Much of the media are dismissing today’s Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas summit as an abject failure. Check out the Guardian, which uses the word “failure” no less than three times in its chronicle of the UN meetings, along with “meager results,” “inauspicious start” and other formulations to characterize negotiations that supposedly yielded nothing. I haven’t come across the […]
Benjamin Netanyahu
Within organized American Jewish community, dovish groups fight back on Jerusalem
American Jewish groups are engaged in another internecine struggle about the ongoing tiff between Obama-Netanyahu. The latest tussle was prompted by a statement about Jerusalem last week from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the most important umbrella group in the community. That statement, addressing the controversy over East Jerusalem housing that […]
If U.S. says talk of sanctions on Israel is “premature,” doesn’t that mean they’re possible?
Am I the only one who finds significance in a new p-word used by the State Department: “premature?” Asked at a press briefing if the U.S. was considering putting financial pressure on Israel to get it to comply with American demands, State Department spokesperson Richard Wood said, “It’s premature to talk about that. What we’re […]
Netanyahu cynically plays the civil rights card to explain Jerusalem housing
On the Americans for Peace Now blog, the relentlessly smart Lara Friedman and attorney Danny Seidemann refute Netanyahu’s faux civil rights arguments about Jerusalem housing. To fully appreciate the post, you must have a willingness to wade through the details of arcane real estate law, but the devil, quite literally, is in those details. Here […]
What else Netanyahu needs to know about Obama
The following op-ed just went on-line and will be in Friday’s Haaretz. I’ve been waiting about 25 years to be able write something like this and actually believe it. Something else Netanyahu should know By Dan Flesher Even before President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech last week, there were reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and […]
A ray of hope: maybe Bibi has no principles
Under normal circumstances, we want the world’s leaders to have moral and ideological consistency and to know who they are. Perhaps, under current circumstances, it is better for Israel to be led by a man who doesn’t have the faintest idea of who he is and relies on others to define him. “Nothing has changed […]
Baker and Biden at AIPAC: A Tale of Two Speeches
At the AIPAC Policy Conference 20 years ago, Secretary of State James Baker made a widely publicized speech that, if I’m not mistaken, was written by Aaron David Miller. He told the throng: For Israel, now is the time to lay aside, once and for all, the unrealistic vision of a Greater Israel. Israeli interests […]
Ace reporter: American Jewish leaders are getting nervous about Obama
The well-connected and astute James Besser is hearing from American Jewish learders who are concerned that Obama will ignore conventional political wisdom and not worry (too much) about battling “the pro-Israel establishment.” He tells us: Last month Obama said “the status quo is unsustainable,†and he sounded like he meant it. For many pro-Israel leaders […]
New spin from Israel’s desperate foreign ministry
Imagine the consternation among the career staffers at Israel’s foreign ministry after their new boss, Avigdor Lieberman, said that Israel was not bound by prior agreements and explicitly mentioned Annapolis. It was hard enough for them to adjust a few years ago, when Tzipe Livni started to sound more like a Peace Now activist, ca […]
Why not call Netanyahu’s bluff on “economic peace?”
Prime Minister Netanyahu still hasn’t given up on the idea of forging an “economic peace” with the Palestinians, Bloomberg reports. Last week, at a meeting in Washington, I heard Yossi Beilin tell some left-learning, pro-Israel American Jews that they –and the Israeli left– should take Netanyahu at his word. “If he wants economic peace, let’s […]