Tag Archives: Netanyahu

Netanyahu and Biden and the Symbiotic Relationship…..

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The media, in the US and Israel, and in the Middle East have been speculating about the cold ties between Joe Biden and Israeli PM Netanyahu. Speculation about when Joe will call Bibi. The Israeli PM is known for famously and deliberately disrespecting Democratic American officials, even before Trump. From Obama to Hillary Clinton to John Kerry. He delayed his traditional congratulatory message to Biden longer than any other world leader, then accompanied it with a message praising Donald Trump. Unusual. He knew that would not affect the overall Israeli stand in the USA. And he is right.

Fact is, Israeli-American ties have deepened over the decades, and on the American side they transcend party affiliation. It is different for the ruling Likud. It has deep symbiotic ties with the US Republican Party, rooted in a shared right-wing ideology and boosted by the American Evangelicals concentrated in the deeply Red States. To some extent one Party is is almost an extension, a branch of the other. Bibi Netanyahu is probably more influential in the GOP than any Bush ever was or can be. A friend of a friend of a friend once told me that “Bibi may be able to win a Republican primary against almost any GOP candidate whose name is not Trump“. Maybe he didn’t really believe that. Maybe.

So, this cooling of the relationship is just a partisan thing. Netanyahu can still be PM four years from now. He will no doubt root for the Republican candidate, whoever he is.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Bibi and Donald and Adele and Forcible Dates: Is the Thrill Gone Already?…………..

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Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu is coming to Washington this week. Meetings of world leaders with Netanyahu remind me of younger days and dating days. Sometimes the thrill is gone from the get go, from the first time. Sometimes afterwards she (usually) or he realizes they would not want a repeat.
In world politics it is that way too, except that these diplomatic dates are almost like “forcible dates”. If one lasts eight years as a leader he/she would have to keep on dating him or her often.

George W Bush kept his meetings with Netanyahu to a minimum: he already knew exactly what his date would say. Which always takes the thrill out of any date. Clearly Obama did not want a repeat after his first date with Netanyahu, but he had no choice: eight years in office is a long time. I doubt any world leader ever looks forward to meeting him. (American Congressmen and Senators are not world leaders, they are more like star-struck Bibi-groupies. Or maybe they can’t get another date with so many resources).

In fairness, almost all other Middle East leaders are also like Bibi in that respect: they all think others are thrilled to hear them whine out their wisdom.

I suspect, as some comments in the media have noted this week, that Donald and Bibi will start taking many bathroom breaks during their very first date this week. A real date is not like a long-distance post-election telephone date, you don’t see and hear the warts (a rude person would add that you don’t use your olfactory faculties).

Mr. Netanyahu is at a bigger disadvantage here when he meets Trump this week. He really has no new case to make anymore. The US Congress, both houses and almost both parties, have been making the case for him for several years. The Senators and Congressmen have made his visit to Washington redundant, just a cosmetic thing. A photo-op. Sort of like watching Beyonce and Adele walk and pause on the Red Carpet: it has nothing to do with the prize…..

But eye candy is much more pleasing to look at than older men plotting to step into the next military quagmire……

Cheers

M H Ghuloum

A Banana Republic? USA as Portrayed by Some Americans and One Israeli Hustler…….

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“President-elect Donald Trump will be a good friend to Israel and hopefully the two countries can work together to dismantle the international nuclear agreement with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview Sunday. While the two countries are close allies, relations were sometimes tense between Netanyahu and President Barack Obama because of their vastly different world views on the Iran deal and other issues………”

There is something eerily Banana Republic-ish about the way the USA is being portrayed in the media these days. As portrayed by US media, some US politicians, and also by foreign hustlers like Benyamin Netanyahu of Israel.

American media and many among the political classes talk of Russians influencing the 2016 presidential election. Hacking the DNC and RNC and somehow influencing the election results (no explanation yet as to how hacking leads to influencing). A lengthy investigation is pending.

Enter Benyamin Netanyahu, the super-opportunistic right-wing prime minister of Israel. He is publicly and loudly offering to “help” the president-elect Donald trump handle the cancellation of the Iran Nuclear Deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,or JCPOA). An agreement signed on by Iran and the Rest of the World, including the UN and European Union. Mr. Netanyahu knows a thing or two about breaking treaties and agreements (you can ask Barack Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Nicolas Sarkozy, and many other world leaders and international bureaucrats about that).

Thus Netanyahu is setting the stage for what he has wanted for years now: to get America embroiled in another endless Muslim war. A war of choice that is not related to American homeland defense. Yet another of what some critics have been calling stupid wars in Muslim lands.

To complicate matters, reports have announced yesterday (Sunday) an agreement between Iran and Boeing to purchase jetliners for US$ 16.7 billion. Unless Sheldon Adelson and John Bolton can replace the Iranian order with their own. No matter, the US Congress of both houses and both parties is beholden, and often forgets national interests when it comes to campaign money……….
Cheers

M Haider Ghuloum

Obama Will OK Iran Nuclear Deal Review by Netanyahu………..

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“Obama Will OK Congress Iran Deal Review. On Friday, President Obama called a bill which would allow Congress to review the terms of an Iran nuclear deal a “reasonable compromise” and said he planned to sign the bill. He said he feels it will not derail talks with Iran, though Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator Bob Corker and leading Democrat Ben Cardin have been tasked with making sure that the bill is not laced with “poison pills,” or amendments that might kill the Iran agreement…………..”

I, we all know (at least in the Middle East) that it will not be truly the US Congress that will really review and judge the Iran nuclear deal. It will almost certainly be the real boss who will effectively do so: Benyamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel and Supreme Leader of the U.S. Congress (both houses, both parties).

Eventually, to approve the deal, Obama will have to go around the Congress. Otherwise, no deal: congress is bent on either tightening the blockade of Iran or waging another major war of choice against another Muslim country in the Middle East.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Iran Nuclear Duel: Supreme Leader Khamenei vs. Supreme Leader Netanyahu………

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“Iran said on Wednesday it would only accept a deal over its contested nuclear program if world powers simultaneously lifted all sanctions imposed on it. The comments by President Hassan Rouhani came the day after U.S. President Barack Obama was forced to give Congress a say in any future accord — including the right to veto the lifting of sanctions imposed by U.S. lawmakers……………”

The United States Congress, both houses of it, has finally managed to get hold of the pending Iran Nuclear Deal. The congressional jingoists are now in control of this issue. Which very likely means that as far as the United States is concerned this deal will remain ‘pending’ for a long time, at least through the 2016 general elections.
It will be fun but also painful to watch the major candidates from both parties doing contortions and pirouettes to avoid the pitfalls of taking any clear and definable position on this issue. That especially applies to the Democrats, since the Republicans have already abdicated and handed American Middle East policy to a foreign leader. A tail that effectively leads the dog now. A triumph of campaign money over national interest.

Now the nuclear deal, as far as bilateral American-Iranian relations are concerned, will be in the hands of two Supreme Leaders. These two will decide the outcome: (1) Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for Iran, and (2) Supreme Leader Benyamin Netanyahu for the United States. I suspect the latter will have more say in the final outcome, which may mean there will be no final deal.

Which might be irrelevant, since the blockade is already unraveling. Russia has decided to resume the delivery of defensive missiles to Iran (S300). The other major countries of BRICS and others have already started the framework of an alternative or parallel world financial system that will compete with the Bretton Woods bureaucratic institutions of IBRD and IMF. That might reduce the effectiveness of this recent clamor for blockades and sanctions that Western powers seem to impose with impunity.

It is a measure of the complete domination of the Israeli tail of U.S. Middle East policy that even members of Mr. Obama’s own party were ready to defy a potential veto. Now that the U.S. position seems to be in more doubt, the Iranians are also playing hardball.
Either way, the Western sanctions are being whittled away, as they should be. Worldwide economic sanctions and blockades on whole countries only harm the people, not their rulers…………

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Netanyahu King of Israel: the Arab Dilemma of Theodor Herzl……..

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Netanyahu won by throwing under the bus the remnants of the anemic and failed ‘Peace Process’. No two-state solution now, unless he backtracks again. So, no Palestinian State means One State for Jews and Arabs? At least not for the next two to four years. In doing so, he may have thrown part of Israel under the bus as well. Few world leader take him seriously or believe him now, outside the US Congress and the Republican Party. The “wolf” warning could have been a little bit more credible if the boy doing the crying had been a different one.

That leaves two eventual options:

(1) A democratic option: everybody votes, which is the case in Israel now. Which also means the Palestinians in the West Bank get their first truly free vote. The Israeli right does not like this, the idea of Arabs voting “in droves” as Netanyahu complained on election day. The Israeli Arabs were given the vote at a time when the center-left (Labor) dominated Israeli politics, with what they could salvage from the ruins of their old European ideals. Had the Likud and the extreme right-wing been in power in 1948, the Arabs probably would not have gotten the vote. Even now the right (Lieberman) has tried to keep them away from the Knesset (an Israeli version of the claimed voter suppression in some American states). To be fair, Arabs don’t also get to vote in most Arab countries, but then the princes and potentates and generals don’t claim to be democratic, not convincingly. When they do, nobody believes them anyway.

(2) a moderate version of the untenable South African option, pre-Mandela. Which means Arab townships surrounded by concrete walls. We already see the beginnings of that now. Two unequal states in one country: unless they get the vote. The Israeli right wants to keep the West Bank but keep its voters away from the polls, and the Israeli center-left would probably want universal voting rights. If they get the vote, and in such large numbers, what would that do to the original Zionist visionary idea of Theodor Herzl

There are other options which some hard-nosed Israelis might prefer. A Jordanian option, back to pre-1967 state when Amman ruled the West Bank and Egypt ruled Gaza (forget Gaza for now, it is a different entity). But Likud does not win elections by uprooting Jewish settlements and displacing settlers and new immigrants, its reliable political base.

So, a dilemma. Best left for some future date to resolve. Easier politically for now.

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Five Dollar Bill: Forget Canadian Spock, USA to Replace Abe with Bibi…….

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“Since Friday, the world has been grieving the passing of Leonard Nimoy, with many touching tributes to the man best known for his role as Spock on “Star Trek” hitting the Internet over the weekend. Perhaps one of our favorites so far is happening in Canada, where Trekkies are “Spocking Fives” by putting images of Nimoy on the country’s $5 bill…………

SpockCanada
New Canadian

AbeLincoln –> NetanyahuLooney3                                                                                                      Proposed US change
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New face of GOP

My very own special incredible Congressional source is reporting that this Canadian move has inspired the U.S. Congress. If the Canucks can honor Mr. Spock (Nimoy) on the $5 bill, why not the US? So, she reports that a bi-partisan group of representatives and senators are getting ready to propose a similar U.S. move.  No, it has nothing to do with Spock.

Fresh from their verbal oral interaction with Benyamin Netanyahu last week, still in the grips of the afterglow, the law-makers will propose that the USA replace Abe Lincoln with Benyamin Netanyahu on the $5 bill. With the cost of living and ‘entertainment’ now so high in Washington, they claim, Abe Lincoln can’t buy you as much as he used to.

Americans will have the joy of carrying Bibi in their wallets, and even giving him back to the tune of $5-6 billion every year. Besides, it is a New Republican Party now, it needs a new symbolic and final break with its distant shameful and inconvenient past……….
Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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Meir Dagan of Mossad: ‘Chickenshit Spewed Bullshit at U.S. Congress’…….

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“Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan lambasted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Channel 2 interview previewed Thursday, calling his speech before Congress “bullshit,” and charging that his policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians endangered the Zionist dream……… In a snippet from Dagan’s reaction to Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress on Tuesday — which he watched alongside a Channel 2 reporter — Dagan can be seen muttering at the screen “bullshit” after Netanyahu makes a point on Iran’s progress in its nuclear program………..”

So this former chief of the Mossad, like other top Israeli commanders, don’t think much of Benyamin Netanyahu. They call Chickenshit’s speech Bullshit. They would know: have been close enough to him to know, and maybe familiarity does breed contempt in this case.
As for members of the U.S. Congress (both houses): how can they tell? They have been acclamatised or desensitized to bullshit, they produce so much of it themselves………

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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A Fatwa on the Nuclear Deal: What If……..

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From the Netanyahu speech and the orgasmic reaction of the members of the U.S Congress, we have learned that it all has little to do with the nuclear issue as far as Israel and its Washington lobby are concerned. It is more about forcing a certain foreign policy path on the Obama administration so that it would try to force certain regional policies on Iran. Which means it is aimed at certain failure and increasing tensions in the Middle East, possibly leading to another war against yet another Muslim country. But Netanyahu has no intention of waging a futile war alone: he wants to drag the United States into it. Which might mean creating and inviting Shi’a extremists to open a second front against the West. Great, so much for the ‘war on terror’. 

What about the rest of the world? The Germans, Russians, French, Chinese, British, and billions of others who are not Netanyahu cheerleaders? The rest of the world that is not necessarily captive to moneyed American or Israeli lobbyists, powerful special interests, Rapture-obsessed evangelical Christian Zionists, and bigoted Las Vegas tycoons? Those who are truly concerned about the nuclear issue and have no other ‘foreign’ agenda imposed on them?
If they like ‘the deal’ but Washington is too afraid to accept it? They are likely to reject American dictates, which in that case would be Israeli dictates. The sanctions will get much weaker, since they will become even more unilaterally American. Can the extreme right wing in America, the half of the government that is a proxy for the extreme Israeli right wing, force its agenda and the Iran blockade on the rest of the industrial world? On the rest of the world? Highly unlikely………..

So my fatwa is that failure of the talks will very likely also weaken the Western blockade as well. So shall it be written, so shall it be done. Probably……

Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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The Bibi Political Circus Hits Washington: Netanyahu’s Nuclear Looney Tunes………..

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A polarizing figure, a celebrity, and a supremely opportunistic politician. Now he brings his circus into enemy territory: Washington DC. It has been a circus,a diplomatic and political and media circus these past few weeks. Of the kind that only a celebrity (in America) like Netanyahu could deliberately provoke and organize. Besides Israeli politics he also seeks to deliberately embarrass and disrespect the black man he probably detests the most: Barack Obama. He would never do that to a white president. He also knows the nuclear negotiations have their own logic, be they successful or not.

Folks at the White House consider him a ‘chickenshit’.

Many Democrats, be they Jewish or gentile, see him as either a chickenshit or just a political hustler following his only path to keeping his job. Most of them would not dare say so publicly. Some of them have already decided to throw Obama under the bus and attend the Netanyahu political rally.

Most Republicans see him as the man who will lead the Jewish people to a belated conversion to the old Jewish sect of Jesus Christ. At the time of the Rapture.

A couple of star-struck extreme American neoconservative groupies even have a form of man-crush on him. They have taken to comparing him to Churchill, evoking Munich and the Holocaust and all that.

Will he use his staple of Looney Tunes Road Runner WileCoyote cartoons again to illustrate the nuclear issue? It should be interesting when the the bull is spread and let us see how much of it sticks to the ceiling of the Capitol.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum                          Follow ArabiaDeserta on Twitter
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