Israel to World: "Suck It."

I just want to believe that even though the liberal Israel of my youth seems to be dwindling there are still a lot of Likud types who agree with Ya'alon and don't want to make common cause with Avigdor freaking Lieberman

http://demandware.edgesuite.net/sits_pod26/dw/image/v2/AAWA_PRD/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-wilton-product-master/default/dw4c115213/images/product/2115-1405/2115-1405-lrg.jpg?sw=502&sh=502&sm=fit

gideon levy + other haaretz staff met with bibi for 4 hours. this is what levy (who if u don't know is one of bibi's staunchest domestic critics) wrote about it:

During a four-hour closed door meeting with members of the Haaretz editorial staff, Netanyahu lectured, preached and demanded. At one point someone saw tears in his eyes.

There’s an agitated man sitting in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem; a man who’s frenetic, powerful, unbending, convinced of the righteousness of his cause. A man who believes only in force. He has tendencies toward megalomania and narcissism; he is arrogant, boastful and haunted. This man is full of contradictions, as is the impression that he leaves. For better or worse, it is a strong impression.

The man has elements of a biblical or Shakespearean tragic figure, a king or a Caesar, including the dramatic elements – the wife (who isn’t mentioned,) the father’s shadow and the loss of a brother. He is motivated by ideology far more than is commonly ascribed to him, and this ideology is inflexible and extreme. It will never allow him to compromise on matters important to him.

Sitting in the Prime Minister’s Office is a man bringing a major disaster upon Israel, not because of the Zionism commonly attributed to him, but because of ideology. Personally, I prefer rigid ideologues to hollow cynics.
I can only tell you this: Two days ago, Benjamin Netanyahu hosted members of the Haaretz editorial staff for a closed conversation that lasted four hours, during which he spoke without interruption. “Spoke” is a rather restrained understatement; Netanyahu lectured, preached, demanded and overwhelmed; he showed videos, slide presentations, maps, tables, and minutes.

He scribbled a self-portrait, with an elongated nose and beads of sweat; he pounded on the table, raised his voice, lowered it, leaned forward and back in the meeting room, wrote on the board and erased. At one stage, he approached my colleague Odeh Bisharat so angrily that I feared for his safety. At another point someone saw tears in his eyes.

It was a Netanyahu performance, authentic theater, a one-man show by a character actor who so closely identifies with the figure that he plays with such talent that at least some members of the audience believed him some of the time. Perhaps he is an effective Evangelist preacher. It started with the terror tunnels; what followed regarding his economic achievements was more boring, until he got to his diplomatic beliefs. It ended with a crescendo; a final monologue about his dead brother. Curtain. The Energizer remained in his seat, alone and exhausted, naturally.

In the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem there sits a man who believes solely in the power of his country. Weakness devastates him. Morals, values and justice are not within his realm of thought. He portrays his country as a world power in weapons, cyber, water technology and whatnot, and in the same breath lists country as a world power in weapons, cyber, water technology and whatnot, and in the same breath lists the existential threats lurking (“In the air, at sea, on the ground and under it”) from the ragamuffin army in Gaza, from Hezbollah, from Iran and even from forest fires.

There’s no way to resolve this contradiction. He doesn’t believe in any peace with the Palestinians; he will defeat them with the alliances he is weaving with his new friends, the ephemeral heads of corrupt regimes in the Arab world, until they agree to the non-arrangement he proposes, which of course will never happen. The fate of the Palestinians doesn’t interest him in the least.

Netanyahu is not a warmonger – he may be the most antiwar prime minister Israel has ever had – and even the settlements don’t interest him very much, if at all. Only power – military, economic and technological. Peace won’t bring any economic benefits to Israel, he says. Like all veterans of the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit, he’s a kid who’s never grown up; his imagery is stuck back in “the unit,” with touches of MIT.

Based on the colors of his map of the world, it’s almost all in our hands. After meeting with 144 statesmen, all that’s left is a problem with Western Europe. Everyone else is on our side, or almost there (and I believe that he’s quite right.) After we left his office, he passed us on the way to his car, waving at us with a half-cigar in a defiant gesture full of self-deprecating humor.

Netanyahu is here to stay. Given the current proposed alternatives, we may even, God forbid, come to miss him.

:O

intense bit of writing, damn

yeah Gideon Levy swinging for the fences

Israel Quietly Legalizes Pirate Outposts in the West Bank

Unauthorized settlements dot hilltops in the West Bank, and
anti-settlement groups and Palestinians say retroactively
legalizing them is a methodical effort to change the region’s map.

...Today, more than 40 Orthodox Jewish families live in Mitzpe Danny, one of a string of outposts on a strategic ridge with breathtaking views southwest to Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives and east all the way to Jordan. They are part of an expansive network of about 100 outposts established mostly over the past two decades without government authorization.

At least one-third of these have either been retroactively legalized or — like Mitzpe Danny — are on their way, in what anti-settlement groups that track the process see as a quiet but methodical effort by the government to change the map of the West Bank, now in its 50th year under Israeli occupation, by entrenching the outposts that spread like fingers across it.

With the Israeli-Palestinian peace process dormant and the international community increasingly suspicious of the right-wing Israeli government’s commitment to the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state, the outposts are being seized on as evidence that the conflict may be impossible to unwind. In its July report, the so-called Quartet of Middle East peacemakers — made up of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia — listed it as a trend “imperiling the viability of the two-state solution.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in his first term when Mitzpe Danny was founded, has since endorsed the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, and said that his government would not build new settlements or expropriate land for existing ones. But Ziv Stahl, the research director at Yesh Din, one of the left-wing advocacy groups, said “they are authorizing them in disguise.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/world/middleeast/israel-west-bank-outposts-mitzpe-danny.html

ha hardcore UN trolling from Bibi today:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2016/09/bibis-speech-at-un-text-and-video.html

he and Kissinger were hangin' last night

if i'd had a rocket launcher...

you'd shove it up yr ass?

^classy fuck

I just feel like there's nobody to like in this scenario. Bibi is right that the UN has a bizarre bug up its ass about Israel. And yet he's 1000x more of a jerk about it than he has to be. Of course his base loves it. But for myself, I wish somebody, anybody, other than him were the international face of the Zionist movement. OK, not anybody. Not Ayelet Shaked. But ... ALMOST anybody.

bizarre, huh

naftali bennet? xp

god morbz the problem isn't that you disagree it's that everything you say is dumb, uninformed + uninteresting. do you really need to fill this messageboard with your landfill dumbassery in a desperate attempt to get anyone to acknowledge that you exist, even if the attention is only negative? you're like the little kid in class who keeps getting in trouble but at least the teacher is paying attention to him not like his distant distracted parents at home. you're a grown ass adult get yr shit together.

put the bong down and buy your Phillies season tickets (great game last night)

OK not Bennett either, fine.

lol i'm sure i could name a bunch of ppl who you'd prefer bibi to and that's really the problem isn't it? considering that the israeli public is fed up w/ labour and unlikely to hand over the reins to anyone on the nominal left any time soon, bibi is a pretty good option. probably lapid would be marginally better in terms of promoting the peace process but even he is likely to go acc to the will of the israeli public, which in the post-oslo, post-2nd intifada, post-gaza withdrawal world has lost its appetite for compromise. the leadership is just a reflection of the politics of the populace. they feel like bibi has done an ok job keeping them safe, has been growing the economy, is establishing new + stronger diplomatic ties throughout the world, etc. why switch over to herzog then? (not to mention that even the left is moving right on the palestinians - bc they know which way the electorate wind is blowing). the only way forward re the peace process that i see is some kind of massive peaceful protest movement from the territories, and/or some kind of very eloquent pro-peace palestinian leader. i don't see either coming v soon. (and if anything i think PLO is on its last legs as Abbas is getting old and there's no clear successor - which is to say that if things seem bad now, just wait until Hamas is in charge of everything.)

Israel continues to make itself harder to publicly support for anyone to the left of Paul Wolfowitz and you keep cheering, gl

honest leftists can't support any country so really that shouldn't be the metric for national success. this idea that israeli politics should conform to what liberal americans jews most want is insane. you'd never say something similar about politics in turkey, poland, france, the UK, russia etc. i guess it's bc we feel like we're owed something bc of military aid and close ethnic bonds. but if you keep waiting for a country to make you feel good, and you're not a right-winger, you'll be waiting a long time.

I feel owed nothing. it's israel that feels owed.

that's ridiculous. israel is a country full of ppl. you're a dude on a message board complaining that ppl on the left can't support it.

do you think there's a right-wing movement in any country in the world that keeps itself up at night worrying that the left doesn't like them? it only makes sense as an argument if you believe that the ppl you're discussing have a huge stake in being liked by you. but if they have other interests (which they do) then your feelings about their decisions don't figure particularly heavily in their political decisions. if it did they wouldn't keep reelecting bibi.

anyway, if they do eventually go full-blown authoritarian we know that'll win back all the jill steinian leftists who seem to love that fascist shit when russia does it

a country full of ppl including my wife's family, as I think you know, so I don't need to be reminded of that

do not feel owed, do feel concerned. Israel does in fact have a huge stake in being liked by people in the US and EU.

If Israel thinks it's only "Jill Stein leftists" I'd say it faces a reckoning in 10-20 years.

ppl have been prophesying this reckoning since at least 67 if not 48. i suspect it's hysteria.

BDS is only 10 years old, the south african boycott movement took about 30. Not saying it will definitely happen but I wouldn't be too smug about it either.

south african boycott movement had a lot of things going for it that BDS does not. for one, they were trying to end an apartheid system, not a military occupation. apartheid is inherently unjust. a military occupation is only unjust when it stops being necessary. as long as palestinians are stabbing jews and firing rockets from gaza they will not have the moral leverage that south africa did. nb i understand that south african resistance also included the use of terrorism but again - that was to end an unjust society, not to end an occupation - and even then it didn't take off until it had a leader with serious moral authority. maybe you're right and 20 years from now everyone will be boycotting israel. but i doubt it. i don't see it trending in that direction. if anything i think BDS is boiling off. if one day the pressure becomes too hot for israel, all they have to do is withdraw from the WB like they did in Gaza. unilaterally declare borders and keep whatever settlements they decide to. that's an option open at any time. you can't bully them into accepting all descendants of 48 + 67 refugees. it'll just never happen.

and meanwhile israeli society will become more mizrahi and more charedi and american liberal ashkenazi jews will become more and more defensive about it. but does anyone really believe that mizrahim gaf about what american jews think of them? i have yet to meet one who does.

honest leftists can't support any country

this is a weird thing to say

I fully support Costa Rica for ex.

there may be exceptions but i think among major world countries none of them live up to left-wing ethics. even once beloved scandanavian countries have turned out to have secret nativist cores.

dim view of the world you have there

how could it be otherwise? the nation state is inherently problematic. any time you're defending a nation state's interests you're going to run afoul.

there's a scale, it's not like every country in the world is militarily dominating its neighbors. there are plenty of countries that are small and relatively insignificant in the scope of world affairs and primarily concerned with minding their own business.

i think you'd be surprised. many countries you might think of as innocuous have all kinds of domestic + neighborly issues that just don't get 1% of the reporting that the israel/palestine conflict gets.

BDS is only 10 years old, the south african boycott movement took about 30. Not saying it will definitely happen but I wouldn't be too smug about it either.

― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Friday, September 23, 2016 3:58 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

especially since its such a big deal on college campuses.. at least in california. there's tons of stories out there about students in the pro-palestinian/pro-israel camp really going at it. I havent seen polling but I think the youts are way less pro-israel than they used to be.

my impression is that it's mostly a v minor cause that keeps getting blown up primarily by hysterical right-wingers who use the existence of BDS as a cudgel to attack all liberals w/

it's one of those things that is hard to gauge the actual size + impact bc both its proponents and its detractors have an interest in making it appear larger than it is. in terms of real world consequences though i'm not convinced it has had, or will begin to have a material impact on Israel. it may have an impact on American Jewish college students who feel battered and politically marginalized, which is definitely unfortunate but it's unclear how hurting American Jews will force Bibi to withdraw from the WB.

"a military occupation is only unjust when it stops being necessary"

this isn't wrong exactly but tbh every occupying power thinks their occupation is "necessary"

i agree but it's much easier to make the case - or at least make it controversial enough that it can't be settled unanimously - when hostilities are still ongoing

‏@PageSix
Benjamin Netanyahu was booed by the audience at "Hamilton"

@DougHenwood
Best thing I ever heard about “Hamilton"

This week, with its fresh new $38 billion commitment in hand, the Israeli government announced the approval of an all new settlement in the West Bank, one that is particularly hostile to ostensible U.S. policy, the international consensus, and any prospects for an end to occupation. The new settlement, “one of a string of housing complexes that threaten to bisect the West Bank,” as the New York Times put it this morning, “is designed to house settlers from a nearby illegal outpost, Amona, which an Israeli court has ordered demolished.” This new settlement extends far into the West Bank: closer to Jordan, in fact, than to Israel.

In response to this announcement, the U.S. State Department yesterday issued an unusually harsh denunciation of Israel’s actions. “We strongly condemn the Israeli government’s recent decision to advance a plan that would create a significant new settlement deep in the West Bank,” it began. It suggested Netanyahu has been publicly lying, noting that the “approval contradicts previous public statements by the government of Israel that it had no intention of creating new settlements.” The State Department invoked the aid package the U.S. just lavished to describe it as “deeply troubling, in the wake of Israel and the U.S. concluding an unprecedented agreement on military assistance designed to further strengthen Israel’s security, that Israel would take a decision so contrary to its long-term security interest in a peaceful resolution of its conflict with the Palestinians.”

Much of that, while a bit more rhetorically clear than usual, is par for the course: The U.S. — in vintage Obama fashion — issues pretty, pleasing statements claiming to be upset at Israel’s settlements while taking continuous actions to protect and enable the very policies Obama pretends to oppose. But the State Department denunciation yesterday was actually notable for what amounts to its stark and explicit acknowledgement — long overdue — that Israel is clearly and irreversibly committed to ruling over the Palestinians in perpetuity, becoming the exact “apartheid” state about which (Ehud) Barak warned....

So Israel — in the words of its most loyal benefactor — is moving inexorably “towards cementing a one-state reality of perpetual occupation” that is anti-democratic: i.e., the equivalent of apartheid. And the leading protector and enabler of this apartheid regime is the U.S. — just as was true of the apartheid regime of the 1980s in South Africa....

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/06/u-s-admits-israel-is-building-permanent-apartheid-regime-weeks-after-giving-it-38-billion/

https://twitter.com/IAFsite/status/791565335619104768?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

mondoweiss commenters surprisingly upbeat + optimistic about president trump - now they share something in common w/ hardcore right-wing zionists /and/ white supremacists

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/united-nations/united-nations-schizophrenia-on-israel/

looks like i'm going to israel again this summer (third visit)

where will you be? my parents visited friends in tekoa a few weeks ago

haifa (visiting baha'i holy sites)

might visit a friend in tel aviv, but we're not really supposed to tourist around

akka too

might get in a side trip to bethlehem also