If it is Netanyahu's world now, we live in a world that values power over principle, aggression over diplomacy and corruption over honor. Face it Bibi is a fascist who dishonors the best of Israel. Like Trump, he uses fear, hyperbole, and dishonesty as a means to an end. The exercise of their own personal power.
31
"The Israeli prime minister has shown the world that it’s possible to defy the United States, ignore liberal values — and win."
He showed that? So what? The Chinese and the Russians have been doing it for decades. What's the big deal?
5
As an international oligarchy finds Netanyahu, Trump, King Salman, and Putin useful in expanding their domination, wealth, and narrative control we suffer sovereign, social and economic decadent corruptions.
Sure Netanyahu finds succor and obeisance in the halls of power.
Walking down any street? His options are far more limited.
"Leaders" aren't.
5
"---defy the United States---" When? - and how? One thought that the two had worked hand in hand at all stages of the process towards the creation of Greater Israel. It was Iran that defied the United States according to all reports in our media.
6
This is how Jared Kushner is going to “bring peace to the area’. Disgusting.
16
The question we are facing here is whether like Trump and the other nationalist leaders of the world Netanyahu is an aberration or does he represent a trend that will grow and grow. It gets to the big question: Can social liberal values survive? For the moment the answer points to the Netanyahu trend not being an aberration.
www.InquiryAbraham.com
4
Nothing new here. Also nothing admirable. The strong who are willing and able to kill the weaker will survive. In Israel's case, it has long been American strength and money that keeps Netanyahu alive and he is not grateful but arrogant.
14
The whole premise of this article is plain wrong. None of Netanyahu’s or Israel’s dreams have come true. Israel is still surrounded by enemies and its still citizens live under constant threat of war and violence. What dreams have actually come true? What nonsense.
8
Oh please. "the occupation"? With war- lands, and lines, change. If you side with the loser, as in case of Palestinians siding with Arab aggressors who waged multiple wars against Israel, you may find the lines changed, not always in ways you would like. Then you might starts complaining about being "occupied" and appealing to old lines dated at different years.
7
If I remember correctly , Bibi became prime Minister again thru a coalition and like Trump made it by the skin of his teeth . He was and is backed by the ultra conservative right . Like Trump he says what his supporters want to hear and is a pro at manipulating the system . Not everyone in Israel backs him (see the documentary "The Gatekeepers ) which is very enlightening . There is a reason why both men are under scrutiny.
Lastly let us not forget that Israel's success at economic and military power was brought about with the help of the United States and it's support .This is definitely the season of the corrupt "autocrat ".
16
For 51 years Israel has occupied what little is left of Palestine. During those years, the occupation has not only brutalized Palestinians, but also Israelis and a significant portion of American Jewry.
Israel was one wing of a two-pronged project that came out of the Russian Revolution: one was originally internationalist and socialist (Soviet Union), while the other was nationalist and socialist (Zionism). At this point the ideals of Zionism are as moribund and deformed as was the internationalist socialism of the Soviet Union in the last decades preceding its collapse.
Jewish nationalism has morphed into an ethno-nationalist racism undergirded by religious zealotry, and the socialist ideals of Israel's founders have receded forever into the past.
If the Soviet Union could be described as a "deformed workers' state," the deformity - and moral infirmity - of the Zionist state is no less profound.
It took roughly 74 years for the Soviet project to collapse. My prediction is that Israel, for all its apparent strength, is due for a similar unraveling within the next decade.
19
He is a disgrace to Judaism and to the liberal humanism and progressive traditions of most Jewish Americans.
History will judge him severely as unrepresentative of the best ideals of his faith.
25
We give Israel $3 billion a year for ten years- then they decide to pick a fight with Iran. Thanks for nothing!
16
Here's what's doable: an alliance - a natural alliance - of Israelis and Palestinians.
One on one, groups on groups, there are countless instances of them relating well together.
Smart, industrious, entrepreneurial, their togetherness in peace - two adjoining states with security for both - would uplift both peoples and unleash a wave of international hope and possibility.
Possibility felt most profoundly in the region and between the two populations. The economic benefits would be felt mutually, a powerful zone from Jordan through to the Mediterranean… include Egypt too as peace changed public opinion on Israel.
So, Netanyahu's way is myopic.
It's closed in and hunkered down.
It has no imagination or vision.
It's political and self-serving - catering to and promoting fears and division.
Bibi may be serving narrow interests and riding temporary political winds, but Israel's ability to stay aloft and soar will always be hampered by the weight of its policies toward its cousins - the Palestinians.
That weight will eventually crash the machine.
Egypt and Israel were mortal enemies from statehood in 1948 till 1977. Spilled each other's blood regularly - the strongest armies in the region. Now, 40 years of calm and cooperation.
That was a fantasy till Egyptian President Sadat took a bold step and was met by a brave PM Begun - a Jew making peace with Sadat, who had admired Hitler!
That was a land for peace deal.
It worked.
A state for peace is the deal today.
5
With Trump's help, Mr. Netanyahu is turning Israel into a pariah nation. And that is too bad for all the Jews in the world.
History has proven more than once that Jews need a homeland.
And they need one that is respected.
Israel should remember the words of Nietzsche:
"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. "
28
Bibi is evil as far as I'm concerned and I'm ashamed of America for letting him have so much power.
27
The bullies are American Jews who play the anti-Semitic card if there is a hint of protest against Netanyahu's horrible policies.
(PS I'm an American Jew who thinks this is really dumb, and will eventually backfire.)
30
In Netanyahu's world, anti-Semitic American evangelicals are more important than American Jews.
22
Do we really need one or two editorials about Israel every day?????? Please, NYT, let's hear some opinions about what's happening in the rest of the world.
8
Has he really won, or just painted a bigger bulls-eye on his back? Israel, like the US, has a tendency to incite and solidify, not external threats, so much as internal ones. As for the defying (and defining) stake in the ground toward the US and liberal values, I'm afraid the author's book is almost 17 years late.
It’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s World Now
[ Never, for all the destruction wrought, never ever. A completely unjustified headline; an assertion that will never ever be true. ]
9
Running a country that's been invaded three times, had 14,000 rocksts lobbed into its territory and had 1300 terrorist attacks isn't very easy. Benefiting from the safety resulting from Netanyahu's, Sharon's and others' courage while badmouthing them in the foreign press to promote one's book is a tad easier.
The Times obsession with advancing the interests of a group that has turned down three offers of a state, with East Jerusalem included, and conducted 1400+ terrorist raids on civilians, including school children and the elderly, is an odd moral position.
31
Well said! The real problem for Palestinians is a lack of good leadership who care more about their people than the destruction of Israel.
4
Can we officially retire the phrase “Never again”?
It seems that the world’s attitude is more accurately summed up by another more apt phrase.
"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
5
Netanyahu has encouraged Trump to scuttle the Iran deal. He has consistently suggested against his own Mossad that Iran could be better controlled militarily, perhaps with U.S. assistance. (John Bolton has foolishly argued that Iran’s nuclear program could be taken out with simple strikes like Israel’s against the Iraqi and Syrian reactors.) These are catastrophic miscalculations. In the not distant future, Bibi’s legacy could well be a land incinerated by Iranian nuclear weapons. Only the evangelicals will be happy with the Armageddon they, Trump, and Bibi are inviting.
12
Liberal values are deeply flawed and tend to bring about war. Netanyahu is right to defend Israel and destroy her enemies.
12
In America, It’s not “We the people” anymore. It’s “We are Israel”.
12
It figures that this column appeals to most readers of the NY Times (and probably most NY Times employees).
But the reason it does is that it tries to portray the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict as one that is around "liberal values" and "human rights". But that is not correct, this conflict is a war, not a civil rights issue. And the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are a hostile enemy population towards Israel, they are NOT equivalent to blacks in South Africa struggling for civil rights.
Netanyahu is not at all like a Putin or Xi Jinping. He is the elected prime minister in a democracy that is at war, and that has been at war because of the hostility of its enemies for its entire 70 year existence. Netanyahu does not jail political opponents, run a one-party state, shut down newspapers, or jail or kill journalists who criticize him.
20
"NOW he [Netanyahu] has an administration that shares his positions almost instinctively."
The key word here is "now," indicting a temporary or transient situation. If/when Trump is replaced in 2020 by a Liberal Democratic Administration, what's to keep the next President from moving the Embassy back? All Netanyahu and Trump may have accomplished is to turn the Embassy into a football, bouncing back and forth.
And if Netanyahu is so triumphant, why is Israel such a Pariah on the world stage? Sad to say, Israelis are the least able to objectively, or even sometime realistically, discuss Bibi.
6
Benjamin Netanyahu's winning hand could easily be reversed by domestic events in the United States and if he and his far right followers imagine that the majority of Americans would support following Israel further into war with Iran, they are sorely mistaken.
12
This is news?! Israel has spied on us, even shot up one of ships and killed Americans when they were getting to close to things they didn't want us to know in the past. We not only give Israel a pass when it comes to all things in the ME, we get to pay for it.
9
Netanyahu may have won a short battle but he did not win the war, or the Peace, or the hearts of the people in the US, or most of the World....It is a hollow victory, if a victory at all. Does Netanyahu even have the support of American Jews??
9
Pfeffer is dishonest at the core. The description he gives of why there has been no successful peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians is false. Israel has made withdrawals, generous offers of peace and has received from the Palestinians nothing but racist hatred, hostility and terrorism.
Two recent Israeli Prime Ministers offered the Palestinians a state with part of Jerusalem as its capital.They were rebuffed.
Anyone who follows the Palestinian media or the messages their leaders give to them the people know that they teach only one thing- the goal is the destruction of the Jewish state.
16
I can't stand Netanyahu, but he's not an autocrat. He's in power because he keeps winning elections. He keeps winning elections in part because the Israeli left has been completely discredited following the second intifada launched by the PLO in the early 2000s.
Netanyahu is well passed his sell-by date. He has no idea how to pursue peace negotiations, and he's highly corrupt. But the Palestinian leadership is largely responsible for his electoral success.
20
Worldwide authoritarians are gaining the upper hand. As the human race continues to overpopulate itself, the most power hungry who have wealth consolidate their grip on the throats of the rest of us. This is not to say that there are no humanitarians among the wealthy classes, but it is the truly ruthless people with money that seem to be taking over. I find myself thinking selfishly that I'm glad I'm old. I continue to vote, and I continue to donate here and there what little I can, but given family history I'll be lucky to live another 10 years . I am sorry for the people who will be left facing this increasingly brutal world.
9
What a depressing message for the kids.
1
Yes, I too share your views. There is the issue of impact of migration of people, ideas, and goods that have affected different societies since our ancestors walked out of Africa to populate the Earth. Colonization, immigration, and emigration are all part of the same process, whereby human have looking for exploitation of resources in new areas and territories, imping others who are already settled there. War and destabilization are part of this process, interspersed with periods of seeming stability. Unequal distribution of wealth and power are also part of our human history, although there has been a slow but steady movement towards a more egalitarian society. In the Viewing this from evolutionary and historical and larger human and existential perspectives do help me sleep better, as I too am old (80+), and the egalitarian ideal will not reached in my lifetime. .
5
Robert, I do not run around saying these things to the young people that I know, as it would be cruel and pointless, and they will discover on their own their opinions of the world. It is however my personal feeling that we are rapidly moving backwards.
Those hoping for dismemberment of the Jewish State were bound to be disappointed. Bibi, like Churchill, is no angel, but his leadership has personified the steadfastness and resilience of his people when survival is on the line. Historical justice was served when from British Palestine Arab Jordan and Israel were born. Those who posit no other solution than a new Palestinian state should try to imagine the absorption of Gaza by Egypt and the overthrow of the Bedouin monarchy in Jordan. Like Jews made stateless by Arab nationalism, stateless Palestinian Arabs will find their destinies elsewhere - in Jordan, Egypt, or other countries, once they comprehend that the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land is over. Like Greece, Spain, and other lands reclaimed by their indigenous non-Muslim population, the Jews are home at last.
For all his foibles, Bibi has steered Israel's economy through tough times and weathered hostility from the UN, the EU, and Obama. The gifts of Trump, the discovery of natural gas, the blossoming of international relations have all combined with Israel's vibrant democratic culture, innovative technology, and masterful security apparatus to make this a time of harvest that Israelis, Bibi, and Diaspora Zionists can all celebrate.
11
The “right” was in dominance in 1938 as well and the brutality, ignorance and excesses that are endemic to its very being, will destroy it again. The far right as typified by the likes of Modi, Orbán, Erdogan, Abe, Duterte, Trump and Netanyahu perpetuate a paranoid and dysfunctional ethos. They are nasty, uncaring and ethnocentric. In a world made small by technology, theirs is a nationalism antithetical to a healthy world. A pox on the whole lot of them.
8
"Israel’s success as a regional economic and military power is proof in their eyes that the illiberal approach can prevail"
Isn't this a valid reason that countries like NK and Iran also try to build their military and replicate Israel's success ? Then why should we, Americans, preach that Iran and NK shudn't have Nuclear Weapons ?
5
Israel's "success" depend entirely on the billions of dollars the USA gives them.
7
This is an odd column. It includes, not just its argument but also its own refutation.
"Mr. Netanyahu seems convinced that this [preoccupation with Palestine] is just a lingering holdover of the liberal media’s obsession with a minor matter. "
He's convinced that this is the case because it obviously is: "the world, not even the Arab nations, doesn’t really care about the Palestinian issue."
Well, of course. As everyone knows, the Palestinians rejected the best peace offer they'll ever see 18 years ago, which means their miseries are all self-infilcted. Not only that: more or less every single person in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and, God knows, Iraq and Syria, has far more pressing issues to think about than self-inflicted misery.
And not only that. "Mr. Netanyahu has recently been feted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, as well as a host of leaders of smaller countries." The reason is very simple. Israel is a prosperous country with an advanced economy. It has a lot to offer. As for the Hamas medievalists, not so much.
So in conclusion, "those who continue to believe [that supporting the Palestinian cause makes a particle of sense] have to come up with new arguments." Well, I can't help but notice that you don't in fact come up with any. Are there any?
10
I'm missing something here- how is Israel an illiberal state? It's the only place in the Middle East with a market economy, the only place that holds legitimate elections, the only place where LGBT persons can live without extreme prosecution, one of the few places where women can achieve material success without a man, etc. At the end of the day I can't claim to be an expert on the issue, but I just don't understand why people are taking the side of Hamas, a violent and ideologically backwards political party/ quasi terrorist group.
16
In just 2 generations, the oppressed group has become the oppressors under a man whose character is not so different from the original one.
8
"Mr. Netanyahu's world"... for the moment, perhaps. But in the West Bank he's got a tiger by the tail in the form of a "forever" occupation. The settlements are essentially military outposts along the lines of France's "oil slick" approach to the occupation of Vietnam, and we know how that turned out. To the extent that he cozies up to Eastern European nations and others dallying with autocracy again, he forgets history. That's where his and most other Israelis' ancestors came from, and anti-Semitism is accepted with a shrug in most of them. Equally, anyone who thinks a friendship with Trump is anything but transient - or a scam - deludes himself. The whole world seems troubled these days, but if a time comes when those troubles are ameliorated and the world turns its eyes back to Israel and its West Bank occupation, the picture will be even uglier than it is today.
9
It's not over till It's over.
3
Two state solution? How about starting with non-lethal crowd control? Israel has managed with the USA's help to create an effective iron dome anti-missile defense at a cost in the billions. How about an anti-intrusion Palestinian defense, a water cannon dome to shoot down those pesky burning kites, extinguish those noxious and annoying burning tires and maybe help to keep those rock throwing, stick wielding (or barehanded ) Palestinians back from their razor wire fences.
Until the Israelis show some humanity and a sense of proportion, everyone is now wasting their time postulating about Bibi and his right wing Old Testament government... and how good Israelis are wringing their hands at the new "sniper logic" barbarism of the IDF. Sad times continue in the Middle East and as usual many complicit parties to the ongoing humanitarian disaster...
11
Until Hamas shows some humanity and stops using human shields, the existing partisans will remain. When Israelis can target Hamas members masquerading as protestors, they will continue to take them out. And the existing partisans will remain, only with fewer members.
2
I was always opposed to BDS and any total boycott of Israel, because I refused to be in the same camp as people opposed to the very existence of Israel, not to mention the fact that some of them are outright antisemites.
Netanyahu's victory, which is aptly described in the article, has made me change my mind.
For I am convinced that the continuation of his policies is bound both to weaken the legitimacy of the State of Israel and to endanger its actual survival.
For real supporters of the Jewish State that was envisioned by its founders, the time has come to act, starting with a total boycott of Israel, in the hope that it will finally awaken Israeli public opinion.
And as to antisemites and anti-Israeli BDS participants, well, the European resistance to Nazi Germany also saw some strange bedfellows. The infamous Munich surrender took place in 1938. Eighty years later, let us avoid a similar shame, and its consequences.
7
For those less familiar with Israel, Haaretz is a left wing news media in Israel. Nothing wrong with that and it shows the strength of Israel's democracy and freedom of the press.
Unfortunately Mr Pfeffer, with this article, is appealing to those that equate their sympathy/antipathy for Trump with their opinion of Israel. Democrats used to be strong supporters of Israel but just because Trump nixed the JCPOA and moved the embassy to Jerusalem, Democrats now go the other way.
The JCPOA is a very weak agreement, leaving Iran free to an unlimited nuclear build-up in a few years, It does nothing about Iran's ballistic arsenal and nothing against Iran's nefarious interference in the Middle East and its public calls for Israel's annihilation. Obama gave in to Europe's commercial interests with Iran.
Jerusalem has always been Israel's capital, where practically all its government offices have been since 1948. It is wrong to make that a point of peace negotiations.
It is easy to criticize Trump and I oppose him on much, but he is right on Iran and Jerusalem. These decisions are not victories for Netanyahu but doing the right stuff, and ultimately, when people take out their feelings for Trump and Netanyahu, these decisions will protect the world from Iran and will facilitate peace with Arab Palestinians.
15
Haaretz is one of the oldest published and most respected newspapers in Israel--the "New York Times of Israel". It isn't so much that they are left wing than the government of Israel has moved so far to the right.
12
I find the claim that Jerusalem has always been Israel's capitol specious, although I acknowledge that Israelis feel that way and consequently present it as fact.
But in regard to history, it is a city that has always housed three major religions, each of which sees it as a part of their heritage and there was a time when that was acknowledged even by the leadership of Israel.
Without accommodations to that perspective and serious efforts to work out what is essentially nothing more than a dispute about land whatever religious perspective an entity wants to lay on it, there will be no peace. The idea that moving the embassy is a step in the right direction is preposterous on its face given the history of the entire region and more specifically since Israel's creation.
The decision to pull out of the Iran deal without any idea about the next steps was wildly irresponsible, short sighted and unnecessarily provocative. Further, it's impossible to separate that decision from Trump and Netanyahu, a dangerous alliance between gamblers, one largely illiterate on foreign affairs and one diabolically manipulative. If anyone imagines that the American people would support following Israel into a war with Iran, they are seriously deluded.
2
Isolation empowers tyranny and leaves a nation without stakes in the common interests of nations.
2
I can't wait to read the biography of a person who seems to be just about the worst man in the world in terms of his impacts on Palestinians, the Middle East and the United States. Was he the primary planner and salesman of our Iraq invasion? How many conflicts has he initiated? How much has he received in funding from the United States? I hope those questions are answered. But, In some ways it is a relief to learn that he is at his peak, because when the media announces this, it's time for the antithesis to set in. I can remember when Sharon was at his peak...and it did not end well. More enlightened policies are now emanating from America's Jewish community with such organizations as the Jewish Voice for Peace. They are more honest, incisive. and moral. They recognize that Israel's policies have created a bottomless pit that sucks our attention, money and resources into a conflict without end.
19
"Now he [Netanyahu] has an administration that shares his positions almost instinctively."
That is damning with faint praise. We know what an uninformed dunce Donald Trump is.
Trump has told us we would be tired of all the winning. Netanyahu thinks he is also winning.
How delusional can two people be?
9
It's Mr. Netanyahu's world for the time being.
But soon it will will be Dr. Avichai Mandelblit's world. He is the Attorney-General of the State of Israel and will decide on the various cases pending against Mr. Netanyahu and whether indictments should be issued.
The wheels of judicial bureaucracy grind slow but they eventually get to where they should go.
Just ask former Prime Minister and convicted felon Ehud Olmert.
How long is "now" for Mr. Netanyahu?
Time will tell.
Numerous contenders wait in the wings.
13
Netanyahu's big gain now may be a tragic loss for Israel in the not too distant future.
18
The world "terrorism" was originally applied to describe governments, not to groups that attacked governments (e.g., the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution).
Now we have full circle back to where Terrorism began, as the state-sponsored activity of corrupt, violent maniacs like Benjamin Netanyahu.
13
Netanyahu, in my opinion, has the easiest of tasks in comparison to others heads of states. He has got centuries of anti-Semitism, victimization, and the Holocaust on his back.
Whenever he does something which gets repelled, he just plays the anti-Semitism card, portrays himself as a victim, and the world changes it view on him and his twisted policies.
11
As a confirmed Realist I Find it amazing Weatern Democracies won’t admit there is no solution to Jews and Arabs conflict.
1
Hard to imagine how I would act, if all my neighbors wanted to kill me.
8
The hatred this man is generating in the world against Israel and unfortunately Jews as well is unbelievable. Hiding behind the strong and defying the weak is unethical, unfair and unjust. We Jews are taught this very early on in our lives. We are give examples from the Bible in Passover and Purim of how the injustice was paid back and what happened to the Pharaoh and Haman. We have the example of the most wonderful Jew of all times despite his being excommunicated by the Pharisees of the 17th Century, Baruch Spinoza, who dedicated his life to write his masterwork called Ethics. Netanyahu is the well-educated son of a famous scholar. He has no excuse to be ignorant of what Spinoza stood for. Shame on us for letting this corrupt man shaming us.
20
As an ex-Israeli occupation-opposer leftist I hate to say this: Pfeffer is right. Bibi is winning. One aspect, however, is missing from his analysis: The fundamental muslims and their notorious legal-political manifestation - the ‘Sharea’. Their pathetic efforts to drag our 21 century world back into a medieval anti-gay, anti-women, anti-semit, anti-christian, anti-any-other-muslim-sects reality is the best support Bibi could have ask for. With such enemies how can he NOT win
6
I predict that the State of Israel will and must be dismantled to provide natural justice to the natives of Palestine. Can you imagine the weeping and gnashing of teeth when all the sojourners must return to their ancestral lands ?
Many extremists dpn't want to hear this but it is thus. As it written, so mote it be!!!!
3
Jews are the indigenous people of the Levant. (Note that "Judea" means the land of the Jews.) They had a continuous presence for more than 3,000 years (although the size of the Jewish population ebbed and flowed over that time). Arabs are the indigenous people of the Arabian Peninsula. Some of the Arabs now calling themselves "Palestinians" had arrived as recently as 1946. Very few Arab families were there for more than 100 years.
Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Israel would allow Arabs to live there also, if the Arabs recognized Israel as a (the world's only) Jewish state and agreed to live in peace with it. Unfortunately, the highest priority of the Arabs is destroying the only Jewish state in the world. They see that as much more important than creating yet another (the 23rd) Arab state.
4
He is a war criminal nothing more. Sadly, Jewish Americans are blinded by their own heritage and selfish goals, that they too ignore the murdering of Palestinian children. Just like Evangelicals overlooking Trumps crimes. Proves neither group believes in anything higher than themselves.
19
Mr. Kinske: hamas is responsible for the murdering of Palestinian children. In fact, hamas encourages Palestinian children to throw rocks and other weapons at Israeli soldiers. If you encourage children to commit acts of abuse, vandalism, and harm against others, you do endanger the lives of those children. SHAME!
4
I find Netanyahu, Trump and all the other right wing leaders to be abhorrent. But they are not a new phenomenon. The world has seen these leaders come to power in the past. It wasn't good for their countries and wasn't good for the world. It will take the involvement of the people's of the countries where these folks rule, to actually turn this terrifying trend around. I hope Israel survives the Netanyahu era and I hope we survive the Trump era. I fear if we don't get back to the values and policies of the New Deal and The Great Society, we may all go down in flames. The majority of people in both Israel and the U.S. do not support these dangerous leaders. I just hope they come out of their fealings of apathy and hopelessness and get out and vote these folks out of office.
14
Now that the US has stamped its seal of approval on the legitimacy of Israel despite no European countries following suit perhaps the US could make some attempt to bridge the gap and make the Palestinians more than pawns in this wonderful display of friendship of old friends. The world watches this act of brotherly love wondering if there is any chance of peace; or is that too much to ask. The GUARDIAN asks its readers "to be nice" to American visitors this summer. "Why" asked American in Monaco today when we have such a lousy President? Because that is why we should be nice to Americans in such a predicament was my reply. He knew what we know; or the known known as Donald Rumsfeld would say?
1
He doesn't get there and do it alone. He gets plenty of help from certain quarters in America. Without them, he'd be nothing.
11
Wishing to remind readers Benjamin Netanyahus' brother Yani was killed in 1975 leading the "Raid on Entebbe" by Palestinian
terrorists..some of those men now in leadership positions with Hamas and other organizations.
Yani was the true spirit (as told in a number of books, plus conversations with BN (on TV documentaries) of his family...a rising star and reluctant warrior to the many battles for Israel.
This point must be considered when evaluating the "option metrics" relating to current issues within Israel.
3
I've always thought Netanyahu was, basically, a timid person. He is at his strongest when doing nothing.
1
I look at Mr. Netanyahu and see a man who may soon enter the record books as Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister;
whose country remains surrounded by enemies on all sides who after 70 years are still sworn to do his people in;
who presides over a democratic country known to be full of highly contentious people who constantly disagree among themselves and with their co-religionists elsewhere;
a nation that now ranks as a world leader in science, technology and medicine that in 2017 was ranked by a study conducted under the auspices of the UN Secretary General as the 11th happiest country in the world, coming in ahead of the U.S. and Britain;
and as a man who is currently telling Palestinians in the clearest terms possible that the game is nearly over;
and that by obstinately refusing to come to the peace table soon with an offer to Israel of permanent recognition as a Jewish State -- including meaningful land trades and security provisions -- means permanently accepting the unenviable conditions they have placed themselves in through their own choices.
11
Before you criticize Mr. Netanyahu, do a simple mental exercise.
Lets say that tomorrow, the Palestinians wake up with Israel's military power and training, and the Israelis with whatever the Palestinians have.
How long do you think it would take for the Palestinians to massacre the Israelis and erase the state of Israel from the map?
Mr. Netanyahu is doing what it takes. And for a change, we have an American president with clarity on the issue. There is no false equivalence. Israel is our ally, they earned the right to their country by defending it from attack for decades. Palestinians have no value to Americans or any legitimacy to claim land held by Israel.
Clarity. Thank you Mr. Trump, thank you Mr. Netanyahu. I was sick and tired of the false equivalence of past US presidents, Mr. Obama in particular.
10
Perhaps the "diplomatic fallout was negligible" on Gaza because it's becoming ever more apparent that the Palestinians are their own worst enemy.
The blockade, which media reports mention but don't explain resulted form Hamas' actions such as using aid dollars to purchase arms and cement imports to build tunnels to infiltrate Israel in order to kill and abduct Israeli civilians and soldiers rather than build badly needed homes,schoools and hospitals.
Infiltrating Israeli territory in order to kill and kidnap Israelis was the goal of the March as well, as Hamas embedded its fighters into groups of protesters, and used women, children and the disabled as human shields.
9
Not many people listen to or consider the points you are making here. And I think they are very valid points.
1
"Perhaps the "diplomatic fallout was negligible" on Gaza because it's becoming ever more apparent that the Palestinians are their own worst enemy"
Precisely
3
I'm not religious in any way. I'm not an evangelical. I have never been to Israel. I'm not a registered Republican and I didn't vote for President Trump. The truth is that Mr. Netanyahu is the last great statesman in the West. He stands up for liberal, progressive while Europe kowtows to terrorists and Iran. When Syria gassed its own citizens with WMD's it was Netanyahu who responded. President Obama tried to silence him but he stood up against the Iran nuclear deal that many now dismiss as a bad deal for the world. President Obama is long gone now but Bibi still abides.
9
Funny...Bibi bombed Syria because he was concerned about Syrian Civiliians ? Let him stop killing the people whose land Israel has illegally occupied and building settlements.
Lets not forget that Germany was courted by Japanese, Italy, Russia and even Chamberlain when he was presumedly at his power..
At least Germany was powerful based on it OWN power. Cut off billion of American dollars in funding and political support, and cut-off american veto power, then find how Israel survives.
3
Neither Netanyahu nor Mr. Trump is winning. Just bullying... which is not the same. Don't confuse bullying and winning.
6
This article acts like Israel is a "major power" but in reality Israel has a smaller economy than Norway, Austria, Belgium, United Arab Emirates.... All insignificant countries.
Israel, like the afore mentioned, is an unimportant country that if gets into an actual "real war" will have major issues without US backing.
Israel is "strong" because of America's money, support and military hardware.
12
"...it’s possible to defy the United States, ignore liberal values — and win." Really? You would have us believe that the US who chose to move their embassy to Jerusalem doesn't endorse the Netanyahu programs?
6
Netanyahu may look successful. Histroy
won't be kind to him. He is like Trump of Israel
but thoughtful people disapprove their
character and the policies. Just like Trump,
Netanyahu is also corrupt. It is not a
coincidence that both are under investigation
and may be charged with breaking the law
and even removed from the office. Israel-
Palestinian problem will be resolved when
new generation of leaders come to power
in both places.
5
Mr. Netanyahu is enjoying his Victorey lap. Trump pased up an oppertunity to use the moving of the Embasy as a bargining chip twords some kind of peace agreement. For decades the world has walked on egg shells when it came to Middle East Peace. I Truly hope peace comes to this region and the Israeli People,but I believe Trump and Mr. Netanyahu are widening the hole.
4
Americans should take strong notice of Netanyahu and his questionable ethics and tactics. He is on his way to becoming autocrat for life in Israel by using a combination of fear and coercion tactics. He and his wife are likely guilty of criminal behavior. However, that doesn't matter, apparently.
Like the xenophobic base constituting Trump's MAGA-heads, the combination of the Likud Party and the ultra-Right political parties in Israeli coalition government has kept Netanyahu in power. Trump admires him. Trump envies him. Trump emulates him.
Netanyahu's past and present tactics will be our fate as a nation if the American electorate does not wake up and vote the GOP out of power in November.
4
It took seventy years and methodical approaches to conquest, in and out, for Israel to become the lone super power in the World; acknowledge it and move on. Netanyahu is the face of this conquest.
1
"It's Benjamin Netanyahu's World Now," but with billions of dollars of out and out aid, billions more of military hardware, etc., and billions in loans each year, from the United States. Had we pulled ALL of the money strings years ago, during the elder George H. W. Bush tenure, maybe the picture of Israel and the Palestinians would of been a world they both could of lived in, now, not so much.
6
How is it those defending their borders are called "snipers", and those throwing bombs, kiting fire ships and trying to breach a border are called "demonstrators"?
8
The two state solution is over. Mr. Netanyahu has the support of the US Govt, nuclear weapons, and the self righteous moral high ground of "never again".
2
What I would like to know is how much money was given to or promised to the Kushners and Trumps in exchange for complete and total support of Israel?
Of course America has always stood beside Israel and given them and sold them tremendous military support. Our support for Israel has been dented but the foundation has never wavered. Netanyahu hated Obama just as much as Trump does. And we have now learned that Israel made overtures to the Trump campaign in 2016 promising 'help' with social media.
What else was promised?
As far as the US goes, our commitment without question under Trump does not look above board. Jared Kushner has had many secret meetings with Netanyahu, the Saudi Crown Prince, Qatar, and of course his father and father-in-law. The man in charge of Middle East Peace had a lot more on his mind than the Palestinian question.
As money, troops and weapons move about in the Middle East with proxy fights, the "strongmen" responsible do seem to have forgotten the Palestinians in favor of money opportunity.
5
The big difference, not mentioned in this article, is that Israel is under an existential threat that is not acknowledged by the outside world. None of the other so called leaders govern under a similar stated threat to destroy their countries.
7
In response to Jerry Snyder:
Gaza is the largest open-air prison in the world. The blockade (to punish Gazans for having democratically elected Hamas) is collective punishment of a civilian population that violates international law, as does Israel's settlement (and de facto) annexation of large parts of territories acquired during war. To suggest that Palestinians represent an existential threat to Israel is to believe one's own propaganda, which - as Amos Oz has pointed out - renders one incapable of making rational decisions.
9
It is not so much that Netanyahu is winning as the Palestinians are losing. Historically, and repeatedly, there have been Israeli leaders, and factions, that have authentically acted in the interest of finding a peaceful two state solution. It is not the Israeli's who have remained intractable but the active terrorist groups who have hijacked moderates in the West Bank and Gaza areas, turning those sites into either artillery bases or tunnels with which to attack the Israeli citizenry. There was not to be peace in Ireland until the IRA also willed it...and peace in the Middle East will require the same sort of reversal.
12
Perhaps you have heard it said, "it takes two to tango." It is foolish to blame all the problems in Palestine on the Palestinians. It was also not all the IRA's fault in the British Isles either. Putting all the blame on one side will never solve the conflict.
3
This article's headline, "It’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s World Now," says it better than if "now" had instead read "forever." There are chickens yet to come home to roost, and come they will even if their journey has been temporarily delayed.
16
1. Netanyahu is not a strongman, but elected leader in clean elections. Israel in not a ‘regional power’ defying the US, but a small country, a US ally, who in multiple cases (not always) acted against its better judgement to accommodate/support the US.
2. Netanyahu ‘success’ is not his, but rather, IMHO, result of the actual Iranian victories - Iraq, Syria, Lebanon & Yemen are now Iranian proxy states and the remaining Sunni Arab nations are focused on that risk to their own countries (rather then the Palestinians).
3. The NYT and Haaretz (where the author of this piece writes) are obsessed with demonizing the Israeli PM. They are shaping the debate away from substance. Many read the NYT, it shapes the DC view of the world.
Do not complain about ‘fake media’ when you actively engage in similar (if more nuanced) effort.
19
1. Israel gets over $3 billion a year in US military aid. And you say Israel is the one accommodating the USA? Wow.
7
Donald Trump is not a strongman, but an elected leader in clean elections...with the support of the Judeo-Christian evangelical-right (who endorse convicted felons and child molesters for the Senate), the Russian Mafia, and all the dark money floating around in the world that wants to put private advantage ahead of public interest. And there was that little matter of the settlements, even though everyone seems to have forgotten all about the Palestinians. Now, how many of them did you shoot last week?
4
Tell Netanyahu every person has their high point. I hear that US Intel met with the Israeli police about computers in Israel recently. (see today’s NYT) . I’ve certainly noticed that Bibi just can’t get enough of Russia’s Putin. He has been making trips there for the last 5 years. He praises him constantly in Israeli papers. And he also loves the M/E Arabs. We should definitely should not forget Mr. Nader, the pedophile, who works for the Emirates & Erik Prince who moved there to the Emirates bc he was so toxic after Iraq, and Bibi’s testimony about Iraq prewar. Then also, Mr. Broidie, one of Bibi’s friends, who hangs out with Mr. Nader.
Yes Bibi should be proud of what he thinks he’s accomplished, I find out more everyday how Trump & Kushner are selling off America, Deal by Deal. So nice of this big Cabal to team up together to bring down America! Well done, but it’s going to hurt Bibi too, bc Russia & China don’t care about Israel or Bibi. They just want power & as long as Bibi keeps sharing technology, he should be fine. Bibi should rue the day he’s no longer useful to all these people, bc he is absolutely disposable! He could very well fall off a very tall building. Everyone is disposable in autocratic nations. Good luck!
9
Bibi is a fraud con man like Trump. He may have a tinge of a soul, but he is another aging politician who will do anything to appease his base.
22
The title of this piece in the print edition is, Netanyahu, the Icon of the World’s Strongmen. It is obscene to equate him with the dictators such as Putin and Arab leaders. And when you mention Prime Ministers of Japan and India, are you implying that they are also “strongmen”? Fake news, indeed.
5
Modi? Yeah. Not disimilar from Netanyahu, Putin and Modi are elected leaders so why call one a dictator and let the other slide. Elected leaders ( Erdugan) are, or become, strongmen. It is their methods of ruling that define them.
1
Only two countries supported the move to Jerusalem as a capital. USA and AUSTRALIA. And if all those Presidents disliked Netanayu they still did not mangae to seriously object to the occupation or coerce Israel into a peace treaty or deprive it of arms. This article is seriously biased and flawed
2
"...they still did not mangae to seriously object to the occupation or coerce Israel into a peace treaty.."
And the Palestinians gave the US nothing to work with on that score.
2
I doesn't cease to astonish me the fact that all those that criticize anything Israel, are totally oblivious of Arab facts and deeds affecting the equation.
Where is Iran's role in destabilizing the area?
Where do appear the spurious Hamas actions?
What's the weight of the 160 thousand Hizballah missiles in Lebanon?
Does anybody know about Iranian military build-up in Syria? How that plays into Israel's security?
How many know that Israel's size is like NJ?
How many understand the lethal implications of 1.5 billion Muslims enraged with the mere 8 million Israelis?
There's no room for error here. One small misstep anywhere in the globe is fatal for Israel.
Netanyahu is the end result of that fragility.
14
Netanyahu and all the immigrants from Europe don't belong in Palestine. Europe is so rich, free, and beautiful. Let them stay in Europe. Britain did bad, UN did bad, US continues to do bad in shoring up this illegal State at US taxpayer expense. Tell the truth. Israel exists to steal the resources of the Middle East just as the previous Colonial masters.
3
Israelis such as the writer of the NYT's article are more concerned about stateless Arabs and their plight within the borders of a Greater Israel than about the real Muslim and Arab threat against Israel's existence. A solution to the so-called 'Palestinian' problem may never be found, so what do these peace-nowniks propose? Allowing an existential threat to Israel's borders with an independent Palestine? Why not have the Arabs who's ancestors lived in the area once known as the Levant or Palestine under the British Mandate, become citizens of another Arab state? Jews traveled thousands of miles to relocate to what is now Israel. How about these 'Palestinian' Arabs migrating into Jordon and Syria, or Europe?
4
Gaza is the largest open-air prison in the world. The blockade (to punish Gazans for having democratically elected Hamas) is collective punishment of a civilian population that violates international law, does its settlement (and de facto) annexation of large parts of territories acquired during war. To suggest that Palestinians represent an existential threat to Israel is to believe one's own propaganda, which - as Amos Oz has pointed out - renders one incapable of making rational decisions.
6
Yes, Jews traveled thousands of miles to relocate to what is now Israel, thanks to the West, thanks to their protective umbrella. It is still open even though the rain has long stopped. Meanwhile, the people living there for centuries and centuries were simply, summarily pushed out of their homes, their lands, their livelihoods to live in open prisons. So they are of Arab descent, but that is no reason for the cruelty thrust on them. You state that Palestinians should just move to other countries like Jordan and Syria. The arrogance in that statement.
By the same token why don't the Jews go back to where they came from - Europe. After all they are decendents of European ancestry. There is no Hitler or Mussolini now. It's like renter telling the owner to evict from his own home. And all the reasons of safety etc. at Israel's birth is not valid anymore. Yes, Jerry Syder it is Netanyahu's world now. He is the democratically elected despot like Trump. No wonder they compliment each other. Arrogance at it's worst.
5
You are right in only one respect.Jews did travel from Europe to displace the Palestinian who inhabited Palestine for more than 1500 years and had nothing to do with the experience of Jews in Europe. The Palestinians have been displaced largely by European Jews. How would you feel if you were forced out of your present location? That is the situation being faced by the remnant of the Palestinians.
4
Anshel Pfeffer writes as though nothing that Netanyahu does is well-intended, is in Israels interest, or is fair to the Palestinians. Mr. Pfeffer is wrong on all counts. Netanyahu is acting to protect innocent Israel civilians (Jews, Cristians, Muslims, and all others) from Palestinian terrorism. The Mandate for Palestine was supposed to be for the reestablishment of the homeland for the Jews on their ancestral land. After 76% of the territory of the Mandate for Palestine was given to the Arabs to form an Arab state (what is now Jordan), the Arabs renounced any interest in the remaining 24% (what is now Israel, Gaza, Judea, and Samaria). However when the Jews' 24% was again proposed to be divided between a Jewish state and yet another Arab state, the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected because they didn't want Israel to exist at all, no matter how small its land was. Netanyahu was willing to negotiate even this extremely unfair-to-the-Jews deal as long as Israel was recognized as a Jewish state and its security was guaranteed. However, the Arabs desire for another (23rd) Arab state is lower priority to them than the destruction of the only Jewish state in the world. The Arabs keep rejecting all the Israeli proposals because they all have a major defect - Israel would continue to exist.
10
"He has been at loggerheads with President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama, both of whom could barely conceal their disdain for him.'
Bill Clinton came close to impeachment for not entertaining contemptuous Netanyahu. While Obama didn't extend invitation for Netanyahu planned's visit to Washington; Congress majority leader did the job. Obama didn't see Bibi however he got 37 standing ovation from the joint session of Congress, Obama stood embarrassed. Who won this feud; ofcourse Netanyahu and AIPAC!!
3
If Obama had been serious the money tap would have been shut down. It wasn't.
2
It's telling that this article – which is laser-focused in limiting its criticism to Netanyahu, the man – has prompted so many responses broadly defending Israel. In fact, a lot of comments agree that Netanyahu and his far-right politics are a problem, yet inexplicably pivot to "whataboutism" arguments that re-center the focus and blame on Palestine.
6
Netanyahu is a bad political actor. He may appear winning on the short term but anyone can see how his terrible policies, words and deeds will harm his country in the long run.
Yes, he may have the support from Trump now but he has lost the support from very much the rest of the world. That may not seem much right now, but Trump will not be there forever ( or so one hopes ).
Most importantly, there does not seem to be a way forward towards peace. Sadly, Israelis seem to lose the moral high ground every time there is a death of a palestinian child. How can that be an acceptable outcome? How is that winning?
6
As a politician, Netanyahu is more concerned about what happens every day than in the long run.
2
Eloquently written; totally wrong, as it is written, as do many articles in this screed, without regard to reality-you have Iran overtaking Syria to position attack on Israel, supporting and controlling this Hamas false border fence crisis (what are they protesting-it was originally an attempt to break through to march to Jerusalem and bring down the country, morphing into "refugee return" and now the US Embassy (what a farce!)? As well instigating Islamic terror in Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere...sorry, this piece was written with the worldview of a hermit from the wilderness-eliminate history and just focus on the Jewish leader defending his very small nation fighting the never ending Arafat/KGB approach and greatest trick in history to power:always attack the Jew and do what ever you want to get in the papers: whether you are right or wrong the world will always support you with support and money and agree with you! Evil knows this-why not you?
5
It's a real toss up when it comes to determining whether Netanyahu or Trump is the most obnoxious and condescending. Both dishonest, both useless, and only interested in themselves.
10
I am not an illiberal. I voted against Trump. I support gun controls, abortion rights, the separation of church and state, and sustainable, ecological, environmental policies.
But on the subject of Israel, and those who would condemn her for "occupation" I ask: what is Israel occupying? The answer for many is Palestine.
When I think of the possible triumph of the Palestinian cause I only know for a fact that it would be a second Holocaust for the Jews, the destruction of Israel, and the end of a great nation which has pioneered in the world of science, integration of many people into one democratic country, and has only garnered the condemnation and hatred of the world for succeeding.
Netanyahu is doing what any sane and competent leader would do: protect his country from enemies. Israel is so utterly tiny in population, so small in land size, that it is laughably horrific to hear how Israel should give back yet more land to haters who could have easily been absorbed into their fellow Arab nations 70 years ago. And, throw in a divided Jerusalem to "make peace."
I'm a Democrat on almost every single issue. But I am a Republican on Israel.
13
I see Netanyahu as Israel's version of Trump. Aren't he and his wife being investigated for fraud or corruption?
We have been supporting Israel for over 70 years and that will never end as long as Israel remains in the Middle East. Have any of you ever had a personal relationship where you helped someone you saw in need and then they took over your life? Mr. Dawson there are several countries smaller than Israel and less able to protect themselves yet need no help- what are they doing right?
3
Have you looked at a map of the territories? Whose land is tiny? I do not think that a humane existence for Palestinians automatically means a holocaust for Jews, nor can you possibly "know that for a fact". Peace not Apartheid, by Jimmy Carter, may be worth a reread for perspective.
1
Israel is on the way to becoming a theocracy intolerant of anyone except Jews and orthodoxy at that.
2
Netanyahu is gloating, but the reality is that he has little reason to gloat. Israel faces two population bombs which could prove fatal. One is the population bomb of Palestinians living in both Israel proper and the West Bank and Gaza. The other is the population bomb of ultra Orthodox Jews in Israel. The secular Jews who founded Israel and form the backbone of the army and of the economic engine which powers the economy will become a smaller and smaller segment of the population, a minority not only of the population in general, but also among the Jews. Eventually these inevitable and irresistible demographic forces will tear Israel apart.
7
Israel is our hope, our life , everything. When you try to destroy this small country that is a beacon of everything we hold dear , then you are evil and deserve to be destroyed as Good and God destroys evil.
1
Why don’t you just be honest and say it as it is: the US of A is effectively the seventh and arguably most important district of the state of Israel.
6
Then move there! Please stop telling the rest of us to care. Israel means NOTHING to me, never has, never will. I don't exist here and flourish due to anything Israel has done for me.
3
The people of Israel have been kept relatively safe. Considering the significant constant threat against them this is a very important achievement of the government.
Netanyahu is the leader. He deserves credit for this.
5
For whatever the reasons, Netanyahu has also kept Israel out of a major war, which also benefits him. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
1
Is it just to condone Netanyahu allowing the harsh conditions under which the Palestinians having been living? Israel was to be a sanctuary for oppressed Jews. It became a sanctuary for others too who believed in the Israeli ideals. Human Rights was the underlying message of Israel even though it was a "Jewish State." Those ideals have been suffocated by the aggressive land grab on the West Bank. The over-reactive responses to Gaza--often called the largest outdoor prison. What happened to those ideals? As Americans should not accept the strongman acts of Netanyahu or those of our own Trump or sit quietly and watch as other authoritarian leaders emerge. That thought reminds me of the poem of Pastor Martin Niemoller:
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
8
Prime minister Netanyahu is very intelligent, courageous, articulate, and devoted to the security of his country. No matter how many times President Obama and the left-leaning European nations tried to twist the prime minister's arm, he stood firm. Israel is very fortunate to have him as their leader.
9
It is widely repeated that Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians all they could possibly want and they turned it down, but seldom are the specific details mentioned. Once I saw a proposed map of the West Bank. It was a honeycomb of Israeli corridors and controls. Hardly a state with real sovereignty.
Before you claim that the Palestinians have rejected peace, look up exactly what was offered. Would YOU accept that? Would Israel accept that, if the shoe was on the other foot?
The fact remains that Israel will never give up the West Bank. That is why they left, supposedly, Gaza.
Bibi rails on and on about Iran, which Ehud Barak says is no threat. Why? It plays to the Sunni Gulf Arabs, particularly Saudi Arabia, who are now withdrawing support for the Palestinians.
8
For decades, U.S. presidents of both parties have barely contained their disdain for Netanyahu, who certainly has had a decided view of the interests of Israel. And for decades the Greater Middle East generally has destabilized – had been doing so since long before Dubya invaded Iraq – and no material progress was made in securing peace between Israelis and Palestinians despite immense efforts made by Israel and us over decades. If it is Netanyahu’s world now then it’s because in that cauldron of seemingly intractable racial, religious, political and other cultural tensions and violence, we need an ally we can depend on, who heads a democracy in that regional cesspool of religious autocracy, and one who is more popular with his own Israeli voters than ever before. Despite questions regarding personal corruption. Despite what much of the world (including me) considers an excessive response to recent Hamas efforts to breech a border fence.
In the teeth of an Iran that in a few years could have nuclear warheads atop ICBMs capable of delivering those warheads to European capitals, and the prospect of a nuclear arms race on Arab and Persian sands, perhaps the most politically unstable on Earth and led by men who believe they do God’s will … I WANT a hard-case like Netanyahu at the helm in Israel.
7
At least for the time being. Let’s help these people forge a modus vivendi, lower tensions, minimize breakouts of nuclear weapons capacity, and force Palestinians to the table to accept a separate state on whatever terms they can get because their allies are largely abandoning them; and THEN I’d prefer (and probably a lot Israelis would prefer) a less in-your-face Israeli leader. And if all those things can be accomplished, they, and we, could afford one again.
But I’m not holding out expectations for resolutions to these regional challenges anytime soon. For the present, the compelling argument for Netanyahu’s world endures.
3
The Right does NOT believe in human rights and considers the lives of many to be disposable.
21
Untrue.
3
Jason Smith is correct. The GOP/Likud is a mafia of rich white guys utterly uninterested in (variously) the plight of anyone who is not a member of that group.
It's extremely unfashionable to say this, but the religious teachings of my child-hood remind me that Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't own the world because somebody beyond his power does. His defiance of truth and justice has cost Israel and the American people who continue to support his Israel an enormous amount of serious moral credibility, going forward, and laterally, around the world. If, as Martin Luther King, Jr., believed, the arc of truth bends towards justice, Mr. Netanyahu-and Israel--and America--are someday going to pay a very big price for what he does and what we have helped him to do.
44
MLK was wrong. The only One True Prophet that we are given, reality, teaches that the arc of history bends towards survival. Survival is the only truth that matters. If Netanyahu keeps Israel alive in the face of its enemies, then that is argument for his truth.
5
The arc may bend toward justice, the problem is that neither side in the conflict owns justice. When all of us do finally see how the arc bends, we may find it moving in a direction that does not fully please Israel or Palestine, as justice is likely to mean painful compromises on both ends.
That is not truth. That's the law of the jungle. Humanity is supposed to have evolved beyond that point, and to care about such concepts as liberty, dignity, safety, freedom and opportunity. Netanyahu does not feel obliged to offer those not of his (ethnic and - even more so - political) the chance to recognize these. He is a self-impressed hypocrite who is being rolled - willingly? - by the world's new crop of autocrats, all while making enemies left and right. Do you remember when Rabin's assassination derailed the first, best chance for peace between the Palestinians and Israelis? It was a right wing Jew that did that, not the PLO. And far from ensuring or contributing to survival, it set the region on the path which has led to Bibi, Trump, Gaza, the embassy, etc. It has been mentioned repeatedly as a provocation by Islamic hardliners, and even given the source, I think there is a lot of truth to that.
Netanyahu can claim to be winning for now, but Israel as a democratic country is losing in the long run. Those American Jews and Christian Evangelicals who think Israel is become more secure and strong are deluding themselves. Under Netanyahu’s watch, Israel has become increasingly a apartheid-like theocracy with a large population under military occupation. As the arc of the universe bends towards justice, Israel’s destiny looks more like white South Africa’s, with Netanyahu showing the way.
28
"Those American Jews and Christian Evangelicals who think Israel is become more secure and strong are deluding themselves."
Actually, a majority of American Jews oppose both Netanyahu and Trump and understand that this is not making Israel more secure.
Other than some like the wealthy casino magnate (Adelson) most of Netanyahu's (and Trump's) support comes from right-wing Evangelical Christians such as those who spoke at the Embassy opening, believing not that this will make Israel more secure but rather that these actions will take us to Armageddon and destroy Israel and the Jews.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/14/world/middleeast/robert-jeffress-emba...
28
“ As the arc of the universe bends towards justice,...”. Naked assertion without basis in reality. The universe doesn’t give a fig about the human notion of justice. The arc of life bends only towards survival within a greater arc that bends towards the cold amorphous nothingness of the culmination of the Law of Entropy.
4
With Hizbollah and Iran threatening war on Israel's northern and eastern borders, the story of Benjamin Netanyahu's political career may undergo radical revision within a matter of months...
4
Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah have been threatening war against Israel for years. Thank goodness Israel has such a courageous and intelligent leader.
Netanyahu's political career should not be judged in a negative way mainly because Israel has had so many enemies. In my opinion, Netanyahu has shown himself to be a modern-day Winston Churchill, leading Israel courageously during its Darkest Hours.
4
Netanyahu, is the mirror image of Putin. And part of it is our fault, or that of the Republican party. They insist on their Israel first policy no matter what that man does. And the language we use doesn't help. Why when Putin overruns Crimea do we call "Annexation" and when Netanyahu does the same with Palestinian lands we call it "Settlements"?
22
Oddly enough Netanyahu is also very like the USA
Why aren't we investigating Israel's political interference? It has been going on for years.
27
It is megolomania for any world leader of a country with a population of less than ten million to think it is his world. Netanyahu may well be a megolomaniac, but that doesn't mean any of the other inhabititants of this world should contribute to his world view. His megolomaniacal view of the world, if shared by a leader of a truly powerful country, would surely end Israel and perhaps the entire world, as well. Reasonable people wish for the survival of Israel and the world. But Netanyahu and Trump are so out of touch that I do not give the survival of the world more than a 1 in 3 chance.
7
Netanyahu has won. So has Trump. But their victory is not over liberalism. Their victory is over their opponents of today. Liberalism always prevails over time. Ironically, it is their own descendants who will repent this history the most, if this history is regrettable. And I think that human capacity for penance is in fact what underlines liberalism, as well as being a key feature of certain religions. Sad history? Maybe. A bright liberal future, I still look forward to.
4
I have seen several opinion pieces on this theme "Israel Needs to Protect Its Borders. By Whatever Means Necessary" (the title of one of them), but I haven't seen one from the Palestinian point of view yet. Moreover, granted that they have a right to protect their borders, but not the land that was never given to them.
21
I like the NY Times but like in all things in life, we need diversity. Check out al jazeera English. I don't agree with everything that is reported, but they present information we need to know, not just about Israel/Palestine, but about emerging countries throughout the planet.
9
The land WAS given to them--in the United Nations Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947. Seven Arab nations attacked in May 1948 and the armistice lines of 1949 reflected an enlargement of Israel's territory. The Oslo accords of the 1990s could have been a basis of negotiations, but Yasir Arafat instigated intifadas instead. I am not pessimistic that a One-State solution is impossible. I think that hundreds of thousands of Arabs would prefer to be new Israeli Arabs, over and above the million-plus that already are. It is a no-brainer that they would prefer Israeli, over Syrian, sovereignty. Given peace, I believe that Israelis would be more compassionate and generous than anyone can imagine, so great would be their gratitude for normalization.
11
Yes, the land was given illegally. According to the UN's own charter, people have the right to self determination. Yet the UN took that away from the arabs when it decided to give land that belonged to someone else to the jews.
The UN was/is controlled by the US, Western Europe, and Russia. The jews were seen as a problem for all three and they wanted to get rid of them. The best way was to have jews go elsewhere. Thus the land thief for the jews from the arabs.
That the arabs disagreed and demanded their right to determine for themselves what would happen to their land, should have been seen. The arabs protested heavily against the proposal. The supporters of the proposal didn't care, they wanted the jews out of their countries.
As for the arabs in Israel, they are 2nd class citizens with few rights. They are tightly controlled by the Israelis.
As for the Oslo accords, the one thing Israel refused to do was let the palestinians have part of Jerusalem. That made the deal untenable. The major stumbling block has always been Jerusalem, Israel refuses to allow the palestinians any part of Jerusalem. As long as they refuse, making a deal will be difficult.
No country would allow the thief of their land w/o a fight. No country ever has. The US and Europe promised the arabs their freedom twice, after both WWs for helping the allies. Both times the allies screwed the arabs out of freedom. Britain took over Palestine, breaking the promise and then decided to give their land away
1
When Europeans came and wrestled away the land from the natives, the natives fought as hard as they could. Europeans brought their diseases and their guns and told them it was their manifest destiny to own the land. Despite almost being wiped out, a few natives lived to fight on, but as time passed, and their numbers and power diminished, the world stopped talking about the unfairness of their plight and papered over their history with a new history until the natives and their claims to the land were forgotten.
33
Maybe this will happen or maybe not or this situation may devolve into a nuclear conflict involving the United States.
3
Jews are indigenous to the region and have resided there for 3000+ years, long before the Arab Conquest of the Levant. Perhaps you should review your history....
2
yes, the Pal's are just like the Redskins....brown, removed and put in refugee camps/reservations, never to return....
4
Leo Durocher warned us all years ago: Nice Guys Finish Last.
8
Excellent article, and I continue to be sickened by the statements, actions and policies of Netanyahu and his cabinet.
However, the title "It's Benjamin Netanyahu's world now", alarms me. Although I know the author didn't mean to imply this, it's redolent of the "Jews run the world" type of antisemitic/anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to which far too many still ascribe - I imagine many people seeing this title will just have their stereotypes and prejudices reinforced.
I wish this title had been worded differently.
13
There has been a 2 state solutions for decades, but it will take the correct geopolitical power relationships to bring it about .The ONLY resolution to this conflict is the transfer of ALL arab muslims from Gaza;Israel pre1967;and the West Bank (Judea and Sameria) from the jewish palestian state of Israel, to the arab palestian state of Jordan with its ancient undivided undisputed capital of Amman.Jordan consists of 75% of Palestine, and by any definition,its population is arab palestinian.
14
Thanks for proposing massive ethnic purging of Palestinians: but only "Muslim" ones? The fact that your very common opinion is publish in this great newspaper says a whole lot about the power of a lobby whose name we dare not even speak.
6
Why not just shuttle them off to the ovens?
5
Why should the palestinians accept such an offer to steal their land permanently?
4
" He is the leader of a small country who has taken on American presidents and outlasted them."
So did Castro. Nice company.
" Israel’s success as a regional economic and military power is proof in their eyes that the illiberal approach can prevail."
Sure, with 50+ years of unfettered, unqualified backing by the most powerful nation on earth, including anything in its non-nuclear arsenal, it's easy to be a regional power.
Israel is sort of like a nation of Trumps, living on someone else's dime.
94
As we learn more about Russian interference in our internal affairs I don't see the same scrutiny of Netanyahu's long time interference in our government. This is a country the geographical size and population of New Jersey whose global is much less critical than it was 30-40 years ago and should be treated as such.
And Bibi is a dangerous man.
77
It feels good to have nukes, doesn't it, Bibi?
21
Could one suspect that behind Bibi's political shrewdness, rudeness, ruthlessness, and disrespect to others, influential people and partners in those crimes, around the world helping and encouraging him, each with different agenda, some religious and many seeking economic benefits?Would one be asking too much to request an investigation into those people to verify the extent of the damage they are causing our nation, our social values and undermining our American freedom?
25
For those who keep mentioning the Hamas claim about 52 dead being their members —Hamas has to claim something like this. They encouraged the protests and the IDF snipers shot over a thousand people including women and medics. Hamas would look like cowards to their own people if their own cadres weren’t part of those being shot. I wouldn’t necessarily believe the exact figure.
8
Time to cease aiding Israeli with any offense weapons or funding to buy them.
Defense weapons only.
America should finally be the friend to tell Israel we will stand by it, but not enable the actions of those who wish to continue to seize land while keeping the occupation in perpetuity.
The status quo is bad for Israel. It guarantees neither security nor prosperity for Arabs or Jews.
Yes many Palestinians have committed acts of terror. There is no excusing terror. That does not mean the United States should continue to fund the actions taken to crush any peaceful dissent.
There will be elections in the United States that will eventually shift the balance of power from those willing to condone any action taken by Benjamin Netanyahu to those who believe American aide must no longer be used as a tool of oppression.
Enough of religious terrorists and extremists on all sides.
69
O! But now they have the Saudis helping.
The 'coalition' of enemies of Iran, Israel-Saudi Arabia [KSA], is indeed interesting. The KSA folks are afraid of Iranian democracy encroaching. And IT WILL.
11
I recall when Netanyahu tried to inflame the political climate in Saudi Arabia and criticized it by stating it’s not a democracy and it mistreats its women. Attacking it at every turn verbally with the support of the U S
Now they are best friends. It’s only a matter of time when Netanyahu will restart that criticism and tries to take Saudi Arabia down also. One state after another till he achieves his plan to rule the Middle East and Israel becomes a super power and the United States is weakened to oblivion
Congress needs to smarten up before it’s too late.
6
The two-state solution is dead. Netanyahu may want to take credit for killing it, but the long run result will likely be the replacement of a Jewish state with a democratic binational one. Settlement construction and repeated air wars on Gaza have created a situation in which a viable partitioned Palestinian state has become an impossibility. The alternatives are the continued rule of an aging and shrinking Jewish minority over a youthful and growing Palestinian majority or some sort of nightmare of ethnic cleansing. In both scenarios Israel will become an increasingly isolated global pariah state eternally anxious about losing the support of its solitary sponsor, the US. It is only a matter of time before the logic of conceding the right of return and a democratic system of one person, one vote becomes irresistible,
40
Netanyahu's triumphalism is certainly sickening sight. As NYTs pundits line up to blame the Palestinians for the massacre inflicted on them. Its Hamas and Iran that are to blame. The idiotic decision by Trump to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel is thanks to Sheldon Adelson's money and Trump and Kushner's easy corruption.
38
Trump's horrible decision to move the embassy has far more to do with pleasing his Christian evangelical base than it does with any American Jews, including Adelson and Kushner.
10
I wish what you say were true.
In the short run it's Netanyahus's world. In the long run this is what follow: annexation of the territories and so an apartheid state; then an inevitable and costly movement for Palestinian rights within the state; ending with the movement prevailing and so one state with equal rights for Jews an Arabs. That end is what we should all want, why not skip to it now?
15
The persecuted have become the persecutors.
39
In describing Netanyahu's American patrons, Mr. Pfeffer recognizes the foreign policy hawks and the evangelical Christian fundamentalists, and also mentions President Trump. But he does not note the kindred spirit that connects Trump and Netanyahu: they are both cruel bullies, so Netanyahu has that constituency locked down as well.
But not to fear -- Jared Kushner is on the Middle East peace beat. We'll see how things are going there after four -- or, gulp, eight -- years.
That was a bit jocular for a situation in which Donald Trump could be elected president not once but twice. It is about enough to make me give up, not just on America, but to Mr. Pfeffer's point, the entire world.
Oh, well, it was a good run...
8
This track that Netanyahu has been following may be working for what he supposes are his interests, but Israel is fast tracking towards not being the "beacon of democracy" it purports itself to be, but rather an autocratic-lite apartheid state with a large oppressed population of the dispossessed.
57
You're so right Mary. Israel is a beacon of extreme nationalistic Theocracy. Netanyahu and his cohorts are a bunch of gangsters, thieves and liars. He is under multiple criminal investigations for coruption with his deranged wife. His power and support comes from Christian and Jewish Orthodox Evangelical believers. Most of the Israeli Jewish population are staunch religious adherents and believers of strong leader aka Stalin, Hitler Erduan or Putin. They are blinded by their Messianic views, Ghetto mentality (all the world is against us), nurtured by Nethaniu and all Jewish eeligious political Parties . Blend in the mix the American Jewish millionaires "Goldenfingers" influence and money and you get a character such Netanyahu and Israel of Today.
3
President Trump can not read. He compensates. That is why he always has someone with him to help him understand
what has been written. Ivanka and Jared received security clearance so he could know what is in the security briefings.
4
Much as I dislike Mr. Netanyahu's ruthless policies and politics, I have to admit that he is a master of realpolitik, something that Barak Obama, for example, did not seem to understand or have any clue of how to handle--and something that the Palestinians are not powerful or united enough to practice. Mr. Netanyahu is the sort of prince Machiavelli would have devoted an admiring chapter to. And he is coaching Trump and Kushner: Intellectually, Mr. Netanyahu may exert greater influence on American policy than any other living person. How can more democratically-minded politicians in Israel and the USA practice a less ruthless realpolitik and win? I am not sure, but I know it can only happen if Israelis and Americans find the courage to insist (with their votes) that their governments live up to their own stated ideals.
28
"Intellectually, Mr. Netanyahu may exert greater influence on American policy than any other living person." And he's not even on Fox News every day.
6
I have to give Bibi Netanyahu credit where credit is due -- he is a born survivor. He outlasted the US presidents who regarded him with contempt from Reagan to Obama. Trump was still hosting Celebrity Apprentice while Netanyahu was Israel's Prime Minister. Netanyahu is part of the current brotherhood of tough guy world leaders. The days of Obama style appeasement are gone for good.
7
Not hardly...
Why does Trump support Israel? To placate the evangelical Christians who voted for him.
It's one of the reason's he pulled out of the Iran deal. That, and to divert everyone's attention from the Russia investigation.
Oh, and don't forget: to undo everything Obama did, which is the main reason he does everything.
55
Comparisons to other strongmen are absurd. Natanyahu wins because Israelis agree with him. True, Trump's election reduced US pressure, but US criticism only resulted in 1-sided Israeli concessions which produced more incitement, terror, and death. It did not make peace achievable.
A "two-state solution" is a messianic belief. Strategies have to be adjusted when reality changes. In the 18 years since Oslo fell apart smart phones, September 11th, ISIS, and Arafat's death happened. Advocating it now makes no more sense than proposing the Missouri Compromise in 1878.
Israelis have no interest in 2 states because the Palestinians will not negotiate in good faith, have no elected leadership, and their "president" is an 82 year old Holocaust denier, who is so feeble and corrupt the NYT says he should resign. More importantly, standing strong, defending your interests, and ignoring the world's fickle superficial opinions results in security and the recognition that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Worn out demographic arguments are false.
Besides, criticism of Israel this week reinforces Bibi's point. If Israel can't defend the '67 Gaza border without vilification, why would they ever withdraw to a '67 border again?
Not agreeing or liking Natanyahu doesn't diminish his electoral mandate or the validity of his opinions. Obama called him names because he didn't like him. Supporting a country means supporting its elected leadership regardless.
Godspeed Bibi!
21
I agree entirely. Say what you will about Bibi, he is the elected leader of one of the worlds most vibrant democracies, and certainly the only one in the Middle East. Where else is the government free to investigate their own President’s corruption, outside of the US, of course. Israeli courts are independent, the press is free and unfettered and routinely criticizes the government, elections are open and robust, and the Knesset includes many political parties with a wide range of opinions, ranging from the ultra Orthodox to the communists and the party representing Israeli Arabs. Those in the US advocating a boycott of Israel are fools and choose to ignore a myriad of other countries that oppress and routinely slaughter their own citizens.
27
No mention from people with as much "acceptance of nuance" as the NRA ... that the man is widely perceived IN ISRAEL as corrupt and unprincipled.
No mention of the fact that he ran as dirty a campaign as ... you can choose between Nixon and Trump - the point is that he fabricated ON ELECTION DAY a clarion cry that "the Arabs are voting en masse for the Left's 'betrayers' - support me or die!"
Yes, there are the rock solid points that the 2 Bibi-lovers make - that the Palestinian leadership is more or less equally unsavory and that it really isn't clear that Palestinians and other Arab players REALLY are "cool" with Israel existing as a Jewish state 50 years from now.
But as sure as they - and other commenters - are that a 2-state solution's time has come and gone, I'm equally certain that it's the only one that - LONG TERM - has any chance at all ... other than replicating Gaza in the West Bank. (And all of Bibi's horsemen COULD NOT...)
Maybe, I'm naive, but Netanyahu is a disease - already long-lived, to be sure - and as with Trump, a basically decent nation will get past it.
Yes, he was flawed, but Obama looks like a giant with Bush and Trump on either side of him. SOME DAY, a Palestinian will come along with some of the gifts of MLK or Mandela. 2 states will come to be, and Netanyahu will be seen as a kind of Stalin, just as Trump will increasingly be compared by historians to Hitler.
Yes, in our country and theirs, some will die with their blinders still on!
11
Yeah, he's tough, and that's what counts, right? Well, woe to ye who are at ease in Zion. His alleged success is the result of caving to nationalist bullies and to theocrats. And the consequences? Reduced chances for peace, reduced respect from those--including, still, a majority of American Jews--who respect democratic values, coming close to justifying those who say Israel is an apartheid state, and lining up with authoritarians, many of whom are openly anti-Semitic. The fact that many Israelis, like many Americans, are willing to tolerate considerable regime corruption in their own government is also intolerable.
16
arp, when Ehud Barak offered everything possible to Yassir Arafat, did he accept the peace proposal? No. So stop blaming Israel and Netanyahu for the failure of the Palestinians to negotiate in good faith.
18
Faint praise by a writer for the far-left Haaretz. Fake criticism of the most successful Israeli Prime Minister.
10
Fake criticism? What makes it fake? It is criticism. "Fake" has become the new adjective for something you don't like or agree with, but isn't that the nature of criticism?
14
Anyone that cares about Israel should pay attention to what the Israeli public thinks. Their lives are on the line. And, except for the far Left, typified by the columnist Anshel Pfeffer, who hates everything about Netanyahu, the Israeli public likes Netanyahu.
15
The greatest existential threat to the state and people of Israel does not come only from outside (Iran), but, evermore disturbingly so, from within, namely from the current very occupant of the prime minister's office in Jerusalem, Bibi Netanyahu. Six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust have not died for this man and his cabinet who flout, and indeed desacrate, Jewish spiritual and moral values, character, and respect for the law as befits a free and democratic nation. Our obligation now is to mourn and remember those who have been murdered by the IDF on the Day of Terror on the occasion of the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Our obligation, too, is to mourn the loss of Israel as the beacon of hope, dignity, freedom, and democracy under its false, even though democratically elected, Leader Netanyahu.
Though not a Jew myself, but a Christian, I join in heartbreak my Jewish ancestors and siblings in faith as they mourn for their beloved Israel which has lost its way by abandoning G'd's covenant and not heeding G-d's prophets past and present, turning the Promised Land into a desert bereft of the faithful, just, and righteous.
6
Israel is not lost. Not even close! Killing those who are up to kill you is actually a Jewish command. You are mixing between Chrsitianity and Judaism. Only Christians pay lip service to handing the other cheek to the enemy, and they don't have any record of actually doing so in practice. Look under "history". I feel very comfortable with the targeting of these 60 individuals, more than 50 of which are Hammas and Islamic Jihadists by their own admission. Neither you, nor any sane person in any sane country would let hordes of enemies swarm their borders and try to infiltrate. They did not succeed with the tunnels or with cutting the fences and walking in to pillage and murder, so the time-tested tactic for winning is for them to turn to world pity for people they shamelesslly sacrificied to die. Enough nonsense.
15
Netanyahu is ignoring the liberal "value" that Israelis should welcome the rain of death and destruction upon them from Arabs in Gaza, instead of doing everything possible to destroy a real physical threat. Yeah, that's the kind of "value" that liberals embrace. It's why every "liberal" (aka Progressive, Democrat, Socialist, whatever) should be required to live in the Israeli target zone of Hamas before they are allowed to spout their unreal, irrational nonsense.
18
Faced with a choice of 'peace' or 'land', Israel has consistently chosen 'land'.
Israel also demands that Palestine chooses 'peace' over 'land'.
In the context of the slaughter in occupied Gaza, apartheid in the West Bank, one can understand the Palestinians' continued rejection of the Israeli 'offer'.
#FreePalestine
8
Not true. Israel gave Sinai back to Egypt as part of the Camp David accords. And sadly Israel thought it would finally have peace by ceding Gaza back to Palestinian control. What a disaster that turned out to be!!
23
Yes, what a disaster. The problem is that Israel did not give real control to Gaza. It is a prison, the biggest in the world. Israel controls who and what can enter, having a strict embargo on Gaza.
There is no real freedom in Gaza.
Hamas gives food and medicine to the people, builds hospitals and schools. Which Israel destroys.
Hamas in not an angel, but then again, no one else is helping the Palestinians. Which makes Hamas the only decent player for them.
For a people who have been subject to the most egregious abuses of basic human rights and an attempted genocide, Israelis today seem to be inscrutably dismissive of the Palestinians' plight.
9
The Jews in the Diaspora never threatened or terrorized their hosts. They never called for the destruction and annihiliation of the countries they lived in. There is no comparison here. People simply forget that we are still under existential threat no other nation has to endure. People forget how small and hard to defend our borders are. People forget that Israeli Arabs have all the freedoms and a stable country to live in. They know it, that's why they do not want to live in a Palestinian state. Considering all, Israel behaves much more morally than any of its neighbors including all.
18
It’s ironic that Gaza has become a ghetto, regulated and kept in check by a Jewish state. What did the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto ultimately do? They rebelled. They were willing to lose their lives because anything was better than living in misery under Nazi oppression. The analogy is not perfect. Israel is NOT Nazi Germany. But Israel would do well to recognize Gazans’ desperation and how it makes them susceptible to extreme action. For Israeli leaders to behave as if there is nothing to be done other than shoot the protesters shows a failure of imagination and willful denial of any Israeli responsibility for the state of this modern-day ghetto.
2
No, but the Israelis do threaten destruction of other countries, just not the ones they live in.
Netanyahu is the Churchill of our time. Protecting Israelis (that includes the 20% that are Arab) from the Iranian menace is job #1.
10
The Israelis don’t seem to mind.
3
"stateless Palestinians." Stateless Kurds, bombed and "oppressed" by Turkey. Stateless Tibetians, militarily overrun and oppressed by China. One might even go so far to say "stateless Native Americans" since their tribal treaty land rights are consistently abrogated and disrespected by their "oppressors."
Yet all one ever reads or hears about is Israel the oppressor. Why is that?
33
Israel has lost the the US youth, the next generation. Israel will pay a heavy price for Netanyehu. Adelson will not live forever and Kushner is headed for jail.
24
Sadly the Palestinians said no one too many times.
11
There is only one word that works to sum up Bibi's accomplishments in diplomacy and war:
Feh.
2
Article not 100 percent right.Trump sent Jared to work on peace agreement.Supposedly Trump told Netanyahu recently that he does not see agreement happening.If not Israel will keep building settlements and Israel will for all intents and purposes become a Moslem-Jewish country,not a Jewish country.
1
We’ve seen this movie before. I don’t care if anyone in the ME acquires Peace. I just want to break with Israel & Trump, whose Mafia handler, Mr. Cohen, is in a perilous legal state in SDNY. It’s only going to get worse, not better.
1
The problem with Bibi is that like many other Israeli politicians he has no long game when it comes to dealing with the millions of Palestinians living in squalid conditions on Israel's borders. He can ignore the problem today, but without a long-term solution rooted in a viable peace process Israel will no longer be able to resist being branded as an Apartheid state. I hope Bibi has a vision that extends beyond Israel's short-term success rooted in closer ties with Vladimir Putin and America's military industrial complex.
4
Trump’s just like him. They deserve each other!
I would characterize the U.S.-Israel relationship as one of codependency. Israel hides behind a paranoid sense of victimhood in order to victimize the Palestinians whose land they stole, and the U.S. enables their actions with money, weapons and diplomatic cover. There was a time when one might have seen some benefit to the U.S. from this arrangement, but that time has long since passed, and now the enabler, too, is being harmed. Nevertheless, special interest groups (i.e. Christian zionists, the Jewish Israel lobby, and the weapons industry) have captured both Congress and the Presidency. It is the special interest groups and their allies in the media who are driving U.S. policy, even as an increasing number of Americans are appalled by Israel's dehumanizing brutality towards the Palestinians. I am waiting for the day when that latter group rise up and make their voices heard.
18
Netanyahu is a dangerous right wing voice for Israel and matches
with our own Populist, racist, authoritarian Trump who defiles the truth and defames the presidency. They are two of a kind. He also has his own corruption issues in Israel - a bad politician at best, bad for Israel and for us.
6
Exactly right. We are going to pay a very very heavy price for Netanyahu and Trump. Of course the deplorables are clueless.
7
Hopefully Netanyahu's world will shrink to the size of a jail cell when he is convicted of corruption.
14
So basically, hold on long enough and wait for the messiah (in this case Trump) to deliver the Jewish state. So now Trump is on par with the Jesus, Moses and Muhammad. Give me a break.
7
Netanyahu with thanks to Trump, who is being supported and encouraged in his Israel policies by American Christian religious conservatives who believe they will ascend to heaven in the apocalypse they believe is coming, starting in Israel.
5
Yet another article that leaves out the fact that of the scores of Palestinians who died in Gaza this week, 90% of them were members of terrorist organizations, according to this organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad themselves. And leaves out the fact as well that out of every country in the Middle East, even with its supposedly autocratic leaning leader, the best place to be Muslim, sexually non-binary, atheistic, or non-dominant culture is far and away Israel.
14
Mr. Netanyahu has won nothing. A man that cruelly destroys others, that negates their existence, that treats them as animals does not deserve our accolades, but our shame.
8
This type of winning is the most despicable form of victory. It is a sure thing that over the long run Netanyahu will be seen for what he is: an opportunistic thug who hides behind the strongest, a corrupt soul who hides behind the worst humanitarian disaster commited by people who have nothing to do with his current enemies, and a bully who knows no shame. Many others like him were winners in the short run. Too many to name here!
3
Netanyahu has also shown how Donald Trump can be played like a fiddle. Bibi wants the United States to fight his wars, spending American treasure and lives in the process. All he needs to accomplish this is to manipulate Trump's infantile ego and fears, which most have found to be trivially easy.
At the behest of evangelical Christians, we are inexplicably taking sides in 1,400 to 3,000-year-old Middle-Eastern religious conflicts. The only beneficiaries are the foreign leaders who have mastered the manipulation of Donald Trump and American corporate arms dealers.
My father, a Cold War era Air Force officer, once told me: if your country needs you to fight, you fight. But he was speaking of Stalin, Hitler and Mao, and the existential threat they represented. He would not give that advice today.
3
so what? anything that Israel does is by definition the right, correct and moral choice. any criticisms of Israel are anti semitic. get with the program.
3
Revive the Oslo Accords.
And now we have the outrageous spectacle of Jews who plan to survive? Who support a leader who may have his flaws, but who plans to see his nation survive? Who protests plans to overrun and occupy his nation? Just listen to the UN General Assembly today, saying that although any nation on Earth would have a really hard time explaining to their own citizens why they were allowing their borders to be overrun by neighbors intent on occupying their property, only Israel should just let them in, vacate their homes and businesses. So if your sensibilities can not extend to an appreciation of Benjamin Netanyahu, I can explain his success to you; he plans to live, he plans to see his nation live, he plans to see his children live.
16
well stated , Mary from Arizona, The Jewish people in Israel or any place in the world , will no longer let the world impose victimhood on them. We will not accept a double standard when it comes to moral judgment of Israel.
8
If anyone has defied the United States and rejected liberal values, it is Israel’s Arab neighbors, who openly declared their goal of destroying Israel in 1948, engaged in terrorism in Israel and abroad (starting long before 1967), exported violent strains of religion, and repeatedly rejected peace proposals that met nearly every one of their demands.
For seven decades, Israel’s Arab neighbors resorted to war and violence in the first instance, as a way to achieve a political goal. This is not about 1967, Palestinian activists themselves have stated in Times OpEds that it is about living within the lands the UN established for an independent Israel. This is about 1948, and the legitimacy of Israel itself.
Amazingly, notwithstanding this, Israelis and their leaders are criticized for not being more accommodating or for not advancing the peace process. How would any liberal nation react to 70 years of this behavior other than as Israel has done?
36
With absolutists on both sides controlling the dialog, the desparate people caught in the middle are getting chewed up and spit out at a fearful rate. The people at the top of the heap love the conflict while those at the bottom continue to suffer and die with little if any hope left for a better future. History shows that more times than not when all hope is lost by the majority of those suffering, the conflict becomes cataclysmic for all.
1
I sincerely hope it's Benjamin Netanyahu’s world, temporarily. Like waves in the sea, geopolitics is the sum of multiple curves. Sometimes we gt a confluence of waves, and sometimes this results in a rogue wave. Netanyahu [like Trump] is a rogue wave, a one-in-n-times event. The danger with all these rogues is we'll reach a tipping point. When that happens, I'm emigrating to Mars.
For ages Netanyahu has lied and lied and lied.
All he wanted was an all out war in he Middle East, if possible run by a proxy like the US.
Years ago, no one wanted to listen to him.
Now the world has changed and there is a big liar in the White House who listens to the simple lies Netanyahu is telling.
Which does not make it Netanyahu's world but a world in which the wrong people listen to him.
Yes, at the moment it looks as if Netanyahu is able to get away with his lies and his aggressions.
But he is also under immense pressure to get his plans executed as there is a very real and imminent danger that Netanyahu will be in jail soon and for a long time.
And that will help the region and world peace quite a bit - at least as long a Liebermann will not be the successor of Netanyahu.
What powerplay really is, is what Kim Jong Un does.
Best expressed in this cartoon:
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/cartoon-des-tages-fotostrecke-142907-2...
4
The idea that someone that has won, and lost, elections based on the popular vote in a Democracy is a "strongman" is ludicrous. What is illiberal about representing you coalition in a government as the opposite coalition opposes?
The author notes that Palestinian intransigence has scotched peace. So if Netanyahu is replaced Palestinian rejectionism with disappear. Perhaps if the Palestinians had a different leader than Abbas -- now in a very strongman-like 14th year of a 4 year term -- that is willing at accept any Jewish state then peace may be more attainable.
6
Israel is winning because deep down, everyone knows she is in the right.
Prior to 1948 both Israelis and Palestinians were without a country. They were each given a country, side-by-side. At that moment their narratives split, being guided by two different philosophies: the Jews pursued personal survival and the Palestinians pursued Israeli destruction.
Israel has not been sowing hate, nor pursuing the destruction of another people. Israel returned land that they conquered in wars they did not start. They send medical aid and food to the Palestinians. Palestinian children are cared for in Israeli hospitals. The Palestinians send their children to the front lines to take bullets for the politicians. They launch rockets from schools and send those rockets into civilian areas. While they have played the victim card exquisitely & to perfection, the world's other countries have too many of their own problems to spend too long supporting a group whose platform is based on hate and destruction. It has been observed in the NYT many times that the other Arab countries have done nothing to support the Palestinians for the past 2 decades or so. They don't want another war with Israel; they won't squander their own blood and treasure on such a conflict and several have made direct peace with Israel. So, the two narratives varied in strength: the will to survive has been stronger than the will to destroy.The narrative of survival is winning, that's all.
27
The palestinians didn't have a country because the British took it from them after WWII. The British had promised the Palestinians their own land, but reneged. Then instead of freedom and their own land, they got told that their land would be split with the jews getting the larger portion.
As for the Arabs not wanting to get involved, you are correct. They have bigger fish to fry.
Oh And Israel tightly controls everything going into Gaza and often denies basic necessities like food and medicine. Which is why Hamas is so popular, they supply food and medicine to the people. And rebuild the schools and hospitals the Israelis destroy.
2
Netanyahu, despite his hawkishness, was willing to allow the shipment of medical supplies to Gaza.
https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/05/18/hamas-turns-away-supplies-from-isr...
Hamas turned them down.
Why is Hamas in power? Because Israel voluntarily withdrew from Gaza, allowing its people to vote Hamas into office.
Hamas, in effect, is telling Israel not to make any future withdrawals from territory.
15
I have seen this story before. It does not end well. The last time the right rose up, it caused the deaths for 50 million in Europe...and the murder of 6 million innocent Jews. It is ironic that the country that was formed out of the ashes of that war has taken a eerily similar form of nationalism and made it their own.
8
Bibi-baby cynically sought and welcomed the support of the extreme right-wing orthodox religious groups even though Israel was never meant to be a religious country even at the time of the British Balfour declaration (1917!)
Now they are stuck with this attitude as long as Netanyahu remains in power and Israel would do well if they could get rid of this ultra-corrupt man.
Of course, the Palestinians need to come to their senses as well and stop listening to their most extreme factions who are trying to destroy Israel because it is not in their ultimate interests to do that.
Mr. Pfeffer is correct on her analysis. But she also misses two very important points.
First, Israel still is a country that is dependent on American support (in all aspects) to maintain its current advantages and on European indifference. Those two items can change very fast, in particular if you are aware of the attitudes of young Jewish Americans and young Europeans.
Second, in many respects Israel's Netanyahu is a country that lives by the sword. In many ways it is not different than certain historical figures like Napoleon or Imperial Germany or more recent Apartheid South Africa. I wonder how many people would have taken you seriously if you told Napoleon in 1809 (after the battle of Austerlitz) that in less than 6 years everything would be over or if you have told the the German Kaiser in 1913 that in 5 years everything would be over. I also wonder if you told people in 1982 that in 9 years the apartheid regime would be over.
The point is that Israel is a country that was built in a century were most people believe in certain humans rights that Israel denies to the Palestinians and to maintain such situation it requires the support of outside actors (which in the long run Israel can't control) and brute military force. Two things that will not last forever.
6
And that spells disaster for the Middle East!
There is an old American saying Netanyahu surely must know: "the chickens will come home to roost." He is betting they "will come home to roost" when he is no longer PM and the mess he and this coalition have made will be someone else's responsibility.
One of the hallmarks of an astute leader is foresight. Like his buddy Trump, he has none
2
I think demographic realities are pushing Netanyahu to the right. There are too many people. The Palestinian, Jewish, and Israeli Arab populations are all growing. Gaza epitomizes this trend. How could there ever be a two-state arrangement now? Trump is not the enabler. I think these facts, plus Netanyahu's own advancing age, are all clarifying reality. If he didn't have tunnel vision before, he does now.
1
For much of its history, Israel was led by center-left governments. This included significant periods in the last 20 years. The Palestinians got offers from those governments to make peace, offers that would have given the Palestinians a state and 90% of what they wanted. They turned those offers down, preferring to play long ball in search of winning 100%. The current situation is what long ball looks like. Meanwhile, Netanyahu has led Israel to even greater prosperity, good relationships with the USA and Russia, burgeoning relationships with the Gulf States, and a status quo where the best place in the Middle East to be a woman, gay, Arab, an atheist, LGBTQIA+, etc. is Israel. In their decision to play long ball, the Palestinians have only fallen further behind.
15
I am tired of people condemning Israel when he Palestinians have shown no intent to compromise.
They say Israel hasn't done enough and then mention the settlements and say they are built on stolen ground.
Maybe same are but most are not.
This is fake news.
This is not the reason the Palestinians and Israel have no signed a peace treaty.
The real reason is that the Palestinians will not accept Israel as a Jewish state but demand that they be seen as a Muslim state.
This is the real reason why they are against the settlements.
They do not want Jews who own property living in their Muslim state.
They also want what they call the right of return.
They know Israel will never agree to this.
Why do they insist on making a demand they know is a deal breaker.
It's because they don't want a deal.
The Palestinians have stated on may occasions that this point is not negotiable.
If you accept what I have written then you have to see that Israel either does what they can't do or does what they are doing.
Waiting for the Palestinians to wake up and decide that they can not dictate the agreement.
Israel prime ministers before Netanyahu and even Netanyahu have made proposal that give the Palestinians most of what they want.
Now it is time they give Israel something more and recognition isn't it.
Something they can't take back.
Something like West Jerusalem and it's suburbs in return Israel would get rid of all the settlements.
.
7
The problem is that for this victory, Netanyahu has sold the soul of the Jewish people and compromised its moral standing. It's a Faustian bargain.
97
Ellin: "Netanyahu has sold the soul of the Jewish people..."
Sold the souls of a lot of Israeli Jews, maybe. Not the souls of the many, many American Jews who say "Not in my name!"
- and who see his actions and policies as being in direct contradiction to Jewish traditions, principles and philosophy.
17
There is NO OCCUPATION OF PAlESTINIAN TERRITORY, because there is no Palestinian territory. There is Gaza, Judea, and Samaria (including the eastern part of Jerusalem) that were illegally occupied by Egypt and Jordan, from 1949 until their 1967 war against Israel. During Israel's defensive war, it was able to liberate Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Israel has the strongest legal claim on them, but there are other claims - so they are disputed territories. If the Palestinians were willing to enter serious negotiations with the understanding both sides would have to make painful compromises, some agreement could be reached which would create an independent state of Palestine (the first time ever that there would be a non-Jewish state of Palestime). But Palestinian leaders are unwilling to do that - probably because they suspect that they would be assassinated if they agreed to anything less than "From the River to the Sea", i.e., if they signed a treaty which allowed Israel to exist as Jewish state. If the Palestinian leadership cared about creating a state of Palestine, they'd be in an awkward corner.
As it turns out, the Palestinian leadership is fine, because they don't cate about the Palestinian people or about a Palestinian state. All they care about is that they continue receiving the most generous per capita foreign aide of any place in the world, so they can continue stealing billions of dollars each year and living the good life. Palestinian suffering doesn't bother them.
1
This piece is thoughtful and sums up perfectly the sad, corrupt moment we are now in, i.e., authoritarian leaders in charge who are indifferent to the value of human life and democracy.
3
Israelis can’t afford to be ‘liberal’. Being liberal gets them killed.
24
with all those tanks, guns,planes, atomic weapons, walls
money from the US treasury?
They really must be terrified.......Please...and this is a Jew
speaking......open your mind
7
The age of Bibi will not last long. One of his “trump” cards, so to speak, is the Mossad, which is willing to do anything at anytime to dig up information about individuals or carry out secret missions even to the point of assassination. They have taken pages out of the Dulles brothers’ book, which promoted the “do whatever it takes at any cost” approach. Democracy be damned. In time, his tactics will be shown for what they are - despotic
The second card is still the guilt of the holocaust. Netanyahu still uses this. The Holocaust was incredibly horrible series of events that should be a lesson to teach us what tyrannical power can do. However, it does not give license to Netanyahu or Mossad to do whatever they wish. The last great leader of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, understood this and tried to work with all nations, including Palestine, to forge a world order built on peaceful relationships. His approach was to build bridges; Netanyahu, like Trump, is more intent on building walls
The people mentioned this article as friends of Netanyahu will all come down, like the walls of Jericho - as will Netanyahu. The sooner the better
7
Netanyahu is winning, indeed, but his win means a bi-national Israel where the Jewish supremacy is protected by apartheid laws.
4
Let's look at the results. The "liberal" approach of Rabin and Peres, darlings of the left, in pursuing the Oslo Accord "peace process" led to thousands of dead and maimed Israeli civilians, a faltering Israeli economy, and no substantive change in the Palestinian refusal to truly accept the Jewish state. Putting progressive pipe dreams ahead of stark reality led to chaos, mayhem and death.
The "illiberal" approach of Netanyahu -- ie recognizing that the "Palestinians" never have and seemingly never will give up their dream of annihilating the Jewish State and responding accordingly -- has undeniably led to Israeli prosperity, security, and demographic and economic growth. All the while, the Palestinians sink deeper into a hell that is completely of their own making.
Let the world and the liberal media gnash their teeth. For those who love and support the State of Israel, the only response can be -- kudos Mr. Netanyahu, looking forward to another term.
17
The "NYT Picks" comments almost always lean right when it comes to this particular subject. Make excuses for hawkish factions in Israel and solely blame the Palestinians for their suffering? Chances are your comment will be approved and featured prominently.
Of course this comment probably won't see the light of day.
6
Netanyahu and the power of the right in Israel are a direct consequence of Palestinian intransigence during negotiations. In 2000, 2001 and 2008 Arafat and Abbas had a real option to compromise and build their state. They decided not to... if over 95% of the territories you want, compensation for refugees and capital in part of east Jerusalem isn’t enough- what are israelíes and Palestinians negotiating towards?
The Israeli public that has chosen mainly left wing, more flexible governments until the 2000s. It moved towards Netanyahu because it felt that peace aspertures only resulted in violence and mayhem. Does anyone remember the exploding buses, pizza parlors and clubs after camp David? Every time Israel has offered a workable peace accord or given land it has been hit with new waves of violence- why would anyone there think that the trend is going to change?
The Palestinians deserve their country, but to achieve that they need to be able to compromise, so far their answer is we get all or we act up - and that’s why they ended up with Netanyahu and not Herzog at the other end of the table. That’s not going to change until they realize the process is a negotiation and not a list of demands Israel and the world need to comply with.
51
Careful. The idea of Palestinians actually having the same agency to make peace as they have to make terrorism is only worthy of half a vague phrase in articles such as this one. Surely, with the right partner, that magical mystery Tooth Fairy, the Palestinian Partner for Peace, will emerge from the ether in spite of no evidence that such a person exists (please show me the facebook pages and websites of the Palestinian peace movement). Simply put, Palestinianism is annhilationist first and nationalist second. That is why there is no Palestinian state. That is the reality that any Israeli leader must deal with, but the author can dismiss with three words.
14
Netanyahu reflects a popular view of Israel as an invincible force that can outwit and defeat all it’s enemies without ever needing to compromise. This notion sprung out of the Six Day War in 1967. Wise people know that it’s nothing but hubris. Netanyahu is just an old fashioned manipulator who is preoccupied with money and power who thinks that he can keep it because he’s just better than others.
15
Casual Observer is a appropriate name.
A more detailed observation is that Israel does and has always feared for its destruction. She therefore prepares accordingly, ALL citizens spend 2 years in the military when they turn 18. All learn to handle weapons.
A more detailed observation would be that Israel has compromised multiple times, and received nothing or worse each time. They have swapped land for broken promises of peace several times.
Wise people know that the situation in the middle east is highly complex & needs more than casual observation and resultant simplistic, schoolyard conclusions.
9
Israel must make it’s relations with it’s neighbors normal so that it is free of fear of being destroyed. Living in a perpetual state of war and war readiness is not sustainable. It has achieved success in surviving so far but to do more means making compromises that it is just not ready to make. The Palestinians are never going to go away and no other country about Israel is going to give them a home. Israel will have to split the land that was Palestine up with them. It cannot be the case that the Palestinian state will be unarmed while Israel remains so. Right now neither side can trust the other but until they can this conflict will not end.
1
I'm sure Netanyahu wins their vote because of security. Can you imagine what it's like to be surrounded by enemies? In retrospect, it's probably a huge mistake to have ever given this sliver of land to the Jewish people, but now that it's a fait accompli what can be done?
7
Imagine you have the over-3000 year old history of having lived and built a civilization in a place, and you have to urge the rest of the western world to recognize and honor it, not wait for it to be "given back" to you...And THEN to have "everyone" repeatedly question everything you do or don't do because of their own religious, strategic, and economic self-interest, not because you simply want to survive and prosper for another 3000 years.
6
Given? How do you think Israel came into existence?
You are right, it was a historic mistake a epic proportions to allow the creation of a religious state whose very existence depends on expelling the native peoples.
4
Netanyahu is a symptom rather than a cause. A symptom of the shift to intolerance in societies under pressure. In Israel, the more the Arabs attack it - physically and by boycotts - the more the population shifts rightwards. A campaign of Hamas suicide bombings in 1996 killed hundreds of Israeli civilians and ushered in Netanyahu's surprise victory in the elections and rightwards march of Israeli politics. Rabin and Labor were able to offer concessions subsequent to a long period of existential calm prior to the 1992 Oslo accords.
12
This is a well phrased point: A symptom of the shift to intolerance in societies under pressure.
3
Mr. Netanyahu finally has someone in the White House that will do his bidding. He figured out early that if you compliment the president and play to his vanity that he will do anything you want. The speech he gave about Iran before the president pulled out was aimed at an audience of one. The move of the embassy to Jerusalem was directed by Mr. Netanyahu, as was the pull out of the Iran deal. When you have a president that isn't a student of history, or very well read, you get strong men like Putin, Xi Jinping and Netanyahu telling the president what to do.
8
The article ignores the arguments behind what he calls Netanyahu's successes and let me explain.
Iran is a mortal enemy of Israel and proclaims almost every day that Israel should be annihilated. Iran is also a mortal danger to most of the Sunni Middle East. For Putin Iran is a temporary ally in Syria but he does not want Iran to stay around once Assad is sufficiently back in power to protect Russia's military bases in Syria.
Arab Palestinians have resisted every peace with land proposal that has been offered to them, and prefer to hold out their hands for foreign aid, and then skimming off most of it to their personal bank accounts. Corruption is rampant at the Palestinian leadership. Palestinians made a mess of Gaza by handing power to Hamas.
A two State solution would be best for Israel because it does not want to integrate millions more Arab Palestinians, bit Israel can simply not take the risk of Hamas reproducing what it has done in Gaza.
You REALLY want to solve the conflict, then put in place the means to guarantee Israel's security, agree to land swaps between Israel and the West Bank to ensure better borders than those of the 1949 armistice, and get rid of the extremists.
20
Netanyahu has managed to isolate Israel and in the process US by campaigning before , during and after the JCPOA (Iran agreement) was signed. He really insulted Obama Administration and American people by visiting US and addressing congress without the acquiescence of the US Govt. By now cheerleading the withdrawal of US from JCPOA despite opposition from Israeli intelligence, he has elevated the possibility of a military conflict and in the process has negatively affected the security of Israel. The recent Gaza protests and its violent confrontation by IDF will for sure reduce solidarity with Israel among the rest of the world.
His policies will be deemed unsuccessful long term despite seeming to work out for him short term.
6
One day everyone in the "homeland" will be on one vacation or another and Israel will have to pay the Palestinians or others to wear makeup and pretend they are Israelis, so the actual ones can escape again to civilization.
The Christians tried to establish a permanent grip on the place but became so poisoned by the spirit and violence of the idea they lost support of the Europeans who had made it possible.
1
Just the opening para contains two misleading statements as fact:
The opening of the Embassy in Jerusalem was not a "reversal of policy." It was the Executive branch finally following the will of Congress, who passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995. Funding for the move was set aside in 1999. A resolution was passed the Senate in 2017, by a vote of 90-0, reaffirming the Act and asking the President to abide by its provisions. This President finally implemented the policy set by Congress.
The "deaths of scores of Palestinians from Israeli sniper fire at the Gaza border" fails to note that, by Hamas own count, 50 of the 62 who were killed were Hamas operatives. And that it was Hamas who pushed women and children to advance on the border, firing from behind them. It was through careful Israeli sniper fire that mostly Hamas operatives died, among the 20,000 storming the border through the smoke of burning tires.
After that opening para: The rest of the article has no credibility.
22
You are citing “fake news” when you cite the quote from one single Hamas member that 50 of the dead in Gaza were Hamas members. There is plenty of sources that say that the movement in Gaza is way beyond Hamas’s control. But it is sooo convenient some of Israel’s supporters to frame events in simplistic black and white terms, all the better to dehumanize your opponents!
4
"On May 9, the morning after the announcement on the Iran deal, Mr. Netanyahu was in Moscow as guest of honor at Russia’s Victory Day, standing beside President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin still supports the Iran deal, and is in tacit alliance with Iran, Israel’s deadly adversary. And yet the Russian president presented the Israeli prime minister as his country’s close ally. He has also allowed Israel to attack Iranian bases and weapons depots in Syria, and even to bomb Russian-built antiaircraft batteries."
In other words, everyone is playing everyone else and the world has basically become Game of Thrones.
6
After reading this commentary, it sounds as if Hamas is the best ally that Israel has to date.
3
Well, now I get it. Bibi's a right-wing, autocratic, near dictator, much like those strongmen emerging all over the world.
First, Bibi meets with all these folks as a project of foreign policy. He shouldn't meet with Putin, etc.?
Second, whether one is left or right in Israel is primarily predicated on the matter of the West Bank and Gaza. Domestically, Israel has a raft of policies in place that we here in the US would call liberal, in particular, a first-rate universal health care system. Once doesn't hear a peep from Bibi about dismantling free health care.
Third, about this business of peace with the Palestinians. Here the author is probably correct, but, like every issue, once one looks closely at it, it's complicated.
Let's take it for granted that Bibi is reluctant to move toward a Palestinian state. Guess what? So are most Israelis, though their reasons vary.
We saw an example just this week why a Palestinian state, at this time, is a terrible idea. Hamas is through and through a card-carrying Islamist terror organization. How would it be turning Hamas loose on the entirety of the West Bank?
Bibi's longevity is surely a phenomenon. But right now, according to Israelis, he's their man. He might well be a criminal, but for the moment he's covered in Teflon. What that is is a longer conversation.
10
The Americans and the British created Israel in the then land of the Arabs. If Israel is to stand, then Palestinians need a new home, or sort of. I know this suggestion would be knocked as naive/outrageous/absurd, but how about the U.S. and U.K. giving out citizenship to Palestinians? Then maybe they will be forced to actually take care of a conflict they help created. Some of these Palestinians will then emigrate, while others will stay to fight. But we will then have a better grip on the conflict as we will now have a better picture of the actors in the conflict.
6
The modern State of Israel was sanctioned through a resolution adopted by the United Nations - Resolution 181.
It called for an Arab and Jewish state. The Palestinians could have been citizens of their own state. The Arabs rejected it and attacked Israel.
This should give a true picture of the actors in the conflict.
8
And don't leave out Germany, which caused the catastrophe in the first place, and needs immigrants!
1
Better yet: How about the rest of the Arab states offering them citizenship? They won't. They look upon these supposedly "fellow Arabs" as inferior beings, good only for manual labor and cannon fodder.
8
While the general connotation of this article is strongly anti-Netanyahu, most of the arguments are on target.
Bibi has been very successful at growing relations with a number of Arab and African countries, improving Israel's economy, and keeping the Palestinian issue under wraps.
But the part that is missing is that the Palestinians themselves have never made a reasonable case to the Israeli public. Like every politician, Bibi is sensitive to what his countrymen want. And his countrymen believe that the Palestinians would murder every Jew if they could.
That is what they saw on TV in Gaza over the last few days, and that's what they have seen since before 1948.
Readers of the Times can complain all they want about how despotic the Israelis are, but the Israelis don't see themselves that way. They see themselves as willing to compromise but that the Palestinians will not.
Sure there are some settlers in the West Bank that want to keep all the land, but that does not represent the mainstream Israeli public.
The Israelis feel that they have made serious peace proposals several times, and all they got back were rockets.
So they, and Bibi, are now concentrating on what they *can* control: increasing standards of living and better ties with former enemies. When the Palestinians decide to take half a loaf, peace will break out. Until then, Bibi and the Israelis will continue in their current path.
I, for one,applaud them for doing so.
33
From what I have seen of Netanyahu on television, he seems almost giddy, a light in his step, as he survey's the carnage wrought by his security forces against unarmed protestors. Clearly the events have served to shift the focus away from his many domestic (corruption allegations, etc.) travails. That, I submit, speaks volumes about the sort of person he is . . .
7
It's Netanyahu's world only as long as his Republican henchmen are in power. He has succeeded in destroying the precious bipartisan support Israel once had in the US. Having made his country a partisan football in US politics will be his legacy and it will ultimately prove to benefit only the enemies of Israel and wedge issue politics in the US.
8
Both political parties understand that the USA has supported Israel since its inception and will continue to do so. Who else would you prefer to support?
Obama was surprised and displeased that N. held to a firm policy. But with the collapse of the "Arab Spring", Israel has remained steadfast in dealing with its neighbors- that is- verifiable progress, not just making dramatic headlines in the foreign press. N. could lie and posture and make flowery speeches about love and peace, but he is ex-military and carried a rifle before entering politics. So I have trouble blaming him- this is who he is.
1
Trump likes men like Mr Netanyahu, men of action, Men who set out on course and follow through. Mr Netanyahu has had to make some tough decisions as prime minister of Israel, and has never wavered or back peddled, like Trump he is always moving forward. Indecisive people are not for Trump, and to call it like it is, neither man has any love for the Arabs. Trump has plenty of work ahead of him and he hates radical Islam above all other things. Trump wants to make history, and secretly , so do most Americans.
1
Can anyone please give me respite, if only for a spell, from the unrelenting news of conflict in this part of the world? I beg for a concise, accurate, and truly non-partisan explanation of why the Middle East seems to be an ever sinking quagmire. Apply Occam's razor, and surely some dispassionate thinker can provide relief in 25 words or less.
2
like the question, here's a try:
1) western interference in the region
caused by collective guilt about anti-Semitism at the end of WWII and decades of foreign policies compromised and corrupted by oil interests
2) intransigent centuries-old tribal rivalries that stymy cooperation and progress
2
There is a phrase that applies to what is described by the author. And yet he and the Times tiptoe around it, as though to use it would be heresy.
That phrase is, of course, 1930s fascism. Economic success founded on military domination of the region, human rights abuses, expropriation of land, and disregard for the opprobrium of the civilized members the world community are the hallmarks of the Axis and the Netanyahu government. And, as the author suggests, there are plenty of appeasers to let it happen.
But what is lost to the world is the Israel of humanity, the Israel with moral authority borne, not of victimhood as Bibi would have it, but of perseverance. And what is lost on Israelis is that their most ardent “supporters,” evangelicals and nationalists alike, really only seek their destruction.
6
In practice, Netanyahu is and has been US's' true' head of the State Department and has the Republican Congress in his pocket.
His ego is commensurate with that of Trump.
His visceral hate for the , Palestinians, and of Iran will keep the ME in unending turmoil.
And his 19+ nuclear tipped missiles?
3
The only thing moving more slowly than the Mueller investigation is the corruption investigation involving Netanyahu.
3
This is certainly curious!
"On May 9, the morning after the announcement on the Iran deal, Mr. Netanyahu was in Moscow as guest of honor at Russia’s Victory Day, standing beside President Vladimir Putin."
2
Israel and the United States face perfectly parallel binary questions.
Is Netanyahu to destroy Israel? Or Likud?
Is Trump to destroy the democratic republic The United States of America? Or just the GOP?
3
What exactly are Netanyahu’s “foreign policy successes?”
Allowing Iran to get back into building a nuclear bomb? Reuniting the world muslims against declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital? Isolating his country’s stand in the international community? Constant border skirmishes with Syria? Killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza?
This is probably an incomplete list but as long as having Trump as his benefactor is considered a success, nothing else really matters, does it?
2
Mr. Netanyahu is winning what? The race to help the heirs of a great ancient civilization with a blessed religious tradition of the highest human and spiritual values betray their history, their values and their souls?
4
I think there will be peace and progress when the Palestinians admit defeat. Imagine if the Germans and the Japanese were still pretending they did not lose WW2? The Palestinians are masters of chopping off their own nose to spite their face. Fantasies of revenge are not going to get them anywhere. Accepting defeat will get them everywhere.
5
Forget Bolton and Pompeo. Our foreign policy is being shaped by evangelical Christians. We moved the embassy to fulfill biblical prophesy. Moreover, the evangelicals want to keep Bibi in power because they know that he will never effect the two-state solution. That is why they were so adamant about the Iran deal. Apparently ceding any portion of Israel interferes with end-times prophesy.
Most Israelis are far more moderate than Bibi. He gets reelected because Israelis are also justifiably paranoid. The perception is that Bibi keeps them safe. Actually Bibi keeps them paranoid.
3
By recognizing Israel and supporting Israel over all these years the US has been involved in creating this situation. Why not bring the 3 million Palestinians to the US and let them settle here. It could be financed with what we pay Israel in a year or two and Israel could take over Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would become part of the US melting pot. Whether you agree with Israel or not if the Palestinians were offered US asylum the issue would become moot. Germany has taken 2 million Muslims....and reports crime rates have dropped. The US birth rate like Germany is dropping below replacement.
2
as**** I have spoken and thought of the relocation idea many times also. It may be the only thing that could really work. But there's many obstacles. Would the Palestinians leave? I heard Canada offered the Palestinians a place years ago, but they turned it down.... We have the room, esp. out West. People here esp. the immigrant haters would go crazy. But it may be worth exploring.
Perhaps if every liberal democracy outside of the United States didn't rebuke and criticize Israel at every chance, to the point of questioning their legitimacy, then maybe the Israeli PM wouldn't have to resort to policies and procedures to help preserve that small strip of land in the middle east as the eternal homeland of the Jewish people--all 14 million of them in a world of 7.5 billion.
11
Maybe you should instead consider why every liberal democracy is criticizing Israel. Seems like a better place to start
3
Focusing on trade and security; and sticking idealism in a back-bedroom closet. Is this NOT the American way?
To force Israel to do something one would only need to do those things Israel doesn't want. The "boycott" is an example. Israel is so afraid of it that even the mere speaking of the word causes Israel to scream anti-Semitism to quash one iota of a idea of a boycott.
4
How many Americans vote for a poitician because of foreign policy issues? Ten? Israelis are no different. They want the Arabs to stop murdering them, but, for the most part, people are going about their lives supporting their families, hiking in the desert, visiting the seashore like everyone else. And I can tell you that whatever the world thinks of Bibi, he has removed the socialist yoke from the neck of the Israeli economy. Despite the high taxes Israelis pay for defense, the Israeli economy has taken a 180 degree turn from when I lived there in the 70s and 80s. The currency restrictions that were responsible for booting Yitzhak Rabin from office have been loosened. People are doing equity raises, managing hedge funds and participating in the international economy. On a day-to-day basis, people are able to live more comfortable lives. THAT's why people choose to vote for politicians. TU.S. blue collar workers voted for Trump because he promised them a better life. He has not fullfilled that promise, but in many ways, Bibi and the Likud have. To judge a politician and a country based on one issue is short sighted, but it's a good way to get a byline in the New York Times.
6
I would add that Israel has health care, education, 'social safety net' and gun control protections well to the left of those in the USA and Netanyahu is not altering those aspects.
8
That's because they don't spend half their budget on defense.
1
Netanyahu's mutual love affair with anti-Semitic evangelicals, like those invited by the Trump administration to speak at the opening of the US embassy, speaks volumes. The disdainful treatment of reform Judaism is worse. This guy is a threat to all Jews everywhere.
3
Netanyahu doesn't seem to defy the US as much as he issues orders and our leaders follow them. Next week he'll tell Pompeo to bring him a pizza. And Pompeo will bring it.
5
This piece reads like a dust-cover blurb in its summary statement of the obvious. One can wonder only at the use of the continuous present tense, as in "The world is tiring of the Palestinian issue". "The world" tired of it a long time ago; the election of Trump and the final outsourcing of US policy to Netanyahu's American supporters only makes the abandonment official. And the almost universal ho-hum at the recent Gaza atrocities proves the author, and Netanyahu, correct. Might makes right, or worse: "Might is all that matters".
2
"Might" and the media setting the narrative.
Bibi and Hamas are in a symbiotic relationship. Hamas needs conflict with Israel to remain in power, and Bibi needs Hamas attacks to continue so that he can claim to be the defender of Israel. They both live in fear of peace. So there is no peace.
2
If Mr Pfeffer and his comrades at Haaretz had shown the good sense also to demand adequate safeguards to the Iran Deal it
might have given ordinary Israelis an alternative to Netanyahu.
Moreover, if the US had acted like the dominant party in the
negotiations for a treaty Iran needed more than we did -and if Obama had shown the grit to make these demands - most likely
today we'd have a treaty that genuinely protects all of us.
I do not, and except in this matter, have never supported Mr.
Netanyahu. But with all his rascality as well as the way he
ignored the Democrats in his approach to Congress, thereby creating a serious rift within American Jewry and significant others, he was and remains right on target regarding Iran.
5
It is time to completely cut off our annual foreign aid package to Israel. They have clearly shown that they have no respect for international standards of justice, prefer war over peace and are unwilling to seriously negotiate with their adversaries. Our current shameful policy of backing Israel regardless of its actions will hurt us in the long run. It is time to drastically reevaluate our relationship with Israel.
14
Cut off Israel, no. Assert American interests first, yes. Where Netanyahu rejects American policy, make him pay a price: as we do elsewhere. Since Netanyahu has joined the GOP, in time israel will pay for that error. We deal with many unpleasant regimes around the world. Netanyahu’s joins the list. Unfortunately there isn’t a hair’s breath of difference between Netanyahu and trump. And that’s our fault. But the bigger picture is this: the dog wags the tail, not the other way around. Right now Netanyahu the tail is wagging America the dog. Finally these ridiculous attacks on obama’s Iran treaty are rebutted by the other treaty members and even trump’s old Secretary of State. Only those with an ideological or religious axe to grind think otherwise.
3
One fault in this kind of analysis as Netanyahu and/or the Israeli gov't's of the last 10-15 years as illiberal, is you are looking at the country ONLY through the lens of local and regional conflict. You do mention his focus on trade once, but there are quite an array of social and political policies in Israel, many longstanding, that are certainly not populist or right-wing, at least as I view them as an American.
The GOP is way, way, way, way, way, way more right wing than Netanyahu or any Israeli gov't could begin to imagine.
11
I trust Netanyahu as much as I trust Trump. And that's so sad to write, but they have no credibility.
I remember all too well that it was Netanyahu who was the first politician I remember barking about Iraq having WMDs.
I feel like we are seeing this repeated with Iran.
69
"Mr. Netanyahu is the toast of the new wave of right-wing, populist and autocrat-like (if not outright autocratic) leaders. They see in him a kindred spirit"
Well said. It is best to be clear that Netanyahu is an illiberal pretend-democrat like Putin, and Hungary's Orban, and the new Polish right wing government. He leads the way away from democracy and its ideals, in favor of everything hateful to real democracy.
78
First what is a liberal Democrat and are they better than conservative Democrats.
Netanyahu never claimed o be a liberal Democrat what ever that is.
Israel is a democratic state that has elements that make it Conservative and some Liberal.
Netanyahu is a Conservative.
Anshel Pfeffer is a secular liberal.
It should not come as a shock that he would write a article against Netanyahu.
He is very bias against conservatives and to religious doctrine.
Most of the world is either one or the other.
Are the Chinese right populist.
How about Russia,
If not then they must be autocratic,
Please give me a list of countries that are neither
It shouldn't be very difficult as there are very few.
Israel is one of them.
.
2
Or perhaps the real problem is not that the world doesn't care, but rather that most of the world has come to the unfortunate conclusion that the situation is hopeless.
65
The situation would not be "helpless" if US taxpayers were to stop funding Israel's massive military budget and providing it with the most advanced weapons in our arsenal.
When you steal people's homes and deny them basic human rights, they will resist - every time, no matter the country, religion or ethnicity!
Enough hypocrisy from Americans!
34
The USA never was an honest broker. Trump just finished that delusion. Give him credit, he does not pretend, he bulldozed it when he moved the embassy, a continuation of American Israel policy without pretense.
9
The Old Testament record for Israeli governments is not good once a certain level of chutzpah is achieved. A country that once understood persecution, injustice, and intolerance at a gut level and sought to transcend it, has now embraced it.
For a long time, the view in Western circles was that civilization began in the Middle East. (Scholars looking at Africa, Asia and Central/South America might quibble about that.) Take a heritage of several thousand years of strife embedded in culture and history, toss nuclear weapons into the mix, and the Middle East might well end civilization.
Permanently.
30
Our policy toward Israel and Netanyahu is just Trump extending more special privileges to his family and those close to them. Trump's father Fred was a good friend of Netanyahu beginning in the 1980s when Bibi was an U.N. Ambassador. Trump is always looking out for and rewarding those who have been friendly with and done favors for the Trump family - and no one else. Reportedly Netanyahu steered friends in New York to rent or buy Trump real estate back in those days. This genuflecting now to Netanyahu is more of the same - Trump Family Values - we reward our friends who've paid us.
100
Yes, it is all transactional, money and votes (evangelicals), and more money.
8
...and there's Jared too don't forget.
Corruption does seem a la mode,
Like Trump why take the high road?
It's money and muck
That brings one good luck,
What future does this thesis bode?
41
I suspect that Netanyahu's support is a mile wide and an inch deep. He has no military alliances with any nation save only our own and could depend only on a succession of craven U.S. presidencies if Israel were attacked from without or within. Considering their well-trained military and their nuclear arsenal the Israelis almost certainly wouldn't require any such assistance in the event that war were to break out with Iran or Syria or Hezbollah (or even a combination of those three). Still, the respect and good will that their nation had once accrued is pretty much gone now, just as surely as the integrity of the U.S. has been compromised and corrupted by the nature of the man we've placed in charge. The Palestinian Arabs can only win their freedom now by doing what Gandhi did at roughly the same time as Israel won its independence: engage in massive acts of non-violent civil disobedience. Israel can't be successfully challenged in a military sense (even Hamas' leaders now concede this) but they can still be humiliated in the eyes of the world. Palestinians demonstrated courage by attacking the prison fence in Gaza and facing down the Israeli military. Now they need to bring business-as-usual to a halt with protests and sit-down strikes within Israel itself. The only other alternatives are submission and suicide.
142
They could have done this type Ghandi action in the West Bank, if they would have decided to march peacefully on settlements. They would be shot anyway, but that would make a point.
It is a very different story with a Hamas dominated Gaza. Israel has no settlements there, and Hamas is committed to Israel's destruction. It is legitimate to repressed them by force . The case does not hold. Morever, Natanyahu knows perfectly well that 60 casualities are no match in this "bad "neighborhood. 300 daily deaths in Syria trumps it all.
We might sadly recognize that indeed he is winning. His nationalist conservative view is winning worldwide while liberals are still very strong but are in retreat.
18
I'm sorry but Hamas is never non-violent.
25
@arik: Nationalism worldwide is already bringing poor sub-Saharan Africans through the borders of Israel. If they can't get into Europe they'll try to force their way into your country. Be prepared; the Palestinian Arabs may end up as the least of your problems.
1
Make no mistake. Palestinians are committed to the destruction of the Jewish state and do not recognize its right to exist. If the balance of firepower were reversed they would settle for nothing less and there would be no discussions of peaceful coexistence, 2 state solutions, or anguish over the deaths of scores of Israelis from Palestinian sniper fire.
64
Perhaps, but if the roles were reversed I can't see the US supporting the Palestinian war machine, the way it currently supports Israel today.
1
For many of us, including Arab governments, it isn’t a loss of interest in the Palestinian issue. Rather, it is coming to the sad conclusion that Palestinian leadership is not ready for peace with a secure Israel. Serious peace offers have been made by Israeli leaders of the left, right, and center and witnessed and supported and documented by both Democratic and Republican Presidents. Each time the offers were rejected and met with renewed violence and demands to destroy the Jewish state. Israel had traded large amounts of land, won with blood after being attacked, with former enemies resigned to peace. That will happen again when extremists lose their hold on Palestinian power and agree to negotiate; it won’t come one day sooner. Those in the West encouraging Palestinian extreme demands and demonizing Israel only delay the day when Palestinians too gain land, and independence, for peace.
150
Where exactly would this Palestinian land be? Would they cobble together patches of dirt on the fringes of the settlements? Palestinians are ruled by extremists but the Israeli government has also been taken over by extremism. To be blunt, many in the government and the general population have adopted a calloused attitude that no longer regards the Palestinians as human. The casual racism is shocking. Look at the collective shrug over the 60 dead. Look at the blind eye turned to illegal settlements.
If the Palestinians DID put together a moderate government do you really see Netanyahu tearing those settlements down in order to give them a livable piece of land?
Does anyone believe the current government actually wants a two state solution?
154
Outstanding.
3
Nice to see someone understands reality. Well written comment.,
2
The responsibility for this state of affairs rests squarely on the so-called "pro Israel establishment" in the US and their unconditional support of Israel, which operationally means unconditional US support of the current Israeli government. Netanyahu has taken full advantage of this. Criticism of Israeli behavior is attacked as anti-Semitic, and most Jewish Americans simply don't care enough to speak up.
So now we have a moral dilemma: even as the gap between liberal Jewish values and Israeli behavior grows, the "moral hazard" of unconditional support continues. The stench grows, and younger Jewish Americans are looking the other way.
209
Thank you for telling the naked truth.
11
Buddy - so why don't Arabs and Palestinians have anything to do with this? Do you really think Israel acts in a vacuum?
9
If you're blaming American Jews you didn't read very well. The supporters that matter to this American administration are Christian Evangelicals, a group whose leaders have abandoned any pretense of morality as they embrace Mr. Trump. Their support of Isreal is connected to some weird ideas about the End Times, not geopolitics.
And, by the way, you can't inoculate yourself against charges of antisemitism by vocally anticipating them. Nice trick, but it isn't working.
11
Israel is not an important country. Without U.S. backing and intervention, it would be an Arab state. As for Netanyahu, he is a variation of Trump that will be gone soon enough.
151
Israel is, and will be, the home of the Jewish people. It is nuclear armed, and will not go gentle into that good night. That makes it "important." And Bibi will last; Hamas and the like are providing the political support that ensures it.
20
trump will, I hope, be gone soon enough, but Netanyahu has outlasted Bill Clinton, George W, and Obama. Not saying that's a good or bad thing, just correcting part of your erroneous post Keith.
2
Bibi believes the only way to run Israel is as he does, allowing the building of settlements, building of the army, building belligerence with allies and non-believers, and building enmity, not comity. Palestine has no leverage, perhaps only in the time of Rabin, but the lack of strength from any person in the beat-up Palestinian side to face the tough and wealthy Israeli side is now out of the question. Economic, physical, cultural dissonance continues to push, literally to the edge of the tiny portion of the world Palestine hangs on to, the sliver of their pitiful world from which they were displaced.
17
"when President Trump announced that the United States was pulling out of the nuclear deal with Iran, he delivered a speech that could have been written by the Israeli prime minister."
It probably was. More likely than not there is a draft of that speech on Bolton's phone.
100
Mr. Pfeffer writes for HaAretz, a left-wing Israeli newspaper. He implies that Mr. Netanyahu should be doing the bidding of whatever American president is in power. Perhaps Mr. Pfeffer should be reminded that the Israeli voters are the ones who elected the Prime Minister, and he is doing their bidding. Were he to do something egregious, there are provisions under Israeli law to remove him from power. It seems that the rejection of Mr. Pfeffer's liberal views is a prime driver of his disdain for Mr. Netanyahu, which probably includes the new proposed legislation in Israel which would re-vamp the way that Supreme Court justices are chosen. Yes, Israeli is moving in a way that reflects the will of its masses. Mr. Pfeffer's recourse is to run for office in Israel and shift the direction, if he can get enough people to agree with him. Unfortunately, I believe that he prefers his bully pulpit as a journalist and writer.
20
The best argument for Boycott, Divestment I have read. Israel will never change until they are financially hurt.
131
Why not boycott and divest the terrorists in Gaza and West Bank whose criminal acts are the major impediment to peace
16
Remember to include the $3 billion is real receives every year in war material
12
Does Mr. Holladay know that the boycott movement, like Hamas, calls for the end of Israel as a sovereign state?
16
If Palestinians in Gaza can be blamed for electing Hamas, then Israelis can be blamed for electing and re-electing Netanyahu.
Holding a people responsible for the misdeeds of those they elect works both ways. And what population could be more diabolical than the New Jerseyans who elected Chris Christie? Twice!!
120
It was Netanyahu that campaigned also for the invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein, saying the middle east would be 'more stable'.
How did that work out? Iraq was the power that kept Iran in check. The destruction of Iraq created a power vacuum that was filled in the north by Sunnis excluded from the make-shift new government, and became ISIS. In south Iraq, the shiite influence largely by Iran took over. And Iran has now expanded its militias eastward all the way to the Mediterranean. So we should take his latest advice with a grain of salt.
239
@dsbarclay, the invasion of Iraq was driven by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. If they didn't want to do it, it would not have happened regardless of what Netanyahu (or anyone else) had to say. Sure, Netanyahu had his opinions, but there were also plenty of other leaders in Israel who argued against the invasion of Iraq because they said Iran is the long term strategic enemy of Israel. So please do not overstate Netanyahu's role in what was a decision taken by the leadership of the US, and endorsed at the time by the US Congress (including many Democrats).
56
Ralph, read the first sentence again--"It was Netanyahu that campaigned also for the invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein, saying the middle east would be 'more stable'.
It does not say or imply full responsibility. But it does say that there was support for the position.
6
Yes. But Israel also pushed hard. Am same with the withdrawal from the nuclear deal.
Not good for the U.S.