Doubts whether Obama is tough enough
[I just discovered a blog by Paul Woodward named War in Context. I don't know where he is on the political spectrum.]
Obama gets kind of tough with Netanyahu
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High drama! But will it be of any lasting consequence? I really doubt it.
To put this in perspective we should not forget that the initiative the Obama administration is in a desperate effort to salvage — so-called proximity talks — is one that virtually no one had any confidence would accomplish anything in the first place. A successful resolution to the current dispute means getting this initiative back on a track that leads nowhere.
The Jerusalem District Planning and Building committee has canceled two meetings planned for this week. Big deal. It can reschedule them in a few weeks once America and the media are suitably distracted by current events. Indeed, the closer mid-term elections come, the greater this administration’s interests will be in restoring cordial relations with Israel.
Daniel Levy, a former adviser to then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, says the administration is trying to “lay down a marker with [Netanyahu] that they will not allow him to make them look weak,” and no doubt that is true, but this is a marker on a movable line.
Nothing Netanyahu does or refrains from doing will reverse the perception of weakness that was Obama’s own doing when he caved on the issue of imposing a settlement freeze. To insist that this Israeli prime minister avoid doing anything to embarrass the US president merely underlines the extent to which this president is already highly susceptible to appearing weak.
As for whether the Israeli government has any interest in making meaningful gestures of reconciliation with the Palestinians, Ma’an reports on the latest indication: an order from Israeli authorities for the demolition of a mosque in Nablus, right in the heart of the West Bank.
But he has no problem displaying weakness vis a vis Iran.
The muslims are waging global jihad, engaging in bloodletting throughout the world, massacring Christians and other non-muslims, brutalizing women and threaten to transform free nations into sharia states, the islamic genocidal regime is close to acquiring nuclear weapons and slaughters its own people. But the world lines up against six million Jews in the desert with a tiny strip of land the size of New Jersey and who contribute advances in medicine, science and technology which the world benefits by. I really hope these are the end times because this is a sick world.
Comment by Laura — March 15, 2010 @ 11:54 pm
That is a major part of the provocation.
The French ambassador to Britain complained of that “shitty little country”.
How is it that a shitty little country is so damned great in so many ways?
Militarily.
Technologically.
Medically.
Philanthropically.
It defies all explanation and leaves anti-Semites infuriated that the people they hate are so much better than they are.
Liberal (read: cowardly) Jews also despair because - as the old Asian proverb expresses - “The raised nail gets hammered”.
Comment by ayn reagan — March 16, 2010 @ 12:21 am