How USA Today covers Netanyahu’s election
Here’s how USA Today covers the Netanyahu election:
The outcome would also affirm Israel’s continued tilt to the political right and further cast doubt on hopes of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, partly because of Netanyahu’s close relationship with President Donald Trump.
Israel’s mostly been tilting right since 2000, and with good reason, although the authors of the piece don’t allude to the reason why, which was the utter failure of the peace plans and negotiations the left had championed (see this). The end of the Camp David talks in 2000, which featured Israel’s giving an enormous number of concessions to Arafat and Arafat walking away, made it clear that the whole thing had been a charade on the part of the Palestinians, and unless something changed very drastically there would be little to no hope of a negotiated solution—certainly not of the conventional sort—although the MSM and the left have been pretending otherwise.
So, how has Netanyahu’s close relationship with Trump cast further doubt on a negotiated solution? Did the fact that Obama hated Netanyahu and treated him like dirt lead to productive negotiations? Don’t think so.
More:
Trump’s decision to reverse decades of U.S. policy toward Israel, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem even though both the Palestinians and the Israelis claim that city as their capital, has embittered Palestinians.
Ah, so that’s what’s embittered them. Glad the authors can shed light on that. After all, the Palestinians were so unembittered before Trump did that.
And by the way, the Palestinians don’t just claim that Jerusalem is their capital, they want a right of return to Israel and to essentially stop Israel from being Israel. Good luck negotiating with that.
The article goes on to describe the reaction to Trump’s peace plan, the details of which no one knows:
It’s expected to be unveiled soon but critics have dismissed it even before its release because of Trump’s Israel actions. Foreign Policy magazine described it as a “disaster waiting to happen” and Shalom Lipner, who served seven consecutive Israeli prime ministers, wrote in a recent Politico analysis that it looked “dead on arrival.”
As I indicated earlier, if this plan is “dead on arrival” it’s only because all such plans are, not because of “Trump’s Israel actions.” It’s a convenient fiction for the left and Trump’s other opponents to pretend otherwise. So I tend to agree with these critics that it isn’t going to succeed, although I don’t know what the plan entails.
Danial Pipes says, on the other hand, that he’s got some of the details. I wonder. He also thinks it won’t work, but his opinion is that it’s too much like the old plans of previous administrations and gives too much away, although Pipes says one difference is that Trump’s plan will require the Arabs to make concessions first, unlike previous plans that required that of Israel or that called for simultaneity.
My guess is that Trump will attempt to do it somewhat differently and that he has a few extra tricks up his sleeve. But I am not the least bit optimistic about the results; I just think the situation is too stuck and the Palestinian leaders gain too much from keeping the wound festering. But it would be very nice to be pleasantly surprised.
One thing of which I’m fairly sure is that Trump and Netanyahu will have a good working relationship.
Sorry “USA Today”.
Another victory for Western Civilization.
Wait for the political earthquake in (formerly Great) Britain in the next election
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8827943/theresa-may-tories-suffer-local-elections/
The result will either be hard left turn, or a rejection of both Tory and Labor parties.
“The Week” resumed the election results this way:
“No matter what happens in the coming days and weeks, the right in Israel holds most of the cards, the center is its only opposition and viable alternative, and the left is well and truly dead.”
I read somewhere this morning that there is no Left remaining in Israel.
Reporters are paid to turn in copy on time. They’re not paid to know anything. Kim Hjelmgaard, the lead author, would appear to be a Dutch national living in Britain. He’s worked as a reporter for about 10 years, worked for a publishing company for some years before that, and doesn’t admit of anything before that. He’s about 40 and cadged a literature degree from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He’s also an occasional contributor to Sojourners, the magazine for the Democratic Party’s evangelical patsies.
Deirdre Shesgreen hasn’t the excuse that she’s one of Ben Rhodes’ 27-year-olds who know nothing. She’s about 50. She admits on Linkedin to have been a working reporter for nearly 20 years (with a stint in PR). She doesn’t admit to any higher education. She appears to have spent the last leg of her nonage in Dekalb, Illinois (college town) and to have bounced around between Columbia, Mo., Chicago, and Madiscon, Wi when she was around age 25. And, whaddaya know, at some point she left this vita on a server: (https://pressfolios-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/bio/resumes/68991398542491wPJQD6SERQyLoPs2K13y.pdf). Literature degree (Wisconsin) followed by J-School (Mizzou). She’s lived around DC for 20-odd years.
One or the other (I forget which) contends they’ve traveled to and reported from about 50 countries.
I’m sorry, how does one negotiate with people that want you dead? I’m not even sure LeMay’s quote is applicable.
I read somewhere this morning that there is no Left remaining in Israel.
Plenty in newsrooms and on faculties, I’ll wager.
The Labor Party, the Meretz list, and the Hadash-Taal list collared about 13% of the vote between them, so there is a left in Israel. Just one of modest significance in the scheme of things.
For the record, the statutory position of the US government from 1995 on has been that the US Embassy should be in Jerusalem.
From wikipedia:
“The Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 is a public law of the United States passed by the post-Republican Revolution 104th Congress on October 23, 1995. The proposed law was adopted by the Senate (93–5), and the House (374–37). The Act became law without a presidential signature on November 8, 1995.
“The Act recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and called for Jerusalem to remain an undivided city. Its purpose was to set aside funds for the relocation of the Embassy of the United States in Israel from its location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, by May 31, 1999…
“Despite passage, the law allowed the President to invoke a six-month waiver of the application of the law, and reissue the waiver every six months on “national security” grounds. The waiver was repeatedly renewed by Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama. President Donald Trump signed a waiver in June 2017. On June 5, 2017, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of reunification of Jerusalem by 90-0. The resolution reaffirmed the Jerusalem Embassy Act and called upon the President and all United States officials to abide by its provisions. On December 6, 2017, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and ordered the planning of the relocation of the embassy. However, following the announcement, Trump signed an embassy waiver again, delaying the move, as mandated by the Act, by at least six months…
“On February 23, 2018, President Trump announced that the US Embassy in Israel would reopen at the Arnona consular services site of the then US Consulate-General in Jerusalem. The United States Embassy officially relocated to Jerusalem on May 14, 2018, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.”
I don’t think Trump reversed decades of US policy on where the embassy should be.
“Plenty in newsrooms and on faculties, I’ll wager.” Of course, but this does not translate anymore into enough votes to seriously influence government policies. As a politically motivating ideology, leftism is dead, and its zombi-like existence is a pure consequence of demographic inertia.
Amadeus:
Yes, I meant to make that point. Glad you brought it up. Trump merely implemented the previous bipartisan US policy.
Should also mention Olmert’s more recent offer to Abbas in 2008:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-admits-he-rejected-2008-peace-offer-from-olmert/
But it’s always Israel’s—and Bibi’s—fault that the possibility for a two-state solution is “fading”, “fading”, “fading” until “Israel destroys the possibility of a two-state solution altogether”…. (Sigh….)
Always.
Indeed, Arafat (and his heir) are geniuses.
(But hey, let’s keep talking about the “two-state solution” and keep asking “what the Palestinians want” and discuss “what Israel can do—must do— to facilitate it”….)
As a politically motivating ideology, leftism is dead, and its zombi-like existence is a pure consequence of demographic inertia.
Now if we can get that to happen here as well, we can return to being a normal country again.
I’m hoping that Bibi is putting into effect a two-state solution, on the basis of my “Hasta La Vista” plan. He annexes the areas of heavy Jewish population, puts up a wall between them and the Palis, and says “Hasta La Vista, baby!” Unilateral Palestinian statehood, whether the Palestinians like it or not!
“I am not the least bit optimistic about the results; I just think the situation is too stuck and the Palestinian leaders gain too much from keeping the wound festering.” neo
There’s no basis for optimism and without a change in paradigm, a ton of historical evidence for the continuation of the status quo.
I suggest the solution Alexander employed when confronted by the “Gordian Knot”.
“how does one negotiate with people that want you dead? “ I R A Darth Aggie
You gain leverage over an enemy by attaching to their aggression what for them is intolerable consequence. They don’t value life but they do value Islam’s promise of paradise and their ‘holy’ sites. Deny slain and wounded jihadists paradise and hold hostage the continued existence of their holy sites to an end to the violence. The head of Hamas recently stated that in the future, Israeli’s will flee even Tel Aviv. Formally respond by stating that the day Israeli’s flee Tel Aviv is the day Mecca is rendered uninhabitable…
“As a politically motivating ideology, leftism is dead, and its zombi-like existence is a pure consequence of demographic inertia.”
“Now if we can get that to happen here as well, we can return to being a normal country again.” I Callahan
We currently lack the mortal threat that Israel faces. It’s “the utter failure of the peace plans and negotiations the left had championed” in the face of that threat that has killed the Left.
“Depend upon it Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Samuel Johnson
Liberals are no exception to Johnson’s dictum.
This is why it won’t work.
Muslim Peace with Israel? Nope!
The veteran expert on Islam says that Western officials fail to grasp that the Arab and Islamic world truly see Israel’s establishment as a “reversal of history” and are therefore unable to ever accept peaceful relations with it. From Moslems’ perspective, “Islamic territory was taken away from Islam by Jews. You know by now that this can never be accepted, not even one meter. So everyone who thinks Tel Aviv is safe is making a grave mistake. Territory which at one time was dominated by Islamic rule, now has become non-Muslim. Non-Muslims are independent of Islamic rule and Jews have created their own independent state. It is anathema. Worse, Israel, a non-Muslim state, is ruling over Muslims. It is unthinkable that non-Muslims should rule over Muslims.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/112066
According to Sharon, the way Israel negotiates with the Palestinians needs to be different. For decades, he has been critical of the way Israel’s leaders have handled negotiations with Arab leaders in general, and has written a guide as to how to negotiate in the Middle East bazaar. One important change is to remove the English language from negotiations. “I want negotiations to be in two languages: Hebrew and Arabic. Israel will speak Hebrew and they will speak Arabic. Because then you will really hear what the Arabs have to say, and what they don’t have to say. The Arabs know that what they say will be quoted in their media and therefore they will be very careful what they say and you will hear their true positions. In English, they can say anything they want, and then later when confronted with what they said they will say it wasn’t understood correctly and taken out of context.”
Sharon says that as a general rule, what Muslim/Arab leaders say in English means absolutely nothing. First, because they will always say what the English audience wants to hear, even if it has no resemblance to reality. Second, Muslims don’t view themselves as obligated to the Western audience. “When Muslims speak in front of their own people, they know that when they commit to something they are expected to supply the goods. That is not so with English audiences.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266577/what-trump-needs-say-abbas-gideon-israel
Amadeus 48 on April 10, 2019 at 3:57 pm at 3:57 pm said:
For the record, the statutory position of the US government from 1995 on has been that the US Embassy should be in Jerusalem.
* * *
One of the most annoying things about President Trump (to the Left and GOPe), is that he actually tries to follow the law as written, NOT as “deemed to exist” by the cynical legislators who continually pass legislation they have no intention of obeying.
Daniel Horowitz’s banner line at Frontpage is “Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.”
They used to keep the screaming more restrained in public, but I think they have given it up, because now we all can hear them.
This further information from Professor Sharon is critically important, and I wonder what kind of advice President Trump is getting about it — sounds a lot like real-estate development to me!
The Palestinians had their best shot in 2000. Clinton wanted a Nobel Peace Prize and strong armed Barak. Arafat walked away and began the Intifada. Barak lost the next election in a landslide.
The UN has propped up the Palestinians since 1948. They need to learn what the Sudeten Germans and East Prussians learned. If you start a war and lose it, you’re f**ked. The wall has worked well for Israel. I just finished reading “Beruit Rules” about the Lebanon bombings and kidnappings in the 80s. Without Israel we would be blind in the Middle East. The CIA is useless.
I Callahan: For this to happen in USA, the country should be under existential threat of intransigent enemy with terrorist attacks from day to day. This wonderfully focuses the mind and clears it from humanitarian and liberal illusions. At least, exactly this happened in Israel.
An article of Israeli journalist, with obvious parallels to USA politics:
”
“My friends in the press, do not get confused. The victory of Bibi – the most right-wing coalition in the history of Israel – is completely on the conscience of the press.
You thought that if you didn’t give the elected leader of Israel a moment’s peace, if you chose discourse with investigative actions, ignored and despised his achievements, boasted of your hatred for him in the interview, then he will eventually fall. What happened? He did not fall, he is stronger than ever, and in the new government there is not a single representative of the centrists. No one.”
“You thought that, in the name of the letter of the law, Israel would abandon who is considered the leader of a generation. You didn’t just make a mistake. You pushed him to a more right position than he was, and we will soon see what will happen when we put the Trump programs on the table in front of us. You wanted to return the left to power – and in reality you finally finished them off.”
And by the way, the Palestinians don’t just claim that Jerusalem is their capital, they want a right of return to Israel and to essentially stop Israel from being Israel. Good luck negotiating with that.
Shades of Bolshevism and Iranian Revolution. All the upper level Bolsheviks, of which 80% were Jewish, sometimes religious Jews, returned to Russia to start the revolution. They were exiled instead of killed. Same thing happened to Khomeni, exiled not executed by the Shah of Iran.
These Tzars and Shahs tend to be overly merciful. It might have been better to kill off these humans before it went to ofar.
The most powerful force that shapes the collective mind of the masses is not propaganda, but archetypes of collective subconscience. The psychodrama of history as reflected in hive mind of the masses has the permanent roles, like personages of Comedy del Arte. One of them is the folk hero, the trickster and the savior of the oppressed peasantry from arrogance and hubris of overlords. Trump and Bibi both neatly inserted themselves into this vacancy and became mythological figures to whom usual rules of politics do not apply. People will forgive them a lot, and attacks on them only enhance their standing in mass conscience. An example from the article I cited:
“I spoke on the street today with a janitor. He said: “I don’t care if Bibi steals even a thousand shekels a day. The main thing is that the house has a master.”
Sharon’s idea of speaking Arabic & Hebrew sure seems like a good one.
“Ideas like Israel annexing parts of the West Bank are moving closer to reality,”
The chances of Peace depend on the Palestinians wanting Peace. My own long-time fantasy was of Israel annexing more land until there is a Peace agreement, with the agreed upon Israeli borders. Borders that are, every year, every quarter without Peace, larger for Israel. The Arabs have never accepted any borders.
Of course the Palestinians will call it injustice, but their fighting and their attacks on peaceful Israelis have long been unjust, and without punishment. Losing land to a growing Israel, with the prospect of losing even MORE land, may give their leaders enough of a loss to be able to accept borders and formally recognize Israel.
Instead of offering “more” to the Palestinians, it’s long past time to offer them “less”, and increasingly less of land, until they accept peace.
A related issue is that Israel may need to take far more than it wants in the final settlement, so as to give some of it back.
Well, that’s been a recurring fantasy for many years, decades even. Seems a lot more humane than a massive fire-bombing campaign like what the US good-guys did in Dresden & Tokyo in WW II, tho fire-bombing would also probably “work” to get a Palestinian Unconditional Surrender.
A strong, well led Israel is good for freedom in the world. Bibi is good for Israel.
David Horowitz, not Daniel Horowitz.
[ Just for the record. :>) ]
“David Horowitz, not Daniel Horowitz.”
OOPS.
Oh well, I like Daniel too!
https://www.conservativereview.com/news/author/dhorowitz/
You can’t negotiate with the Palis, because they won’t negotiate.
“If you start a war and lose it, you’re f**ked….”
Ah, but the Palestinians can start—and lose—as many wars as they want.
And if they get banged up as a result, they’ll call it a “victory”, and get down to the business of “the next time”; while getting loads of sympathy and money and moral support from all the usual suspects. (Meanwhile, Israel will be lambasted and excoriated for trying to harm those poor people, for using “disproportionate force” against them, and “illegal weapons and munitions”, etc. etc. ZIO-NAZIS I believe is the correct terminology.)
The result? The Palestinians—poor, starving, oppressed, colonized—will acquire more (and more sophisticated) weapons and materiel while Israel gets bashed increasingly in international organizations, in the media, in academia…. Even Liberal Jews in Israel and worldwide—wise, ethical, compassionate, moral, thoughtful, caring—will start to wonder more and more vocally why Israel just can’t give those poor, oppressed Palestinians what the latter want….as they arrive at the necessary Liberal conclusions: that Israel is to blame. Is evil.
And what do you know! hostilities will break out again (as they must). And the Palestinians will be coddled again and supported again, and the Israelis will be bashed (again and again); and an already tense Israel will become that much more uptight.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Again and again.
Until Israel, finally, loses.
(And Israel can only lose once.)
Ymarsakar once again breathes new life into the old saying of Artemus Ward (or Josh Billings, or mark Twain, or somebody else): “It ain’t so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that ain’t so.”
The number of ethnic Jews among the Bolsheviks was immaterial:
“According to the 1922 Bolshevik party census, there were 19,564 Jewish Bolsheviks, comprising 5.21% of the total, and in the 1920s of the 417 members of the Central Executive Committee, the party Central Committee, the Presidium of the Executive of the Soviets of the USSR and the Russian Republic, the People’s Commissars, 6% were ethnic Jews.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Bolshevism#Jewish_involvement_in_Russian_Communism
The Jews who were Bolsheviks had renounced Judaism and turned their backs on the Jewish people. As far as I have been able to find, there was one (1) religious Jew among the Bolsheviks, a man named Steinberg who was Justice Commissar in the second Bolshevik government. In the first Bolshevik government, there was one (1) ethnic Jew, Leon Trotsky. If anyone knows of another yarmulke-wearing, Sabbath-observing, kosher-keeping Jew among the Bolsheviks, please let me know.
Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein but changed his name to avoid being known as a Jew. He refused his father’s request to be buried in a Jewish cemetery. There’s a well-know story about Trotsky’s attitude toward Jews:
It is related that the chief Rabbi of Moscow, Rabbi Jacob Maze, once appeared before Trotsky to plead on the behalf of the Russian Jews. Trotsky answered him, as he had done on various occasions, that he was a Communist and did not consider himself a Jew. To this Rabbi Maze replied: “Trotsky makes the revolutions, and the Bronsteins pay the bills.”
See http://www.jewishmag.com/118mag/trotsky/trotsky.htm for most of the above.
There’s a well-known story about Trotsky’s
Oops! Disregard last sentence fragment.
One may hate or love Netanyahu, but let give the man his due: he is a grossmeister of political intrigue, not only in Israel, but worldwide the best in this game. When the results came out, it became clear how precise and clever his political calculation was. Look at what this “magician” pulled off:
“Many political analysts dismissed his final “gevalt, I am going to lose” campaign as Netanyahu just crying wolf, like he did on the eve of the last election in 2015. They claimed it wouldn’t work. But it did – and better than he could have imagined. Netanyahu managed to tie with Blue and White by sucking just enough votes from the satellite right-wing parties, but to let them keep enough so they would get into the Knesset and he could then form a coalition.”
“Until Israel, finally, loses.” Or Israel at last would go full Meir Kahane (or full Jabotinsky, if you prefer), and this will be the end of the fiction of so-called “Palestinian people” concocted from the whole cloth by KGB puppeteers. This seems to me the more probable outcome. Most young Israeli Jews who came to age in the midst of Intifada or disastrous unilateral withdrowal from Gaza already are Kahanists.
Indeed…but the Palestinian people (not all of them of course—and certainly not their leaders) is, in macro, the “suicide bomber” for the Holy cause of Israel’s obliteration.
They are wholly expendable—by their leaders, their “brothers” and many of those who profess to support them….as long as the job gets done.
(The only ones who seem to really care about them are the Israelis—though no, not all Israelis. Remember: When Israelis are killed, it is celebrated. When Palestinians are killed, it is exploited and honored (and celebrated).
Thus it is in Israel’s interest to make sure that Palestinian casualties are minimal (despite what all the usual suspects say); and it is in the Palestinian interest that casualties are maximalized, as long as those casualties can be blamed on the Zionist Entity. (This seeming paradox is known as “win-win” in this neck of the woods).
(And yet Israel is almost wholly made responsible for the breakdown of the peace process….)
But think about it: whom, when all is said and done, does Iron Dome truly defend?