new article, Parry discusses the circular, twisted racket of tax deductible foundation "think tanks", the military-industrial-security complex, and government officials, in "A Family Business of Perpetual War", about Robert Kagan, his wife Victoria "F**k the EU" Nuland (who is an assistant secretary of state), Fred Kagan (Robert's brother) at the Un-American Enterprise Institute, and Fred's wife Kimberly Kagan, now with her own little foundation, the Institute for the Study of War--

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/03/20/a-family-business-of-perpetual-war/

You can see Parry's talent in the way he structures his articles and how he carefully uses words.

[Lars]

As the old saying goes: Be careful about what you wish for. You may get it. Likud only has 21% of the seats in the Knesset, which means a majority of Israelis did not vote for Bibi. Thus, he will have a weak government and it will not take too much pressure to unravel it.

Any talk of reducing US support for Israel will create a lot of political anxiety. Younger Jews, both inside and outside of Israel see this government as oppressors, not historical victims and that will eventually change the political landscape.

[Alba Etie]

All
This contretemps with BiBi could really be the opening needed to at least begin the re-alignment of These United States interest decoupled from the Likud MENA agenda. The Two State Solution ,& bombing Nanatanz instead of inspections , -- could be real drivers in the national elections here in 2016 .Its high time We The People call bullsh--t on the neocon narrative. I truly believe that a war weary , & war wary American electorate will ready to hear & have this debate. And as a side bar despite all the campaign in waiting noise coming from Bubba Land - I continue to believe Mrs Clinton will not run for the Democratic nomination . But I have been very wrong before here at SST - HRC might still run and win the nomination . We in any event need to encourage Senator Jim Webb to stand for the nomination too -to carry our message of no more Likud neocon nonsense here and abroad . After I pay my taxes I plan to send Sen Webb a campaign donation . ( I was very disturbed and disappointed Senator Paul was one of the 47 red hots to sign the Sen Cotton letter to the Ayatollah ) .

[LeaNder]

optimax, on a meta level: one of my favorite historians read everything we term "gray literature" over here in his special fields of studies. This includes the sensationalist that usually sells in large numbers. In one of his fields myth surfaces a lot in what in recognized academic literature too.

Why do I think this is important in this context: he has a firm historical basis, which allows him to sort out myth from the more or less frequent grains of truth in the field aimed at the large public. ... That's important if you stumble across something seemingly sensational. How able are you to critically read it? Recognize mistakes?

On first sight, John Sack has no historical background, but according to Wikipedia is a "literary journalist" and "war correspondent". I sympathize with his interest in his Polish background and his mental travel into what could have been his own destiny, hadn't his parents emigrated to the US, that is. What I am less sure about is the usage of his book. Generally I dislike any attempt "to balance" history via a discourse on German victimhood. And no, I am not unaware that the more you leave the collective and approach the microlevel of single humans it obviously exited. ...

http://tinyurl.com/pztupov

"An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge Against Germans in 1945 (ISBN 978-0465042142) is a book by John Sack, which states that some Jews in Eastern Europe took revenge on their former captors while overseeing over 1,000 concentration camps in Poland for German civilians."

Why shouldn't there be "some" Jewish survivors working in post WWII camps as guards for German "slave/repair" laborers used for rebuilding destructed towns and cities, the larger infrastructure?

So one or the other Jewish-Polish survivor may have treated Germans the way both Polish both Jews and non-Jews were treated before?

Below Poland in the larger context of German post WWII slave labor. From the little I know in Poland they were used for rebuilding what had been destroyed the destroyed infrastructure.

http://tinyurl.com/pjcmhym

Not too long ago I saw a short interview with one of these people, who only returned to Germany from Poland in the 50s, as one uncle did from Russia. He apparently wasn't angry, but in apparently he accepted his fate.

What the author's quote seems to suggests, and it must not necessarily mirror John Pack genuinely, however obliquely or indirectly is the demand that "the Jews" act better then even in the field of slave work, where you had a chance to survive after all. Why? They should act better then their most fierce enemies ever looked at collectively? After all what happened, after all what may have happened to them before?

more basically: We share across the diverse religions a basic ethical idealism, but apart from that we are all humans. There are times in which it is more easy to stay closer to the "idealist" pole than in others.

"An Eye for an Eye":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_for_an_eye#Judaism

But thanks, I wonder now what MRW tried to tell us via Sack's work. Is he around?

[oofda]

Amen- too many people today don't know about the attack on the USS LIBERTY. Apologists for Israel, including former Israel ambassador to the US, have downplayed the attack, ignoring facts and outright lying.

And don't forget Jonathon Pollard, who provided Israel with a treasure trove of classified material on the US Navy.
A clean break indeed. And what has Israel ever done for the United States, other than provide intel on helping defend itself?

[confusedponderer]

"Not too long ago I saw a short interview with one of these people, who only returned to Germany from Poland in the 50s, as one uncle did from Russia. He apparently wasn't angry, but in apparently he accepted his fate."

As a young woman an aunt of mine was being deported to work in a Siberian coalmine after the end of WW-II. There she lost half her lung in a cave in. She only returned in the 1950s.

She also showed no anger. She said the Russians who were forced to work there didn't have it much better, so ... she kept talking about the suddenness and beauty of the flowers in the Siberian spring.

[William R. Cumming]

IMO you can safely ignore Bibi, President Obama, the DEMS and the Republicans on US Israeli policy. What cannot be ignored is the deep divisions the election and "victory" of Bibi has created in the minds of secular Israelis. Nor can the truth and fundamental analysis od the American polity post-Israeli election.

What all Americans have known since 1948 is that Israel was a force in MENA that could be counted on in and by the USA for both moderation and a nation-state that even without formal treaty could be relied on by both the USA and Israel.

Now both Americans and Israelis understand that there not only are no formal treat arrangements but that if Israel is going to survive and thrive it will be the sole responsibility of the USA. More than a fig leaf has been torn off.

IT PROBABLY WAS ALWAYS THE CASE BUT NOW MOST AMERICANS FULLY REALIZE THAT AN UNCONTROLLABLE ISRAEL COULD NOT JUST LEAD TO THE DESTRUCTION OF MANY JEWS AND EVEN INVOLVE THE USA IN NUCLEAR WARFARE.

BIBI AND OBAMA CAN AVOID THE ISSUE AND SKATE DURING THEIR TIME OF LEADESHIP BUT THIS RELATIONSHIP NOW HAS BECOME A KEY FP FOR THE 2016 ELECTION.

I could be wrong of course. Was the last President to act against Israel EISENHOWER in the 1956 Suez Crisis?

[optimax]

Leander

The preface to the book misleads one to conclude the Jews controlled the camps in Russian Occupied Territory. The NKVD were barbaric to everyone and I don't know what percentage of NKVD were Jews. Personally, I've always considered Russians a little crazy and is another reason to not mess with Putin. That is based mostly on the local Russian mafia.

[Swami Bhut Jolokia]

Yes, Brooks on The Newshour was quite funny. BTW the disclosure came from Judy Woodruff, not Brooks.

What was even more amusing was Bibi's interview with NPR on Friday morning. The man is a pathological liar, and it was clear he knew he was lying, and to the interviewer's credit the interviewer kept on pressing him. Oy.

You have to listen to the story to catch the tone and nuance.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/03/19/394088313/netanyahu-tells-npr-palestinian-state-unachievable-today

[FB Ali]

Perhaps you've noticed that your comment is spread all over the page. This is due to the long URL that you included in it (Typepad doesn't break them up!).

I would suggest, both for the sake of your future comments and SST readers, that you use TinyURL. Once you put it on the Menu bar, it's very quick and easy to use.

[georgeg]

The local "Russian Mafia" consists mainly of emigres thanks to the Jackson-Vanick Act. Translation: Jewish.

[Charles I]

I think it will take quite a while for an understanding the Israeli SIOP to be any kind of factor in American electoral politics. Between the fear, confusion and psy-ops attendant with the undoing of Sykes-Picot, ignorance, banana peels and the occasional false flag will keep us in a terrified us-agin-them black and whiote world of no choices.

[The Beaver]

@ SBJ

Transcript of the NPR interview:
http://www.npr.org/2015/03/20/394191261/transcript-nprs-interview-with-israeli-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu

This caught my eyes:
"So I wasn't trying to block anyone from voting. I was trying to mobilize my own forces. And that mobilization was based on Arab money – sorry, on foreign money, a lot of foreign money that was coming in. I want to tell you that Israel is a democracy and every citizen is automatically registered to vote"

So Arab money was paying for his mobilization ?

[Croesus]

Wiliam R Cummings --

Apparently JFK tried to act against Israel ---

When Ben-Gurion Said No to JFK, (in 1960, re Dimona) (from) Jerusalem Post --

http://tinyurl.com/o8hjyju

[euclidcreek]

"Generally I dislike any attempt "to balance" history via a discourse on German victimhood." Thanks for being so clear about your contempt for truth in history. As if some people have a monopoly on suffering; well maybe a monopoly on exploiting their peoples suffering.

[LeaNder]

Thanks FB Ali, what I find worse is that it is hardly comprehensible. ;)

I wish I had spent some more time of getting over whatever I was trying to get over more fluently.

Now I cannot ask, what I almost did then to delete the whole thing.

[different clue]

The Beaver,

It would have been a fine chance for the NPR interviewer to have asked Netanyahu how much money Adelson has spent on backing him and on pre-mobilizing his base with all those free newspapers that Adelson pays for and gives away in Israel.

I have not heard/read the interview, but I will blindly guess that the NPR interviewer was not quite that prepared. But if someone gathered those figures for the media, elements of the media might be prepared to use them. If the MSM decide to realize that Bibi is "bad for bussiness" at certain levels, they might be willing to conduct a long well-engineered scorched-earth campaign against Bibi's image and effectiveness.

[different clue]

William R. Cumming,

A candidate Webb might have the public credibility image and stage presence to bring this up and keep it brought up.