HUGE GAZA ESCALATION -- Plus, Did Olmert Really Go Over Condi's Head?
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I don't know whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert actually, as he claims, told the President of the United States to ignore his own Secretary of State and let him, Olmert, decide how America would vote in the Security Council.
My guess is that it's true. And that SecretaryRice, embarrassed, has no choice but to deny that it happened.
The reason I think it happened is that this kind of thing has gone on for years. Elliot Abrams used his position in the White House to sabotage Bush's policies in favor of those of Ariel Sharon's. Abrams (and a few of the other neocons) made it impossible for Rice or her predecessor Colin Powell to play the honest broker role. Every time either one was close to a breakthrough, Abrams made sure it never happened.
As for Israeli prime ministers, they tend to have no reservations about making personal pleas to the President whenever they want something. Eric Holder says that he had no choice but to recommend that President Clinton pardon Marc Rich because Prime Minister Barak told him to do it. (Imagine, Ben Gurion making pardon recommendations to Eisenhower or Kennedy).
I would guess, however, that it is standard operating procedure for Israeli PM's to get on the phone and tell the President to ignore his own State Department. I would guess that started in LBJ's day. (JFK was cool to Israel).
Well, that is all going to end on Tuesday. No one is going to play those games with Obama. And anyone who thinks Clinton or Emanuel are going to be Rice and Abrams redux are in for a surprise.
It was easy to betray Bush. He didn't know his own policies. Olmert probably told him what his policy was and Bush said, "cool, whatever." Bill Clinton was taken in by Ehud Barak who, in Clinton's words, treated him like a "goddamn wooden Indian."
Obama is different. Yes, he is a lovely man. Great husband. Great father. Sweet smile. Good, through and through. But there is something cold about him. And I mean that in a positive way. Something cold and hard. You don't f---k with him. Just watch.
Why should any of those bush crooks start telling the truth now? The "con" continues... Never noticed it till just now but: Con-di
How could she not live up to the first syllable of her name?
January 14, 2009 9:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Was Abrams registered as a foreign agent?
Do the words spy, or mole apply?
Isn't that the definition of a person who works for the advantage of a foreign power?
January 15, 2009 7:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno. We'll see.
January 14, 2009 9:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
>
You would guess wrong. Some weeks before the six day war, Israel pleaded with the Johnson administration to help them free-up the shipping lanes. Johnson refused to get involved because he feared it might lead to a Soviet confrontation. And into the early 1970's the US wasn't yet fully supporting Israel. They were still flying French fighters in the Yom Kippur conflict and making their own engine parts.
The blind American support for Israeli positions is relatively new - certainly it started after 1970.
January 14, 2009 9:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
oh yeah, like Richard Nixon let anyone push him around, and Jimmy Carter was such a tool of Begin, and Bush I always kowtowed to Shamir. Suuuure. I think MJ (former editor of AIPAC's newsletter) Rosenberg needs to believe his fantasies about the power of the Jews to make himself feel important and tragic in his quest to save his people from themselves.
January 14, 2009 10:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
A Bill Moyers-like turnaround!
I hope to be proven wrong, but I think Rahm was probably chosen to be C.O.S. at some Upper East Side fund raising party in May or something.
Rahm only became a Clinton adviser because he raised a ton of Jewish money, and his status as son of a Jewish terrorist probably only helped his fund raising efforts.
Bill Clinton wanted to fire him, and Rahm told others in the administration that if Bill wanted to fire him, he would have to do it face-to-face. Bill never fired him.
I'm just realizing now that it probably wasn't because Bill disliked confrontation, but rather because Bill weighed the Rahmifications of pissing off a bunch of powerful Jewish donors.
And Rahm was on track to become Speaker of the House after just a couple years in Congress. It will be interesting to watch how he gets his seat back, and suddenly emerges as Speaker after some arm twisting by billionaire fund raisers.
Rahm and Hilary are probably already planning what to do if Obama shows real balls and takes on Israel. Just the threat of what they could do would likely make Obama toe the AIPAC line.
If Obama was serious about taking on Israel and the settlements, he never would have appointed Rahm to be his C.O.S., and give him the ability to control access to him.
Rahm wouldn't be able to show his face to his benefactors if he went along with Obama, especially if a mini civil war broke out in Israel.
I sure hope M.J.'s right though.
January 14, 2009 10:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
You say: "Bill Clinton wanted to fire him, and Rahm told others in the administration that if Bill wanted to fire him, he would have to do it face-to-face. Bill never fired him."
Do you have a citation for this?
January 15, 2009 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
"No one is going to play those games with Obama."
Only time will tell.
January 14, 2009 11:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
The next several weeks on this subject will certainly be interesting.
The Obama/Emmanuel relationship is certainly puzzling to many onlookers, but only God and Obama know what Obama really has planned for the US/Israel relationship.
What I want to believe is that for the first time in modern American history our President has been elected without having been beholden to the Jewish/American financial/media interests that has brought the US/Israeli relationship to the present state of affairs. PEOTUS Obama has the ability to cut the unbilical cord, if necessary. I believe this is a huge change in and of itself.
I hope MJ is right too.
January 14, 2009 11:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, well, well....there might just be a little ray of hope in the horizon. This from Haaretz:
full haaretz article
January 15, 2009 12:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ironic, MJ, isn't it, because the same Olmert you are excoriating for this war, is the one who stood in front of you, personally, and your Israel Policy Forum, and spoke with tears in his eyes about how Israel can't fight any more and his ardent love of peace and how he realized he was wrong for decades to support "right-wing" positions and how he is now an ardent member of the "peace camp"?
January 15, 2009 12:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
No big surprise. Politicians lie.
January 15, 2009 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
MJ says:
"Obama is different. Yes, he is a lovely man. Great husband. Great father. Sweet smile. Good, through and through. But there is something cold about him. And I mean that in a positive way. Something cold and hard. You don't f---k with him. Just watch."
Sometimes dreams do come true.
January 15, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
First signs are not good. Clintons f---k with him and still he made Hillary SOS and let her to bring neocon Dennis Ross as her envoy to ME.
January 15, 2009 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am also in the "I hope MJ is right too" school.
In addition to identifying with the left, I also accept that diplomacy and politics are the art of the possible. MJ seems to have a sense of what is possible.
But I continue to worry about Dennis Ross's influence with Obama and Clinton. If Abram could undermine US policy inside a Republican administration, I continue to worry that Ross will play that role within a Democratic administration. For now, I will accept MJ's belief that Ross is a professional and will work to advance America's interests under Obama. Unfortunately his track record in the Camp David negotiations does not look promising.
January 15, 2009 12:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good call on Ross. He was part of the culture of diplomacy failure that made up Clinton's sloppy and meandering mid-East peace efforts.
I have no doubt that he means well, but he was far too tolerant of "we tried" instead of "we need to work harder to get this done so let's get to it."
January 15, 2009 4:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've met the man. Ross "means well" if you accept his premise that ME peacemaking means conflating "what Israel wants" with "what's reasonable".
January 15, 2009 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
So thanks for contributing to this part of the discussion. As I say, I remain concerned that picking this guy who brought us nothing under Clinton and seemed to be okay with that may have been a genuine fuck-up as you kindly aver. "Mr. Placid Acceptance of Failure," that's my worry.
Experience is fabulous up to a point. The classic negative example being our all-time-jackass Mr. Rumsfeld. At a minimum, Obama should make crytal clear to these guys that he expects results, not explanations. But if it's as you say, that may be like talking to a wall.
January 15, 2009 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am reposting this important link because it last appeared near the bottom of another thread by MJ.
Here is the true face of HAMAS and what they really think about Jews and Israel. MJ, don't you read it, it might upset the fantasies you enjoy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/opinion/14goldberg-1.html?_r=1
Mythbuster calls it all lies. If you are reading this Mythbuster, are you saying that this is NOT HAMAS position?
January 15, 2009 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here is the punchline of YBD's linked story:
"The only small chance for peace today is the same chance that existed before the Gaza invasion: The moderate Arab states, Europe, the United States and, mainly, Israel, must help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah, prepare the West Bank for real freedom, and then hope that the people of Gaza, vast numbers of whom are unsympathetic to Hamas, see the West Bank as an alternative to the squalid vision of Hassan Nasrallah and Nizar Rayyan."
It is a significant point, because this common sense perspective is so utterly denied by the West Bank settler propagandists who have hijacked the "voice" of the "Jewish community" in America and US Mideast policy. Instead of helping establish a non-Hamas Palestinian state, as they could have done years ago already, Israel's lame and myopic leaders today are slaughtering Palestinian children (thereby creating a hugely greater number of future recruits for Hamas et al.) in order to win votes in the next Israeli election from voters duped into thinking that cowardice, hypocrisy and war crimes will "defend" Israel, and "teach Hamas a lesson."
There is no valid reason whatsoever why AMERICA has to in to continue to support this utter crap. There are plenty of invalid reasons, however, so with Obama, we will have to wait and see.
January 15, 2009 6:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Regarding the seething Arab masses, see this, from Ha'aretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1055557.html
Note that this alludes out the nonsense about there being a single "Palestinian people" (yes, both Gazans and the Arabs of Judea/Samaria hate Israel, but this is not enough to create a national identity).
January 15, 2009 12:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
You really are scraping the bottom of the barrel when you have to role out the "there is no such thing as a Palestinian" argument.
I will accept your surrender now.
January 15, 2009 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, Mythbuster, but this is no more "bottom of the barrel" than the claim (not seen on this site, but present elsewhere) that Palestine belongs exclusively to fundamentalist Moslems. I don't think we need the AIPACers to "surrender" or even discover common sense, we simply need the US Congress to stop surrendering its policy-making and speechmaking to them. Mideast barbarian fanatics who do not know the meaning of the word "shame" will go the bottom of any barrel or gutter, again and again, no matter what the civilized world thinks or says or hopes for. Our problem is their taking with them those who are supposed to represent the American people.
January 15, 2009 1:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's looking like MJ got it mostly right. According to this Ha'aretz article, the spat comes down to whether Rice intended to abstain all along or if she only did so after Olmert called Bush. She says all along while Olmert doesn't think so.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki was surprised by the abstention, as he had been told the US would vote for the resolution. Rice also had to break the abstention news to the Saudis, promising that she would make US support for the resolution clear later.
January 15, 2009 1:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm afraid, that Rahm will play the Elliot Abrams's role and he'll put Israel's interests over ours. We can't trust people like Elliot Abrams or Rahm to be American first. M.J. Rosenberg is an rare exception that confirm the rule.
January 15, 2009 2:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are a disgusting bigot, but please, please keep it up beause it makes it so much easier for my friends and I to persuade Obama Administration officials that people like Mr. Rosenberg and his cohorts--including you--are idiots.
January 15, 2009 10:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
We might be idiots, but at least we don't betray our country. No person of honesty and vision can look on Jews pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.
January 15, 2009 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for your concern,lady, but we'll handle the overt anti-semites just fine. It's the unwitting ones who malign the patriotism of American Jews in the name of political correctness that we will especially have to watch out for. And, trust me, we will-- using every, single, legal means necessary.
January 15, 2009 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
What is going on in Gaza has fundamentally nothing to do with Jews, the large majority of whom do NOT live in Israel, or anti-Semitism, post-colonial hegemosubalternism, Zionioracism, Islamopanoramafanlangism or the Man in the Moon. It has to do with the stupid, cowardly, barbaric, and titanically hypocritical inheritors on both sides of a sixty year feud in the miserable deserts of the Mideast, and in the asinine cravenness of the US politicians in laying down as a brainless collective door mat for one group of those foreign fanatics.
January 15, 2009 2:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
The pot calling the kettle black?
January 15, 2009 12:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good point
January 15, 2009 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the story is very accurate. What one needs to understand, of course, is that Rice achieved a lot of what she wanted here anyway. She got to be involved in drafting the resolution, and then the U.S. (in a rare departure) did not use its "no" vote as one of the five permanent members to veto it. By voting "abstain," she got to allow it to pass, which is the result she wanted.
So she may have had "abstain" as a solid "plan B" all along, although I am sure she was embarassed, because she had built expectations that U.S. vote would be "yes". Nobody is really safe from having a disgruntled party call one's boss, though. Why Olmert felt it necessary to drag her through the mud over this is another question: maybe to shut her down over her stating afterward that the U.S. supported the measure but wanted to see diplomacy work first. That may have irritated him.
January 15, 2009 4:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
mj,
Have your read the NY Review of Books on the new books by Indyk, D.A. Miller and Kurtzer-Lasensky? One of the impressions given is that both sides in the Israeli-Arab conflict have been running circles around American presidents and their envoys for years, and will continue to do so.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22230
Given what's at stake for the parties on the ground, doesn't that make sense?
At this poiint, not only do I not expect Obama to fare much better, I don't think he's going to survive the machinations of Washington's political culture, including his own Cabinet and staff picks. His coldness might not make him victorious in battle. It might only disenchant the public that thought they were getting a new Bill Cosby show.
But: Hope I'm wrong!
January 15, 2009 5:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
MJ says:
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Obama is different. Yes, he is a lovely man. Great husband. Great father. Sweet smile. Good, through and through. But there is something cold about him. And I mean that in a positive way. Something cold and hard. You don't --- with him. Just watch.
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There you have it, folks. Joyous and rare is the generation that has such a Titan walking in its midst. And fortunate also is a generation that has such a wise, omnipotent and prophetic observer such as MJ who not only is so knowledgable, but knows the Titan so intimately.
MJ reminds me of the character "Squealer" in George Orwell's classic novel "Animal Farm".
January 15, 2009 8:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
I understand your pain. My country just elected Barack Obama.
You will choose between Livni, Ehud Barak and Bibi.
January 15, 2009 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
What ‘escalation’ would that be, I wonder? Hyperzionists have been at war with the UNRWA ever since . . . well, for a VERY long time. ("Security Council Resolution 302? Whazzat?")
Who can forget the 38,219 cogent exposés of how the ‘refugee’ part of "Palestinian refugee problem" was a forgery almost as maliciously hate-inspired as the forgery of the ‘Palestinian’ part?
And a couple of clicks
Reveal they still play
The same dirty tricks
As of early today!
"Help us help Gaza" the monsters of imbalance shriek electronically, or rather, ELECTRONICALLY, with not a word about the woes of Sderot!
And they brazenly congratulate themselves on sixty whole years of violating the Marquis of Murdochberry rules!
And what a surprise that the UNRWA webmaster should bear precisely the wrong brand of Semite surname!
Obviously these [exp. del.] fiends have given up even pretending to be anything other than fiends.
"How long, O Lord, how long?"
===
On the other hand, odds are that the official Hyperzionists, or some apologisers for them, will claim this stroke was (only) an accident. Hopefully nobody over yonder will be so hypocritical as to speak of an ‘unfortunate’ accident, though unfortuately one cannot rule the possibility out altogether.
Anyway, one and the same violence event cannot be both an accident and an escalation, can it? Mil. Sci. is far from my best subject, but I really don’t see how I could be wrong about that.
Ah, this just in [*]!
That seems pretty dispositive: it was not an escalation because it was an error. Though it would not have been a proper escalation anyway, being only a resumption of actual combat on Hyperzion’s Parliament of Man™ or "international community" or genus humanum front. [**]
The neo-Levant being what it is, I must admit that the words "accidentally on purpose" have scurried through my mind, but perhaps Miss Pandora had better not open that can of worms.
Meanwhile, some kind friend might advise the Associated Press to watch its corporate step: "devastating offensive" sounds very like something the fiends of UNRWA might say about . . . about The Recent Troubles. ’Twould be a real shame if accidents and grave mistakes started happening to the AP also, begorrah!
And now that we know for sure what happened, perhaps it will not give too much offense to hope out loud that the IDF marketing arm might moderate its claims about the minimisation of collateral damage just a bit? [***]
Speaking of CD, by the way, and speaking generally: could somebody indicate where all those much-ballyhooed "smart bombs" were hiding between the end of Secretary Albright’s War in 1998 and . . . and The Recent Troubles? Smart bombardment seem scarcely to have figured at all in the AEI-GOP-DoD-USIP-WSJ-AIPAC-EiB (&c. &c.) semiconquest and occupation of the former al-‘Iráq. I had tentatively conjectured along vaguely Darwinian lines that for some reason bombs do not need to be very smart east of Suez, but the . . . The Recent Troubles have put paid to that. So what is going on? (This keyboard is indeed a sad klutz about Mil. Sci.)
Happy days.
___
[*] "THE ASSOCIATED PRESS / Published: January 15, 2009 / Filed at 9:03 a.m. ET"
[**] Friends of Hyperzion make this same point frequently themselves in connection with Syria and the former al-‘Iráq, which declared a war in the year of religionism 1367/1948/5708 and have never yet called it off. By my lights it was no ‘escalation’ when the warred upon took out the Osiraq reactor a whole generation later. That was only business as usual. (So far as I know, everybody at Tel Avîv thinks so too.)
[***] Doubtless the announced investigation will in due course reveal exactly what "engulfing the compound and the main warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food intended for Palestinian refugees" -- as one is sorry to find that the AP tendentiously describes this event -- was collateral to.
January 15, 2009 10:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Meanwhile, some kind friend might advise the Associated Press to watch its corporate step: "devastating offensive" sounds very like something the fiends of UNRWA might say about . . . about The Recent Troubles. ’Twould be a real shame if accidents and grave mistakes started happening to the AP also, begorrah!"
A real shame indeed:
"Bullets also entered another building housing The Associated Press offices, entering a room where two staffers were working but wounding no one. The Foreign Press Association, representing journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanded a halt to attacks on press buildings."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD95NLG8G0
Good intuition. I have to admit I'm stunned that Israel hasn't bombed the media building yet, and made up the typical "militants were firing from it" BS excuse that they are now using for the UN compound.
January 15, 2009 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
Didn't you know: those are Hamas bases! The IDF says so....and they would never lie, would they?
January 15, 2009 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cold and hard, if you will. I infinitely prefer - solid (Solid as Barack).
January 15, 2009 11:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good point.
January 15, 2009 12:27 PM | Reply | Permalink