 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
May 25, 2011
21 Iyar, 5771
How Obama has empowered Netanyahu
By
Dana Milbank
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Lawmakers gave Binyamin Netanyahu 59 rounds of applause as the Israeli prime minister addressed a joint meeting of Congress Tuesday. But more revealing was the whisper I heard while watching the speech from the House gallery.
It came as Netanyahu repeated his rejection of the notion, floated by President Obama last week, that peace talks with Palestinians should be based on Israel’s smaller, pre-1967 borders. “Israel will not return to the indefensible boundaries of 1967,” Netanyahu thundered. “Jerusalem must never again be divided,” he roared. “Go, Bibi!” the woman next to me said, sotto voce. It was the voice of Inna Graizel, my daughter’s 21-year-old Israeli au pair, who is spending a year with my family, learning about America. I, too, am learning. I took Inna to see her prime minister speak this week, first at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and then before Congress, and I saw through her eyes how badly Obama bungled his Middle East speech. He unwittingly strengthened Israeli hawks such as Netanyahu and made the already remote prospect of peace that much more distant. Of this, Inna herself is evidence: Though she’s a moderate who was suspicious of the uncompromising Netanyahu, the episode turned her into a supporter. Inna, whose family emigrated from the former Soviet Union when she was an infant, comes from the north of Israel but from the center of its politics. Middle class and non-religious, she went to high school on a kibbutz before she learned how to fire an M-16 and became an army officer. She voted for the centrist Kadima party in the last election because she didn’t share the militant views of Netanyahu’s Likud. Inna is fiercely patriotic, and when I asked her to assign blame for the conflict, she assigned 80 percent of it to the Palestinians. Twice in her young life, Hezbollah rockets rained on her neighborhood; the last time, she fled to Tel Aviv.
| RECEIVE LIBERTY LOVING COLUMNISTS IN YOUR INBOX … FOR FREE! |
| Every weekday NewsAndOpinion.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". HUNDREDS of columnists and cartoonists regularly appear. Sign up for the daily update. It's free. Just click here. |
|
But she also sees her own country’s culpability. She thought the Israeli raid on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla was “stupid,” and she thought Netanyahu’s expansion of settlements was unwise. She describes her country as “arrogant” and has some sympathy for the Palestinians: “We did invade their home. You can’t deny that.”
What distinguishes Inna and other Israelis is their deeply pessimistic outlook. She fully understands that things could get worse in Israel without a peace deal, but she has no expectation that there will be peace in her lifetime. “It’s like an equation too big to be solved,” she said. This sense of hopelessness, confirmed by the recent resignation of the American envoy to the region, George Mitchell, has hardened Inna’s generation. “We are very cynical and we don’t trust anybody,” she said. Unfortunately, Obama encouraged that cynicism last week, when he offered his now-infamous suggestion that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” Obama and his defenders argued that this wasn’t really a new policy, but, as The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler expertly documented, the statement “represented a major shift.” Later, after the damage had been done, Obama qualified his statement, saying the border should be “different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.” Inna was stunned. “Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank, the 1967 lines? It’s crazy,” she said. “It’s impossible.” Holding her thumb and forefinger an inch apart, she added, “They’ll be this close to Tel Aviv.” The phrase about “agreed swaps” changed nothing. To Inna’s ears, Obama had issued an existential threat to Israel, and it put her in an unfamiliar place: in lockstep with Bibi. When he told Obama in the Oval Office that the 1967 lines were “indefensible,” Inna celebrated. “Now, he’s our guy,” she said. “He’s the voice of Israel.” She’s aware that Netanyahu isn’t about to strike a peace deal. After she listened on Tuesday to Netanyahu’s list of requirements for a Palestinian state — a list one Palestinian official called a “declaration of war” — she knew it was a nonstarter. “I can’t imagine it on a map,” she said. But that was less important to Inna than Netanyahu’s firm rejection of Obama’s frightening proposal. “It’s a big thing to say ‘no’ to the president of the United States,” she said. If there were an election now, she said, “I would vote for Bibi.” This is why Obama’s speech was such a blunder. By pushing an Israeli moderate such as Inna into the arms of Netanyahu, Obama has strengthened the hard-liners.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on Dana Milbank's column by clicking here.
Previously:
• 05/24/11 Pawlenty bends his truth-telling
• 05/20/11 Default deniers say it's all a hoax
• 05/18/11: Gingrich gives voice to moderation
• 05/17/11: Donald Trump and the House of Horrors
• 05/16/11: The medical mystery of Mitt Romney
• 05/12/11: The body impolitic: Schock photos should tempt lawmakers to cover up
• 05/10/11: Muskets in hand, tea party blasts House Republicans
• 05/09/11: The GOP debate: America -- and the party -- needs the grown-ups
• 05/05/11: Mitch Daniels, an alternative to scary
• 05/03/11: Obama's victory lap
• 05/02/11: How the journalist prom got out of control
• 04/28/11: Obama's birther day: Why did he lower himself by appearing in the briefing room?
• 04/27/11: Obama, lost in thought
• 04/24/11: Andrew Breitbart and the rifts on the right
• 04/22/11: Ten Commandments for 2012
• 04/21/11: Obama likes Facebook. Facebook likes Obama.
• 04/18/11: Without Nancy Pelosi, Obama is adrift
• 04/15/11: If progressives ran the world
• 04/14/11: Faith in political apostasy
• 04/13/11: One man's revolution is another's political expediency
• 04/11/11: Shutdown theatrics
• 04/06/11: Paul Ryan's irresponsible budget
• 04/05/11: Robots in Congress? Yes, we replicant!
• 04/04/11: Robert Gibbs, Facebook and the White House corporate placement service
• 04/01/11: Haley Barbour, the fat cats' candidate
• 03/31/11: Republican freshmen in House shut down compromise, and possibly the government
• 03/30/11: Coburn and Durbin, the dynamic duo of the debt crisis
• 03/28/11: The Obama doctrine: A gray area the size of Libya
• 03/24/11: Dems as Weiners
• 03/23/11: Obama's quick trip from tyrant to weakling
• 03/17/11: Who's afraid of Elizabeth Warren?
• 03/15/11: The underwear flap over Bradley Manning
• 03/10/11: In Senate's debt debate, talk isn't cheap
• 03/09/11: With Obama's new Gitmo policy, Administration officials had some 'splainin to do
• 03/02/11: Issa press aide scandal is like bad reality TV
• 02/25/11: Jay Carney: Mouthpiece for an inscrutable White House
• 02/14/11: The Donald trumps the pols at CPAC
• 02/09/11: Arianna Huffington's ideological transformation
© 2011, Washington Post Writers Group
|
