Friday, March 26, 2010

US-Israeli Relations: From chilly to frigid

For a head of government to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip viewed in Jerusalem as a humiliation.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisers and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman, who spoke to the Prime Minister, said.

“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House telephone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea.”
Read the rest here.

4 comments:

reader joseph said...
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reader joseph said...

i hope your readers click to read the entire story, which shows most of the culpability to be on PM Netanyahu rather than on President Obama.

Netanyahu is, like the Republican Party in the US, in the thrall of religious fundamentalists who have no desire for peace. he has continually stuck a knife in the back of the US since the president's election, and has really cast doubt on what kind of "ally" he really is.

the US needs to get out of this Iraeli-based fantasy of how the Mid-east works and should be and realize that Israeli actions towards its Arabic citizens has much to do with the continued unrest there.

if the PM went home isolated and confused, it is his own policies that are to blame, not that of the Obama administration.

at least we finally have a State Department that is not beholden to the Evangelicals in this country whose support for Israel depends solely on its place in their Messianic Apocalyptic delusions.

David said...

Well the Evangelicals will point to this as proof Obama is the Anti-Christ and that his allowing Iran to get nukes and laying down in front of Russian Aggression is further proof that Christ is about to return. Keep in mind there are many scenarios that these groups have as the how the second coming will occur and they change quickly to match what ever takes places geo-politically.

Ed said...

As a point of order, I don't think most of the Palestinians are in fact "citizens" of Israel, wherein lies the problem. If they were citizens, they would have rights...