Bibi gets bollocked

[David Guyatt]

What sort of Obama guy would say this, I wonder, when Obama appears to have a concluded deal with Iran and all is now peace?

Benjamin Netanyahu is 'a chickens**t prime minister' and 'coward', says US official



The comments were made in the light of Israel having refused to strike Iran

LAMIAT SABIN

Wednesday 29 October 2014

Benjamin Netanyahu has been branded a "chickenshit prime minister" and "coward" by a senior official in the Obama administration.
[B][B]
The official, who has not been identified, reportedly said that the Israeli leader had "no guts" and was too scared to launch wars, suggesting that he would not launch a pre-emptive strike on Iran in order to help prevent Tehran from building a stockpile of nuclear weapons.[/B][/B]
[B][B]The claims, which were made during an interview with The Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, reflect a significant deterioration in US-Israel relationships amid Mr Netanyahu's controversial plans to construct Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank and the highly-disputed territory of East Jerusalem, which the Obama administration believe have undermined Secretary of State John Kerry's peace process.[/B][/B]

[B][B]The US official continued to say that Netanyahu has dodged responsibility to strike deals with the Sunni Arab countries and Palestinians, with which the most war to date ended after 50 days in August with 2,100 Palestinian and 73 Israeli deaths.[/B][/B]
[B][B]He said: "The only thing he's interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He's not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he's not [Ariel] Sharon, he's certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He's got no guts."[/B][/B]
[B][B]In response, the Israeli prime minister's office said: "Netanyahu will continue to uphold the security interests of Israel and the historical rights of the Jewish people in Jerusalem, and no amount of pressure will change that."[/B][/B]
[B][B]Palestinian children look out of destroyed buildings in al-Tufah, east of Gaza[/B][/B]
[B][B]Another senior US official told Mr Goldberg that the White House has not believed since 2012 that Netanyahu will launch a preemptive strike on Iran and that an attack now would be "too late". "The feeling now is that Bibi's bluffing," he reportedly said.[/B][/B]
[B][B]"He's not Begin at Osirak" referring to the then-Israeli prime minister's bombing of an Iranian nuclear reactor during Saddam Hussein's reign in 1981. [/B][/B]

[B][B]The Obama administration will no longer defend Israel at international organisations ahead of the Palestinian move toward statehood at the United Nation and the midterm Congressional elections on November 4, Goldberg reported.[/B][/B]
[B][B]He added that even if Washington vetoes a settlement resolution put forward by Palestinians, the situation would be brought to a vote, but Israel would remain isolated by international officials.[/B][/B]
[B][B]Netanyahu last month claimed that Iran is a bigger threat to the world than Isis and Hamas, which he believes are "branches of the same poisonous tree" and that they are as dangerous as the Nazis.[/B][/B]

[David Guyatt]

From Consortium News

Israel Tests the Bounds of Its US Clout

October 30, 2014

Israeli resistance to deals on Palestinian peace and Iran's nuclear program has strained U.S.-Israeli relations and will test if Congress is more loyal to Prime Minister Netanyahu or President Obama. But the tension underscores a deeper division between the two countries, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
By Paul R. Pillar
A piece by Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, bearing the title "The Crisis in U.S.-Israeli Relations is Officially Here," has performed a useful service in at least two respects. One is that Goldberg's piece highlights how friction in the U.S.-Israeli relationship is primarily an epiphenomenon of an Israeli policy trajectory that is detrimental to Israel itself no matter what U.S. officials may or may not say about the policies, publicly or privately and not only detrimental to others.
In commenting, for example, on the latest insertion of right-wing Jewish settlers into Arab areas of East Jerusalem which many Palestinians unsurprisingly see as another step in de-Palestinianizing East Jerusalem so much that it could not become capital of a Palestinian state Goldberg writes, "It is the Netanyahu government that appears to be disconnected from reality. Jerusalem is on the verge of exploding into a third Palestinian uprising."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations in 2012, drawing his own "red line" on how far he will let Iran go in refining nuclear fuel.

He's right about the potential for a new intifada, one that could emerge spontaneously from bottled-up frustration and anger and would not need to be ordered or directed by anyone.
Another service by Goldberg is to portray the relationship far more realistically than one would conclude from the boilerplate that both governments routinely serve up about supposedly unshakeable ties between close, bosom-buddy allies. The fact is that the interests that this Israeli government pursues (not to be confused with fundamental, long-term interests of Israel and Israelis generally) are in sharp and substantial conflict with U.S. interests. No amount of pablum from official spokespersons can hide that fact.
For both these reasons, Goldberg's article deserves a wide readership.
The most recent expressions that reflect the true nature of the relationship are not just a matter of unnamed U.S. officials mouthing off. Goldberg notes in the third sentence of his piece that the comments he is reporting are "representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli[emphasis added] officials now talk about each other behind closed doors."
So the barbed tongues extend in both directions, but with two differences. One is that in this relationship the United States is the giver (of many billions in aid, and much political cover in international organizations) and Israel is the taker; harsh comments are far harder to justify when they are directed by an ungrateful beneficiary to its patron rather than the other way around.
The other difference is that Israeli leaders insult the United States not just through anonymous comments to journalists but also publicly and openly; the current Israeli defense minister is one of the more recent and blatant practitioners of this.
One can legitimately question some of the particular accusations by the U.S. officials that Goldberg reports, not to mention the scatological and indecorous terminology employed. But to concentrate on this is to overlook the larger and far more important contours of the relationship. The most fundamental truth about the relationship is that, notwithstanding routine references to Israel as an "ally," it is not an ally of the United States beyond being the recipient of all that U.S. material and political largesse.
An ally is someone who offers something comparably significant and useful in return, particularly on security matters. That this is not true of Israel's relationship with the United States is underscored by the priority that the United States has placed, during some of its own past conflicts in the Middle East such as Operation Desert Storm, on Israel not getting involved because such involvement would be a liability, not an asset.
The core policy around which much of this Israeli government's other behavior revolves, and which defines Israel in the eyes of much of the rest of the world, is the unending occupation of conquered territory under a practice of Israel never defining its own borders and thus never permitting political rights to Palestinians under either a two-state or a one-state formula. This policy is directly contrary to U.S. interests in multiple respects, not least in that the United States through its close association with Israel shares in the resulting widespread antagonism and opprobrium.
One of the biggest and most recent U.S. foreign policy endeavors is the negotiation of an agreement to restrict and monitor Iran's nuclear program to ensure it stays peaceful. Completion of an agreement would be a major accomplishment in the interest of nonproliferation and regional stability. The Israeli "ally" has been doing everything it can to sabotage the negotiations and prevent an agreement.
It is a fallacy to think that making nice to the Israeli government will get it to back off from its opposition. It is a fallacy because that government has shown it does not want any agreement with Iran no matter what the terms, and because it is dishonest in expressing its opposition.
There certainly is genuine concern in Israel about the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon, but that is clearly not what is behind the Israeli government's opposition because the sort of agreement that is shaping up would make it markedly less likely, in terms of both Iranian motivations and capabilities, for Iran ever to make a nuclear weapon than would be the case with no agreement. That's the very purpose of the agreement.
The Israeli government instead seeks to keep Iran permanently in diplomatic exile, precluding any cooperation between Iran and the United States on other issues (which would dilute Israel's claim to being the only worthwhile U.S. partner in the Middle East) and retaining the specter of Iran and a nuclear threat from it as the "real problem" in the Middle East supposedly more worthy of international attention than the occupation and unresolved plight of the Palestinians.
These objectives, as well as the setback for the cause of nonproliferation that collapse of an agreement with Iran would entail, also are directly contrary to U.S. interests.
The best way to handle the implacable opposition to an Iranian deal from Netanyahu who, according to Goldberg's reporting, has "written off" the Obama administration is to write off Netanyahu and any hope that he could be brought around on the subject. Needed instead is to expose to Israelis, as well as to members of Congress and other Americans the fundamental dishonesty of Netanyahu's opposition.
Maybe a useful step in doing that would be to bring back Netanyahu's cartoon bomb that he displayed at the United Nations General Assembly and point out how the preliminary agreement reached with Iran last year (and which the Israeli prime minister consistently denounced) has already drained the bomb and moved the Iranian program back from the lines that the Israeli prime minister drew with his red marker.
Calling Netanyahu to account certainly is not a sufficient condition to achieve political change in Israel, with its ever steeper rightward tilt, but it is probably a necessary condition. The state of the relationship with the United States is highly salient and highly important to many Israelis, but it will not be a driver of political change as long as it remains masked by all that boilerplate about how great the "alliance" is.
There are a couple of problems with the title of Goldberg's piece (which is probably the doing of an editor, not Goldberg). One is that there isn't "officially" a crisis. The fact that official statements continue to talk about a supposedly rosy relationship is part of what is, as explained above, wrong.
The other problem is that in this context the word crisis is a misnomer. The term usually indicates a potential for a big turn for the worse, especially the outbreak of a war between whatever two parties are experiencing a crisis. That's not what's involved here.
The only reason the term crisis comes up regarding U.S.-Israeli relations is the fictional, deliberately inflated view of the relationship as something qualitatively different that ought to defy any of the usual rules that apply to any patron and client or to any bilateral relationship. Sweep aside the politically-driven fiction about two countries that supposedly have everything in common and nothing in conflict and instead deal with reality, and the concept of crisis does not arise at all.
What you have instead is a bilateral relationship that is like many others the United States has, with some parallel interests and objectives along with other objectives that diverge sometimes sharply and with honest recognition of the latter being a normal part of business. Being honest and realistic is good for U.S. interests, and in this case it would be good for the long-term interests of Israel as well.

[Peter Lemkin]

I'm not sure about chickenshit, but Fascist would fit just fine for him.

[Anthony Thorne]

[size=12]Another warning to Obama. There's been a few of these lately it seems.

.............

The Chickenshit Lobby Is Mad As Hell[/SIZE]
but just how mad are they?

(Justin Raimondo, AntiWar, October 31st 2014)

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/...d-as-hell/

Israel, Israel, Israel, Israel can we ever escape the endless kvetching of its partisans? In the media, in both houses of Congress, on the campuses and in the streets, Israel's fifth column in America is everywhere, making its presence felt. From Chuck Hagel's confirmation battle to the public relations campaign accompanying their latest Gaza massacre, the Jewish state's on-the-ground army of American flacks, publicists, and fanatic rank-and-filers mobilizes the moment someone looks cross-eyed at Bibi Netanyahu and the Chickenshit scandal has them screaming to high heaven.

The scandal was created, unsurprisingly, by Israel's semi-official flack-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, a former Israeli prison guard turned journalist, whose pronouncements carry the authority of someone with impeccable connections in both Tel Aviv and Washington. Writing in The Atlantic, he reports:

"The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. The thing about Bibi is, he's a chickenshit' this official said …

Goldberg has a carefully cultivated image as a moderate-to-liberal Obama sympathizer, and he goes into his familiar riff about how the rapidly fraying US-Israeli relationship is largely a function of Bibi's truculence. Yet it's clear Goldberg who surely knew what the response to his reporting would be, even inside the President'sown party is appalled by this display of candor:

"'The good thing about Netanyahu is that he's scared to launch wars,' the official said, expanding the definition of what a chickenshit Israeli prime minister looks like. The bad thing about him is that he won't do anything to reach an accommodation with the Palestinians or with the Sunni Arab states. The only thing he's interested in is protecting himself from political defeat. He's not [Yitzhak] Rabin, he's not [Ariel] Sharon, he's certainly no [Menachem] Begin. He's got no guts.'"

The Lebanese and Gazans might quibble with the notion that Bibi's "scared to launch wars," but then again those weren't wars, they were massacres. And why should Bibi fight anyone who can possibly fight back when he has the United States to do his dirty work for him?

Goldberg's assessment of the rupture is that "The fault for this breakdown in relations can be assigned in good part to the junior partner in the relationship, Netanyahu" but perhaps Bibi doesn't recognize his junior status because that isn't the way it worked during most of the Bush years.

Obama is apparently much less willing than his predecessor to sacrifice American lives while Bibi directs the action from behind the scenes. The President's initial reluctance to get more deeply involved in Syria, not to mention his eagerness to get the heck out of Iraq ASAP, had Tel Aviv and its American amen corner fuming. On the other side of the equation, the dramatic escalation of Israel's "settlement"-building campaign has at least some in the Obama administration infused with a "red-hot anger," as Goldberg reports the phrase used by one Obama administration official, possibly the same one cited here:

"I ran this notion by another senior official who deals with the Israel file regularly. This official agreed that Netanyahu is a chickenshit' on matters related to the comatose peace process, but added that he's also a coward' on the issue of Iran's nuclear threat. The official said the Obama administration no longer believes that Netanyahu would launch a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in order to keep the regime in Tehran from building an atomic arsenal. It's too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it's too late.'"

The reality is that there was never any possibility of an Israeli strike, as I pointed out in 2011, when speculation was at an all-time high:

"The problem with this alleged plan is that Israel doesn't have the military capacity to do the job and do it well: Iran's nuclear facilities are enclosed within hardened sites, and are spread out to such a degree that Israeli war planes would have trouble reaching them. While the Israelis have recently tested a long-range missile that has the capacity to hit Iranian targets, the idea that they could take out all the intended targets in one fell swoop is simply a fantasy. Therefore, this alleged "debate" taking place within the Israeli leadership, complete with a phony "investigation" by Netanyahu into who leaked the nonexistent Israeli attack plan,' is a non-event. The whole thing, in short, is a bluff.

"But who is being bluffed here? Not the Iranians, who are surely aware of Israel's incapacity. The volume of the war hysteria is being turned up with one purpose in mind: the Israelis want the US to do their dirty work for them. This is a threat aimed not only or even primarily at Iran, but at us."

The Obama administration is well-aware of Israel's technical incapacity, as is Goldberg's source: so what, exactly, is the purpose of this manufactured controversy?

The Israelis are hoping a propaganda campaign in the US will subvert the administration's plans to reach a deal with Iran. As Goldberg reports;
"Netanyahu has told several people I've spoken to in recent days that he has written off' the Obama administration, and plans to speak directly to Congress and to the American people should an Iran nuclear deal be reached."

Goldberg's contribution to this whiny narrative "Israel has been thrown under the bus!" is pretty clear, but then again none of this is surprising. After all, what is Goldberg doing in America aside from acting as a kind of semiofficial (albeit ostensibly self-critical) Voice of Israel in the US media?

What's surprising is how Netanyahu, in a speech to the Knesset, took the opportunity to answer his critics in the Obama administration: "Netanyahu angrily insisted he was under attack simply for defending Israel,' adding that he cherished' Israel's relationship with the US."

The famously combative Israeli Prime Minister went on to say:

"When there are pressures on Israel to concede its security, the easiest thing to do is to concede. You get a round of applause, ceremonies on grassy knolls, and then come the missiles and the tunnels."

Bibi, who spent many years in the United States, is surely cognizant of what his "grassy knoll" reference connotes. You can argue it was just an infelicitous phrase, or that Bibi was referring to himself, not Obama. Maybe so. But what if, say, an Iranian official, even a low-ranking one, had said such a thing? The uproar would be deafening. And so the question must be asked: was Bibi threatening the President of the United States?

If we take seriously Goldberg's depiction of the poisoned relationship between Bibi and Obama, the possibility can't be completely dismissed.

The Chickenshit Lobby, otherwise known as Israel's amen corner in the US, is mad as hell but just how mad are they? I don't know the answer to that question, but as the prospect of a peace agreement with Iran looms larger, those whose job it is to protect the President need to take this potential threat seriously. As we've seen recently, the White House isn't exactly an impregnable fortress. In the meantime, it's time to start reevaluating the "special relationship" in light of an Israeli leader who talks about the "grassy knoll" while denouncing an American president.

[R.K. Locke]

http://mondoweiss.net/2014/10/netanyahus...hickenshit


Why did Netanyahu respond to chickenshit with grassy knoll' remark?
Israel/Palestine
Annie Robbins on October 31, 2014 47 Comments

PM shoots down President (Graphic by @NewryForGaza) PM shoots down President (Graphic by @NewryForGaza)


Wading through all the chickensh*t over the last few days Netanyahu's "grassy knoll" comeback somehow missed out on all the action, but what the hoot guys? Where I come from that terminology only means one thing, as far as I know, that applies to the lexicon anywhere in America, if not the world. Hey, even Google agrees with me. And what are the chances Netanyahu and/or his speechwriters don't know this? Nada. Impossible.

Why would Netanyahu make a reference to one of the most alarming chapters in American history, the assassination of a beloved American president? And for many, an assassination still shrouded in mystery and deceit? I just thought it was very weird. Where is our press?

Winding down after scrutinizing, dissecting and eviscerating Goldberg's now infamous Chickensh*t article, Justin Raimondo, in The Chickenshit Lobby Is Mad As Hell but just how mad are they? makes the argument had a leader of Iran slipped "grassy knoll" into a message to an American president the press would have gone bonkers. I agree.


What's surprising is how Netanyahu, in a speech to the Knesset, took the opportunity to answer his critics in the Obama administration: "Netanyahu angrily insisted he was under attack simply for defending Israel,' adding that he cherished' Israel's relationship with the US."

The famously combative Israeli Prime Minister went on to say:

"When there are pressures on Israel to concede its security, the easiest thing to do is to concede. You get a round of applause, ceremonies on grassy knolls, and then come the missiles and the tunnels."

Bibi, who spent many years in the United States, is surely cognizant of what his "grassy knoll" reference connotes. You can argue it was just an infelicitous phrase, or that Bibi was referring to himself, not Obama. Maybe so. But what if, say, an Iranian official, even a low-ranking one, had said such a thing? The uproar would be deafening. And so the question must be asked: was Bibi threatening the President of the United States?

If we take seriously Goldberg's depiction of the poisoned relationship between Bibi and Obama, the possibility can't be completely dismissed.



Do you think anyone at the White House noticed Netanyahu's phraseology? Me too. So why the silence from the press? Grassy knoll, it only means one thing here in America:

Screehshot of Google "grassy knoll"
It only means one thing. Screehshot of Google "grassy knoll"

Netanyahu is widely faulted for helping to incite Rabin assassination, marching in a rally where guys were holding up a coffin for Rabin.

[R.K. Locke]

And this just in...

http://news.yahoo.com/outrage-over-israe...12840.html



Israeli newspaper's political cartoon sparks outrage over 9/11 imagery

By Ed Hornick
October 30, 2014 7:06 PM

Yahoo News

A cartoon appearing in an Israeli newspaper is under fire. (Haaretz.com)

An editorial cartoon in Israel's Haaretz newspaper is drawing criticism for using Sept. 11 imagery to depict U.S.-Israel relations under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In it, a character resembling Netanyahu is seen flying a small plane into a building that resembles a World Trade Center tower. An American flag flies atop the skyscraper.

The cartoon, which appeared Thursday, comes after the Israeli leader was reportedly criticized by an Obama administration official as being a "chickensh--."

The paper, and its political cartoonist Amos Biderman, faced widespread criticism on Twitter.


Are you kidding, @Haaretz? An anti-Semitic cartoon in the pages of an Israeli paper. Yeesh. http://t.co/8Rr538Nb4e pic.twitter.com/fepqF5LFBR
Jake Wallis Simons (@JakeWSimons) October 30, 2014
Biderman defended his work in a tweet: "The message is that Bibi is arrogantly and wantonly destroying Israel's ties with the U.S. and leading us to a disaster on the scale of 9/11."

Biderman later told Haaretz that he "wasn't sufficiently aware of the great sensitivity that 9/11 holds for Americans."

The cartoon, he added, was a criticism of the controversial right-leaning politician.

"I was mocking Bibi," he said. "He's been acting like a bull in a china shop with the United States, which is Israel's most important strategic asset."