Skip to main content

When victory is not enough

By



It is apparently not enough that Netanyahu won the special election, Republicans are now seizing on the opportunity to link Obama to non-profit organizations that campaigned against the Israeli prime minister and tried to get Arab-Israelis out to vote.  At the heart of these allegations is a Republican strategist, John McLaughin, who worked on Bibi's campaign.

I suppose this is an attempt to counter the heat John Boehner got for inviting Bibi to Washington and now going to Israel to personally congratulate the blustery PM on his victory.  Of course, all this is done on the up and up.  It is our Communist-leader-in-chief, who mobilized his ACORN-like forces to oust Bibi and bring his brand of socialism to Israel, in large part to empower the Arabs, that is to blame.

You really have to marvel at all these conspiracy theories, but then they are really nothing more than a smokescreen to divert media attention away from more serious issues, like our unquestioning support of Israel despite the fact that Netanyahu ignores virtually all UN resolutions regarding the Palestinian territories, and continues to threaten neighbor states.

Israelis don't need Obama to teach them about social equality or anything else for that matter.  The country has been a socialist work in progress since its inception in 1948.  For decades the country was ruled by the Labor Party until the conservatives first won control of the Knesset in the late 70s.  The Likud Party seemed all but dead when Ariel Sharon broke away from it to establish the Kadima Party in 2005, but his successor, Ehud Olmert, made such a mess of things that Likud regained its strength in 2009.


One of the big issues in this election was soaring housing prices, which is a direct outgrowth of conservative policies.  Under previous Labor governments, such prices were controlled to some degree to help create stability, but Likud and Kadima adopted supply-side economics and prices soared through the roof, not much unlike the situation in the US in the early 2000s, resulting in tent cities for those who can no longer afford housing.

However, this election has become a means in which to besmirch Obama.  The Republicans realize they no longer have any traction on Benghazi, and with the economy steadily improving, despite Obama's "socialist" policies, the GOP needs something to keep the President off guard.  So, the Republican-led Senate will now "investigate" ties between American and Israeli non-profit groups and see if Obama had any hand in this himself.  John McLaughlin is certainly not a reliable source, but that's all the GOP has to go on at the moment.

In any other scenario, such allegations would be laughable.  Unfortunately, Samantha Power and Susan Rice made such a big stink about Netanyahu's Congressional visit that they provided a small measure of sustenance for such conspiracy theories.

Obama has since reached out to Bibi, congratulating him on his victory, but also expressed his reservations in the fierce rhetoric he used to rally conservative voters.  However, this wasn't good enough for conservative pundits, who felt Obama took too long to call Bibi and that he should have expressed his unequivocal support of Israel as they do.  One pundit even went so far as to equate Netanyahu's word to that of God.

Like most political storms, this one will blow over.  Obama obviously didn't like the outcome of this election, but isn't going to do anything to undermine the special relationship the US has with Israel.  He will deal with Netanyahu on his own terms, as he has done the adversarial Republican leadership in Congress.  What should be investigated is the symbiotic relationship between the Republican Party and Likud, with "strategists" like McLaughlin working between them.

Comments

  1. James FergusonMarch 24, 2015 at 12:06 PM

    Seems Bibi is already trying to mend the bridges he burned,

    http://www.politicususa.com/2015/03/23/obama-owns-bibi-netanyahu-apology-tour-rolls-apologizes-israeli-arabs.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more