Netanyahu on Obama ties: Under the bus? What bus?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to take the bait on Sunday when asked if he agreed with Republican presidential candidates that President Barack Obama is not pro-Israel enough.
He was asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s recent comment that the Democratic president “threw Israel under the bus.”
“You are trying to throw me under the bus of American politics and, guess what, I’m not going to be thrown there,” Netanyahu joked.
The Israeli leader has had a strained relationship with Obama and in May criticized his vision of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders as leaving Israel “indefensible.”
Some of the Republicans hoping to challenge Obama in the November 2012 election, including front-runners Romney and Texas Governor Rick Perry, have pounced on the issue and raced to proclaim their allegiance to the Jewish state.
Netanyahu, who called Obama’s speech on the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations last week a “badge of honor,” did not cede an inch to partisanship.
“I think the important thing to understand is this and this is the truth about America: Israel enjoys tremendous bipartisan support, tremendous,” he said. “And I think that bipartisan support is expressed by any person who happens to the president of the United States, including President Obama.”
Mideast peace veterans and handshake diplomacy
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly referred to them as “veterans” of the Middle East peace process.
That description is probably one thing everyone can agree on. The process to bring Israelis and Palestinians to a lasting peace agreement has been going on for decades and every U.S. president hopes he’s the one who will finally achieve what those before him tried and failed.
President Barack Obama is the latest to take up the baton. He’s already won the Nobel Peace Prize, but will he be The One to triumph on Middle East Peace?
“We are under no illusions,” Obama said on Wednesday when he met with leaders ahead of today’s talks. “Passions run deep. Each side has legitimate and enduring interests. Years of mistrust will not disappear overnight.”
That last sentence is another thing that probably everyone can agree on.
But if the Israeli-Palestinian leaders’ handshakes over the years are any kind of indicator, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope.
Seventeen years ago in September 1993, President Bill Clinton practically forced Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to shake hands at the White House while observers held their collective breath wondering will they or won’t they?
Washington Extra -The audacity of hope?
If rescuing the U.S. economy from the Slough of Despond wasn’t enough, President Barack Obama took a stab at finding peace in the Middle East today. Obama is determined to forge a new relationship with the Muslim world, and presumably would like to unquestionably earn the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded last year. But getting embroiled in the Middle East is a risk for the president, not least because failure to reach an accord could set back his efforts to win over Muslims and achieve solidarity over Iran. Ordinary Israelis and Palestinians are not optimistic about this latest peace effort, and experts say the one-year deadline to reach a deal does not appear very realistic. Nevertheless, it is hard to argue with Obama’s opening remarks today, and his hope that “extremists and rejectionists” should not be allowed to derail the peace process.
It is often interesting when high-ranking officials leave office and get the chance to unburden themselves. White House economist Christina Romer was no exception today, issuing an impassioned plea for more economic stimulus measures, even if they push up the fiscal deficit in the short term. “The only sure-fire ways for policymakers to substantially increase aggregate demand in the short run are for the government to spend more and tax less. In my view we should be moving forward on both fronts,” she said in a speech at the National Press Club. “I desperately hope that policymakers on both sides of the aisle will find a way to finish the job of economic recovery,” she added. WashingtonExtra won’t be holding its metaphorical breath.
Finally today, another win by a Tea Party favorite in Alaska this week underlines that the movement is not just a passing fad, and has the staying power to be a significant factor in November’s Congressional elections. What’s more, Democratic hopes that radical Tea Party candidates will alienate moderate voters and energize Democrats are not being realized. In fact, Tea Party favorites are already ahead of Democratic rivals in the opinion polls in Colorado, Kentucky and Florida, and only slightly behind in Nevada.
Here are our top stories from today…
Obama opens Mideast peace summit, says U.S. resolute
President Barack Obama vowed that “extremists and rejectionists” would not derail the relaunch of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations as he opened a peace summit shadowed by Middle East violence. Wading into Middle East diplomacy in the face of deep skepticism over his chances for securing an elusive peace deal, Obama condemned as “senseless slaughter” a Hamas attack on Tuesday that killed four Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Of diplomacy and baseball…
Timing is everything in diplomacy and baseball.
After months of prickly talks aimed at coaxing Israelis and Palestinians into direct peace talks, U.S. envoy George Mitchell finally had news to share. But when the U.S. mediator par excellence took the stage for questions Friday at the State Department, reporters tossed him one out of left field.
“As tempted as I am to ask you about Roger Clemens…,” his first questioner began, to chortles from reporters and State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley.
Mitchell, of course, between peacemaking stints in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, took a stab back in 2007 at resolving the conflict between Congress and Major League Baseball over the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
Clemens, one of the best pitchers in baseball history, was named in Mitchell’s report as having taken drugs, but he denied it in testimony before Congress.
The seven-time Cy Young Award winner was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of Congress. He faces a $1.5 million fine and up to 30 years in prison.
So it was tantalizing to wonder what the former Maine judge and senator might have to say about Clemens.
U.S. lawmakers wonder, where did our love go? with Turkey
It almost sounded as if U.S. lawmakers felt jilted by Washington’s long-time NATO ally Turkey.
“How do we get Turkey back?” demanded Representative Gary Ackerman at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing exploring “Turkey’s New Foreign Policy Direction.”
“Why is Turkish public opinion … perhaps one of the most anti-American of any of the countries of the world?” asked the committee’s chairman, Representative Howard Berman.
With a panel of experts on Turkey listening, Berman and other lawmakers listed their worries about recent Turkish policy turns on Iran, Israel and the Palestinians.
Concerns about Turkey had hit a new peak with its support of an aid convoy of ships that tried to run the Israeli blockade of the Gaza strip this summer, Berman said.
Turkey’s contacts with the Islamist group Hamas — which won the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election — are “deeply offensive,” Berman continued, and show Turkey doesn’t respect Washington’s list of foreign terrorist organizations (Hamas is on it).
And Turkey effectively dissed the United States again this week when its finance minister said it would boost trade with Iran, while ignoring non-United Nations sanctions, said Berman, the author of recent tough new unilateral U.S. sanctions on Tehran.
Where is berman getting his info? Israel created the rift between turkey & zion state; turkey aware of israels terrorism and they need to acknowledge Hamas as representative of the Palestinians; israel can’t go around picking who THEY like to represent Palestine. Israel is a terrorist apartheid state=RACISM usa gives billions to israel as they ethnically cleanse palestinians.Iran & the whole region need to protect themselves against Israel!-Crimes in internatl.waters, massive murders of Turkish citizens, trying to help Palestine!
No “no” is final, U.S. mideast peace envoy says
President Barack Obama’s mideast peace envoy George Mitchell is an unlikely optimist.
Ten months into an assignment that has confounded generations of U.S. diplomats, Mitchell said on Wednesday he remained upbeat about bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to peace talks — thanks in part to his experience resolving another once-intractable crisis, the dispute between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland.
Mitchell, credited with shaping the 1998 Good Friday Accord that ended that long and bloody conflict, said the key was not to lose heart.
“Over a period of five years, I chaired three separate sets of discussions. The main negotiation lasted for nearly two years. For most of that time, there was little or no progress, and our effort was branded a failure,” Mitchell told a news briefing.
“But then, after two years of saying no, both sides said yes. In a real sense, we had 700 days of failure and one day of success.”
Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader, has thus far had little success in shuttle diplomacy aimed at resuming stalled Mideast peace talks, which have seen the two sides still bitterly divided over the issue of Israeli settlement construction on Palestinian lands.
You have to give the man credit for trying. I still think there will never be a solution unless there is a clear winner. He then sets the rules and life can go on.
Obama brings out the “American” in Nobel laureate
Nobel peace laureate Martti Ahtisaari is a former Finnish president but, after looking at President Barack Obama’s speech in Turkey, he said: “I nearly felt it’s good to be an American.”
Speaking after lunch at the National Press Club in Washington, the 71-year-old winner of the 2008 prize was asked on Tuesday to assess the U.S. leader’s call for peace and dialogue with Islam.
“I must say that I’m proud as a transatlanticist and democrat to see that sort of speech is made,” he told reporters.
Ahtisaari, the president of Finland from 1994 to 2000, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for helping to bring peace to places as far-flung as Kosovo, Namibia and Indonesia’s Aceh province.
Interviewed by Arshad Mohammed of Reuters on Monday, he said Hamas must be allowed into talks on ending the conflict with Israel and it was both dangerous and pointless to exclude the Palestinian militant group.
He said Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which holds sway in the West Bank, “have to get their act together and form a united front” to end their power struggle.
Ahtisaari said it would be foolish to rule out peace talks under new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recalling it was Richard Nixon who as U.S. president in 1972 broke with a U.S. policy of isolating China by visiting Beijing.
Of course Obama is still tops with under-graduates, Michael Jackson fans etc but in Turkey for whatever reason he encouraged the Islamist government (veiled wives, “the minarets will be our bayonets”) there which is rapidly eroding the secular constitution. The Turkish Prime Minister had previously objected to the ex-Danish Prime Minister becoming the Head of NATO because he adhered to free speech and not put the Mohammed cartoonist in prison.
This after becoming the first American president ever, to bow, bow deeply, before a foreign president or king, and amazingly the recipient of this bow, was the Islamic desert despot, the King of Saudi Arabia.
But as a European,what I found deeply offensive, was his interference in European affairs, his trying to push Turkey into the EU which Europeans do not want. The Turks are Asian Muslims, so why should they be in the EU?
The First Draft: Tuesday, Jan. 6
On a dark and drippy Washington morning, President-elect Barack Obama meets with his economic advisers to discuss the 2010 budget.
At the White House, President George W. Bush will create the biggest protected marine area on the planet, a trio of national monuments in the Pacific.
The new U.S. Congress convenes today, with clouds hanging over two Democrats: Roland Burris of Illinois and Al Franken of Minnesota.
Burris arrived in the Washington area Monday, vowing to take Obama’s vacant Senate seat. But because he was appointed by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Senate Democrats have said they plan to keep Burris out, at least for now — though a compromise is possible. Blagojevich has been charged with having earlier tried to sell Obama’s seat.
Franken, a former stand-up comic and comedy writer, was declared the winner in a Senate contest against Republican Norm Coleman after a recount showed Franken with a 225-vote majority. Coleman has promised a court challenge of those results.
Hamas unendorses Obama after speech to pro-Israel lobby
WASHINGTON – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may have taken care of his Hamas problem on Wednesday with a speech to the AIPAC pro-Israel lobby. The Illinois senator was ridiculed, criticized and generally harassed back in April when a top Hamas adviser, Ahmed Yousef, told a radio interviewer that the Palestinian militant group — considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government — liked Obama and hoped he would win the U.S. presidential election.
Yousef’s remarks were labeled a Hamas endorsement and Republican John McCain used them as part of a fundraising appeal to supporters. Obama’s denunciations of Hamas and criticism of McCain over the incident did little to undo the damage. That may have changed Wednesday, when Obama went before American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington a day after clinching the Democratic nomination and declared his strong support for Israel. Israel’s security is sacrosanct and it must retain a qualitative military advantage, Obama said. Any peace deal must include Palestinian recognition that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s undivided capital, he said. Hamas promply unendorsed Obama, a Christian who has had difficulty dispelling a rumor campaign suggesting he is a Muslim and that his advisers have a pro-Arab bent. “Obama’s comments have confirmed that there will be no change in the U.S. administration’s foreign policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters in Gaza. “The Democratic and Republican parties support totally the Israeli occupation at the expense of the interests and rights of Arabs and Palestinians,” he said. “Hamas does not differentiate between the two presidential candidates, Obama and McCain, because their policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict are the same and are hostile to us, therefore we do have no preference and are not wishing for either of them to win,” Zuhri said.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.
Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Obama speaks at AIPAC conference)
No ‘Siege’ of Gaza
•A Siege is an act of surrounding and attacking in order to cut off supply and aid.
•Israel is neither surrounding nor attacking Gaza, nor has Israel cut off supplies or aid.
•Israel has withdrawn from Gaza to promote peace, whilst facing a constant barrage of rocket attacks perpetrated by Hamas.
•Israel maintains a constant flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza to relieve the suffering of Palestinians under the Hamas regime, whilst admitting thousands of sick Palestinians into Israel for medical treatment in Israeli hospitals.
Hospital Access Facts: (Source COGAT, Israel’s Unit for Coordination of Government Activities in Territories)
o 2006 4,754 hospital entry permits given to Palestinians from Gaza into Israel
o 2007 7,226 hospital entry permits given
o 2008 2,317 hospital permits given in Jan to Feb alone.
•All permits include one family member
•Palestinians receive world class treatment in major Israeli hospitals.
•No distinction made by doctors between Palestinian and Israeli patients
•Hamas members are treated in Israeli hospitals regardless of their previous actions
•Barzilai hospital treated Gazan Palestinians whilst the hospital was under rocket attack.
•From Jan 2007 to Feb 2008, 14,297 Palestinians were treated in Israeli hospitals
•During the same period Israel suffered 1,110 rocket attacks and 1,384 mortar attacks.
•These attacks have a devastating effect on the 200,000 residents of Israeli towns near Gaza
Conclusion
The term ‘siege’ when applied to Israel’s policy towards Gaza is a fallacy. The Israeli Government continues to uphold its ethical commitment to providing medical care for Palestinians living under Hamas control, even whilst local Israeli towns suffer Gazan rocket attacks. This shows Israel’s high level of commitment to provision of hospital access to civilians in Gaza regardless of the constant attacks on Israeli population centers.
What else could Bibi say? There are 18 months during which Obama could do enough damage to put Israel into misery! He remembers how Clinton unseated him with the Limosine Socialist Barak, a failed Prime Minister, only to experience a replay with the Soros funded NIF and the newly purchased tents, this time a “social protest movement”, designed by the same Clinton operatives to finish him off. Bibi is a survivor, betting on Obama’s presidency disintegrating. he does not have to say a thing, Obama has switched the suicide button before he became president-he is not up to it. Time will prove me right.