After President Obama was caught playing tarmac theatrics with Gov. Jan Brewer, everyone accused Brewer of being a racist. (Though, if we’re playing identify politics, I’m not sure how a man storming off a plane with a thunderous expression, stomping over to a woman only to read her the riot act as she stands there with a handwritten note welcoming him to her state isn’t viewed as sexist.) The media would like for you to believe that Obama never thrust his finger in another’s face.

Remember when Obama wagged his finger in Gov. Bobby Jindal’s face? Neither does the media.

Apparently, the Brewer incident wasn’t the first time Obama attempted to create “Tarmac Theater” for the benefit of the watchful press corps. Jindal said the President’s outburst, pictured above, was “staged.”

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Specifically, the New York Times and Ha’aretz, Israel’s left-wing daily.

The Israeli prime minister denies making the remark, which was relayed in a speech by Steve Linde, editor of the Jerusalem Post. Linde has since backtracked, apparently.

Steve Linde, Jerusalem Post

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports:

On Wednesday, the editor, Steve Linde, addressing a conference in Tel Aviv of the Women’s International Zionist Organization, said that Netanyahu made the remark to him about the newspapers at a private meeting “a couple of weeks ago” at the prime minister’s office in Tel Aviv.

But on Thursday, the Prime Minister’s Office told JTA that Netanyahu “did not make the remarks attributed to him,” and Linde backtracked, saying the remarks he had attributed to the prime minister had been Linde’s own interpretation.

“He said, ‘You know, Steve, we have two main enemies,’ ” Linde had said on Wednesday of Netanyahu, according to a recording of the WIZO speech provided to JTA. “And I thought he was going to talk about, you know, Iran, maybe Hamas. He said, ‘It’s The New York Times and Haaretz.’ He said, ‘They set the agenda for an anti-Israel campaign all over the world. Journalists read them every morning and base their news stories … on what they read in The New York Times and Haaretz.’ ” (more…)

In an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times, Aaron David Miller admits the obvious: “Unlike his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn’t in love with the idea of Israel.”

But Miller doesn’t address Barack Obama’s immersion in the anti-Israel, antisemitic views of his pastor and mentor, Jeremiah Wright, in whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama worshipped for two decades.

Nor does Miller note Obama’s friendship with former Palestine Liberation Organization advisor Rashid Khalidi, whose anti-Israel views are a matter of public record, or Obama’s eager association with Arab causes early in his political career.

The Obamas with Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, 1998 (Source: Electronic Intifada)

Instead, Miller cites Obama’s “logical,” “intellectual” and “moral” approach to Israel–as opposed to the “emotional” approach of previous occupants of the White House, whose views were allegedly informed by simplistic faith and fables:

Obama’s views came from another place: his own logic, the university environment in which he developed intellectually and his own moral sensibilities. And according to this view, the Arab-Israeli dispute isn’t some kind of morality play that pits the forces of good against the forces of darkness. Instead, it’s a more complex tale, not of heroes and villains but of a conflict between two rights and two just causes. It’s also a conflict that is vital to American interests. And those interests are being threatened by the divide between those who want a solution and are serious about moving toward one, and those who aren’t serious about finding a solution and throw up obstacles. After three years, the president has clearly placed the Israelis in the latter category and the Palestinians in the former.

Miller adds that the sour relationship between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a result of Obama’s allegedly “intellectual” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He seems to forget that it was Netanyahu who famously gave Obama an “intellectual” lesson in the history of the conflict and Israel’s borders in May 2011:

The truth is that Obama’s antipathy towards Israel is rooted in a passionate, radical left-wing ideology that thrives in both the academic cloisters and the radical pulpits that gave Obama his political inspiration and foundation. And the Los Angeles Times knows it, for it is in possession of a key piece of historical evidence: the “Rashid Khalidi tape.” (more…)

After running a slew of anti-Israel op-eds, the New York Times invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to submit his own.

Netanyahu’s refusal, signed by senior adviser Ron Dermer and reprinted in the Jerusalem Post, is a masterstroke.

***

Dear Sasha,

I received your email requesting that Prime Minister Netanyahu submit an op-ed to the New York Times. Unfortunately, we must respectfully decline.

On matters relating to Israel, the op-ed page of the “paper of record” has failed to heed the late Senator Moynihan’s admonition that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but that no one is entitled to their own facts.
A case in point was your decision last May to publish the following bit of historical revision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas:

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.

This paragraph effectively turns on its head an event within living memory in which the Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan accepted by the Jews and then joined five Arab states in launching a war to annihilate the embryonic Jewish state. It should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact-checking.

The opinions of some of your regular columnists regarding Israel are well known. They consistently distort the positions of our government and ignore the steps it has taken to advance peace. They cavalierly defame our country by suggesting that marginal phenomena condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu and virtually every Israeli official somehow reflects government policy or Israeli society as a whole. Worse, one columnist even stooped to suggesting that the strong expressions of support for Prime Minister Netanyahu during his speech this year to Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” rather than a reflection of the broad support for Israel among the American people. (more…)

Politico’s Ben Smith writes today that Media Matters for America (MMfA) and the Center for American Progress (CAP), both “core institutions” of the Democratic Party, are pushing anti-Israel policies and downplaying the threat of a nuclear Iran.

By promoting views once confined to the extreme left and isolationist right, MMfA and CAP are dividing the Democratic Party and isolating themselves on the margins of American political debate.

Smith notes, for example, that MJ Rosenberg, “Senior Foreign Policy Fellow” at MMFA, “regularly heaps vitriol on those who disagree” with his radical left-wing views on Israel, including liberal pro-negotiation voices such as Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic. In May 2011, Andrew Breitbart noted that Rosenberg had accused supporters of Israel of disloyalty to the U.S. and called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “terrorist.”

Though CAP “tends to walk a more careful line,” Smith notes that CAP policy analyst Matt Duss, who directs the Middle East Progress blog, called Israel’s blockade against terrorist-controlled Gaza a “moral outrage” and likened it to “segregation in the American South.” CAP has also accused pro-Israel organizations, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), of agitating for war with Iraq and Iran.

Smith reports that CAP chairman John Podesta has faced complaints over “borderline anti-Semitic stuff” about Israel published on his organization’s website: (more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Roger Aronoff:

The incident involving a live microphone that took place last week at the G20 summit in Cannes, France involving President Barack Obama, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, and the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, was an important revelation on several levels.

First, it revealed the true feelings that Obama and Sarkozy have toward Netanyahu, which is quite different from their public pronouncements and actions. No big surprise in either case. But the bigger story is how corrupt the media are to go along with the attempted deception.

What occurred is that the two presidents were speaking in what they thought was a private conversation, but what they overlooked was that the mics they were wearing were live, and a simultaneous translation of their conversation was being broadcast to the journalists outside the room. Those journalists were not to be given headphones until the session resumed, but a number of them had their own and were listening as a translator repeated the comments of the two men.

Initially, in the conversation, Obama was critical of Sarkozy for not letting him know in advance that France would be voting to allow the Palestinians membership in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). After they were voted in to the organization, the U.S. Congress voted to cut off its portion of the funding for UNESCO, as it is required by law to do if Palestine is admitted as a member of any international organization before it reaches a peace agreement with Israel. Obama, whose spokesmen have made clear that he once again will ignore Congress and do what he can to help UNESCO, was also reported to have asked Sarkozy to try to help persuade the Palestinians to stop their bid to gain full UN recognition as a state.

Sarkozy then said of Netanyahu, “I cannot bear him, he’s a liar,” to which President Obama reportedly said, “You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day.” (more…)

Some of my friends criticize me because they believe I am too hard on President Obama. They say they can’t believe that there is not one of his policies which I support wholeheartedly. Even a broken clock is right two times a day, they say; isn’t there one policy to which you can urge “let’s help Obama on this one”? And I would reach down to the bottom of my soul and really try to come up with something, but I always failed … until today. I have finally found something we should all help Obama implement. He doesn’t like talking to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu all the time; all of America should be behind our President insuring that he doesn’t have to talk to Bibi every day.

During the G20 meetings, President Barack Obama and French President Sarkozy got caught talking in front of a hot mic.

The conversation began with President Obama criticizing Sarkozy for not having warned him that France would be voting in favor of the Palestinian membership bid in UNESCO despite Washington’s strong objection to the move. But then the two got personal:

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama. The POTUS replied: “You’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”

Nothing leads to good political pundit material like pair of catty politicians speaking candidly an without realization that they’re in front of an open mic.  In true Los Angeles Times fashion, the “journalists” in the room agreed not to report the comments (remember during the 2008 campaign the Los Angeles Times withheld a potentially damaging video tape of Barack Obama toasting his friend and former PLO press spokesman Rashid Khalidi).  Then all of the reporters in the room signed a pledge to withhold the damaging information (although there is no truth to the rumor that Abe Foxman of the ADL insisted on the written pledge).

What happened next is what usually happens in cases like this. (more…)

This week President Abbas made a disastrous application for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian Statehood at the United Nations. This bid, more than anything, was a result of Barack Obama’s disastrous Middle East policy, but not according to Bob Beckel. Beckel on Friday’s “The Five” suggested that Obama’s policies had nothing to do with the UN disaster, nothing to do with the fact that Abbas refuses to negotiate, and nothing to do with Palestinians’s refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish State. It’s all the fault of the settlements, the settlements, the settlements.

Honestly, I can’t remember if he repeated the words “the settlements” three or four times but Beckel certainly made his point. He also proved that he is either too partisan to admit the truth, or too lazy to research recent  history, but either way he is wrong.

Allow me to explain the facts and for brevity’s sake I will start with the Obama Administration.

While the Palestinians have never accepted Israeli settlements, secession of all settlement building has never been a precondition to talks. Israel had long ago agreed not to build new communities in Judea and Samaria but would continue to add housing units to existing communities.

During the government of PM Ehud Barak, there were direct talks and construction continued in existing communities.

It was the Obama administration’s naiveté that made the settlements an issue. Hillary Clinton first demanded the freeze in 2009 and was quickly backed up by Obama. What the President and his advisers perceived as a minor concession (a settlement freeze including no new housing units in existing communities) was for Israel a grave sacrifice. From their point of view Obama was telling adult Israelis that their children could no longer live near their parents. He was also saying that a policy not accepted in the United States (allowing people of a certain faith to live anywhere they want) was OK as long as it appeased the Arab world.

It is interesting that the man who pushed for Muslims to build a mosque on Ground Zero, and for illegal immigrants to live in Arizona, believes that Jews should be banned from living on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Making the settlement a cornerstone of the new administration’s Middle East policy was a major naivete-driven error by the Obama administration. It was further compounded by their inclusion of Jerusalem in the mix and their constant public berating of the Jewish State. This turned the Israeli population against Obama, especially the Israeli left who would be more inclined to support a settlement freeze demand. A May 2011 Smith Poll conducted for the Jerusalem Post showed that only 12% of Israelis believe Obama is pro-Israel while 40% believe he is pro-Palestinian.

Obama’s demand for a freeze of natural community growth broke a US/Israel agreement made during the Bush administration.

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Jonathan Chait at New York magazine [corrected - see below], about “Why Bibi Hates Obama“:

Netanyahu thinks a lot like a Jewish-American Republican….What’s more, Republican Jews tend to have an overdeveloped sense of black anti-Semitism. Indeed, they generally regard traditional (i.e., white) anti-Semitism as having disappeared long ago, replaced by black anti-Semitism, which they consider largely pervasive. Their unstated assumption is that any left-of-center black politician is an anti-Semite unless proven otherwise…

Chait admits he has no basis for the claim above, “other than every conversation about anti-Semitism and Israel I’ve had with any Jewish Republican over my entire life.”

Jonathan Chait

Which could be many, or just a handful, for all we know. What we do know is that Chait probably wasn’t listening.

Here’s my counter-proof, which is just as valid as Chait’s — probably more so, since I speak to Republican Jews on a regular basis (and not just to the delightful one to whom I’m married).

No Jewish Republican–not one–considers “traditional (i.e., white) anti-Semitism” to have “disappeared long ago.” And no Jewish Republican–not one–considers “any left-of-center black politician” to be “an anti-Semite unless proven otherwise.”

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Those who only read the NY Times would get the impression that last week’s trip to the United States by  Bibi Netanyahu was an absolute political disaster for the Israeli Prime Minister.

The Progressive newspaper of record, the New York Times headline proclaimed:

“Israelis See Netanyahu Trip as Diplomatic Failure.”

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned from Washington on Wednesday to a nearly unanimous assessment among Israelis that despite his forceful defense of Israel’s security interests, hopes were dashed that his visit might advance peace negotiations with the Palestinians.”

As my friend Dr. Barry Rubin explains, Israelis have very little hope for peace because unlike the progressive media, they understand that the Palestinians because even though it makes them unhappy they know that the Palestinians don’t want to advance peace negotiations. But that theme–the Palestinian leadership doesn’t want peace–is not permitted in virtually all of the American mass media.

Two new polls prove the NY Times report about Israeli reaction was totally biased.

A poll conduced by the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz which reported the positive Israeli reaction to Netanyahu’s trip.

“Ha’aretz Poll: Netanyahu’s Popularity Soaring Following Washington Trip”

“A new poll conducted by Dialog, under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs of the Tel Aviv University Statistics Department, showed that 47% of the Israeli public believes Netanyahu’s U.S. trip was a success, while only 10% viewed it as a failure.”

In fact the poll seems to indicate the D.C. trip reversed Netanyahu’s decline in approval:

While in a Haaretz poll five weeks ago Netanyahu seemed to be in hot water with the public, with 38 percent expressing satisfaction with his performance and 53 percent disappointed with it, in yesterday’s poll the results were essentially reversed: 51 percent were satisfied, while 36 percent were not.

The moderate Jerusalem Post conducted its own poll conducted after Obama’s Speech to AIPAC:

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It’s always nice to know where one stands and over the past three days Jewish Americans have been told by the Progressive Movement exactly their role: their place is to shut up or leave the country.

On Thursday, President Obama threw Israel under the bus with his declaration that negotiations should start with the premise of Israel returning to the 1967 borders. At the same time he unilaterally ripped up an agreement between Israel and the United States made during the last administration.

As expected supporters of the Jewish State were very upset and they cheered Israeli PM Netanyahu when he stood up for his country during a White House press op the next day.

But to the progressives this act of insubordination by Netanyahu was deplorable. The support of Bibi Netanyahu by some American Jews proved was a reason to bring out their anti-Semitic meme that Jews are not really Americans, they are frauds whose first loyalty is to Israel not to the United States. They also brought out their bigoted contention that the powerful Jewish lobby controls the government and the media.

George Soros funded M.J. Rosenberg, who regularly uses anti-Semitic buzz words claiming the Jews control the government and the media was quick to announce that the outrage displayed by friends of Israel was both bogus and a product of what anti-Semitics describe as their dual loyalty, although Rosenberg calls them “Israel-firsters.”

And suddenly all hell broke loose. But not immediately. Initially, the right-wing of the “pro-Israel” claque praised Obama for not saying anything that challenged Netanyahu but then Netanyahu said that he was outraged by the reference to the 1967 lines.

And then the robotic Israel-firsters switched their line as quickly as Red 1930’s folk singers changed their lyrics when Moscow complained of deviation. (Stop bashing Nazi Germany; we just signed a pact with it).

This is not to say that MJ is an anti-Semite or one of those “self-hating Jews,” he is a capitalist. He understands generally the progressive left is anti-Israel and the progressive media is a major source of income. Heck George Soros pays part on his salary. So in order to prove his loyalty to the progressive media he acts with venom toward Israel and stereotypes his own people. Rosenberg is just trying to show his progressive handlers that MJ stands for Malign Jews.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s gave a speech to the Knesset yesterday, seen by many as a precursor to his Congressional address next week. The PM outlined his parameters for a peace plan with the Palestinians.  However, if you went by the press reports you would think  that peace was the last thing on Netanyahu’s mind.

The AP story carried by most US papers said, “Israel’s Netanyahu takes tough line toward Palestinians, Hamas ahead of trip to White House.” The NY Times called it “hawkish.” Both sources reflect their bias against Israel in general and more specifically Netanyahu, who they see as a right-winger (and you know how the mainstream media feels about right-wingers).  The Wall Street Journal called  the speech a “stark assessment,” and the Los Angeles Times piled on with

In a speech Monday before Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, that some saw as a preview of his planned May 24 address before the U.S. Congress, Netanyahu offered no new peace initiative and faulted Palestinians for the collapse of U.S.-mediated talks.

Wow, you would have thought, Netenyahu came out in a Patton costume,  stood in front of a giant Israeli Flag and opened with something such as:

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

The truth is if they fairly reported the Prime Minister’s words, they would have reported that not only were they reasonable,  but they included more concessions than the supposedly moderate Palestinian President Abbas had ever offered to Israel.

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President Obama’s disdain for that class of nations and leaders traditionally referred to as “allies” has become apparent even to the more obtuse among us. I refer to the New York Times’ s featured op-ed, by the noted op-ed-er Roger Cohen, a distinguished former foreign correspondent in central Europe and elsewhere, who has just noticed that President Obama doesn’t cultivate foreign friendships the way he promised to, gosh darn it. Embarrassingly late to the party, aren’t you, Roger?

Mr. Cohen is perturbed by President Obama’s indifference to tried and true European allies, noting with consternation:

[Obama] has dedicated scant diplomatic energy to Europe. . . . he is the first post-Atlanticist president, drawn by temperament, upbringing and circumstance to focus elsewhere.

But where? Or, rather, what has the president gained by abandoning European allies? (more…)

Andrew Sullivan is not a huge fan of Israel; he is entitled to his opinion.  However, his latest column about the incident in the waters outside of Gaza makes up the facts. Honestly, in the case of most of the posts Sullivan writes about Israel, Andrew is living in his own reality, where truth and facts do not matter.

The Atlantic columnist begins his latest example of creative writing begins with the first paragraph.

Maintaining the siege and blockade of Gaza (because its citizens elected a government Israeli abhors), and strafing it with military might over a year ago, is not exactly what one expects of a civilized Western state. To then go on the offensive against a flotilla of aid ships, trying to bypass the blockade, and killing at least ten people aboard is bordering on insanity…

There are at least three bald-faced lies in that  paragraph. First, the blockade was established to stem terrorism from Gaza (perhaps Sullivan forgot the five thousand rockets sent from the strip into Israel from 2005-2009).

His comment “Strafing it with military might over a year ago is not what one expects of a civilized Western State.” is also wrong.  That is exactly one should expect from a western state.  If rockets landed in Andrew Sullivan’s backyard, I guarantee that he would expect Obama to start “strafing” the offending party. (more…)

The recent flap about Israel supposedly insulting the United States by announcing plans to build 1,600 new housing units within the sovereign territory of Israel is remarkable on many levels. First, it’s a non-story. There is nothing new about Israel developing new housing in East Jerusalem, for Israel has never pledged not to do so.

Second, despite the Obama administration’s repeated assurances that it will continue to stand behind America’s only reliable ally in the middle east, comments by key administration officials make it clear that our commitment to Israel is now conditional on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “good behavior.”

Finally, this incident signals a clear shift in American policy. Under Barack Obama, the United States now officially accepts that there is a justifiable link between jihadist attacks on the United States and Israeli behavior.

Yet, to hear the tired old mainstream media tell the story, Israel is completely out of control, deliberately antagonizing the United States of America. Consider this lead from CNN: (more…)