Tag Archives: Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu’s millionaire list

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I sure hope some investigative journalists have a field day with this. Ynet published today a leaked list of non-Israeli millionaires who he approached for money during his 2007 campaign to lead the Likud party.

“According to estimates,” Ynet reports “98% of the funds donated to Netanyahu came from abroad.” So, it was Americans, and Brits and Australians, who funded Netanyahu’s comeback.

Here are all the usual suspects: Casino Tycoon Sheldon Adelson tops the list. Lots of real estate magnates like Donald Trump and Mort Zuckerman. There’s also media figures: Haim Saban and Sam Zell, the television executive who bought, then ruined, the Tribune Company.

Also there’s David Geffen, who backed Obama during the Democratic primary, but apparently felt the need to support Netanyahu in the primary elections of the main right-wing faction in Israel.

Via Twitter, Ali Abunimah points out the name of Nasser Khalili, who is likely Nasser David Khalili, the Jewish Iranian-born art collector.

Here’s the photo of the document, from Ynet (That’s reportedly Netanyahu’s handwriting):

Machinations of diplomacy

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New York – The machinery of Mideast diplomacy is churning, and the product is likely to be a prolonging of the current impasse.

The Arab League is set to meet on Thursday in Cairo, where the body is expected to endorse Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision not to proceed to direct talks with Israel, and instead continue to the current indirect talks.

Abbas and his advisors believe that entering more fruitless negotiations with the Netanyahu government would be, in their own words, political suicide, a speedy way to alienate their already weakened political base in the West Bank. They also believe  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not serious about negotiations that would yield a Palestinian state, a point that was underscored by the release last week of a video that shows Netanyahu casually discussing his role in scuttling the Oslo process.

Still Abbas is apparently coming under immense pressure from the Obama administration to proceed to direct talks. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was said to be “burning up the phone lines” this week working to get Arab leaders on board with direct talks.

But for now Abbas is not buckling, and has apparently added a settlement freeze to his list of preconditions for direct talks again, which would appear to be a more robust condition than his previous demands for “progress” in direct talks.

Meanwhile, in what could be an attempt to intensify US pressure on the Arab and Palestinian side, Netanyahu said Wednesday during a meeting with the visiting Spanish foreign minister that continuing the current partial settlement building moratorium would cause his coalition to collapse.

There are unlikely to be any surprises at the Arab League meeting in Cairo, were reports indicate that key rivals Syria and Saudi Arabia (in the midst of a show of unity to calm tensions in Lebanon) will back Abbas’ position. Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat also said Wednesday that Jordan is onboard with Abbas, in spite of a surprise visit from Netanyahu on Tuesday. Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa is staunchly opposed to unconditional talks.

The Arab League’s backing is important for Abbas who faces a deeply skeptical public at home, and whose own party is reluctant to tie their fortunes to further fruitless negotiations.

Netanyahu: America won’t get in our way

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New York – Israel’s Channel 10 obtained a videotape this week that shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in 2001, boasting that he derailed the Oslo peace accords and commenting that the United States is a paper tiger when it comes to negotiations.

In the video, Netanyahu appears speaking to a group of Israelis in the West Bank settlement of Ofra who lost family members in the Second (Al-Aqsa) Indifada. The video was recorded just two years after Netanyahu finished his first term as prime minister of Israel.

The video has emerged at a sensitive moment, politically, as the US is attempting to persuade the Palestine Liberation Organization to enter into direct peace talks with Netanyahu, who recently visited the White House for a meeting meant as a show of unity with President Barack Obama.

“What were the Oslo Accords?” Netanyahu says, apparently not knowing the camera was on. “The Oslo Accords, which the Knesset signed, I was asked, before the elections: “Will you act according to them?” and I answered: ‘yes, subject to mutuality and limiting the retreats.’ ‘But how do you intend to limit the retreats?’ ‘I’ll give such interpretation to the Accords that will make it possible for me to stop this galloping to the ’67 lines. How did we do it?.’”

Netanyahu then claims he found a loophole in the negotiating process that allowed him to keep huge portions of the West Bank under direct Israeli control: “No one said what defined military sites, Defined military sites, I said, were security zones. As far as I’m concerned, the Jordan Valley is a defined military site.”

These quotations are according to a translation by Dena Shunra, a US-based Hebrew-English translator, which appeared on Mondoweiss and on Richard Silverstein’s blog, Tikkun Olam.

‘America won’t get in our way’

The translation also includes this exchange, in which the Israeli leader advocates an all-out assault on the Palestinian Authority, and claims that he would never be forced give in to US pressure:

Netanyahu: … The Arabs are currently focusing on a war of terror and they think it will break us. The main thing, first of all, is to hit them. Not just one blow, but blows that are so painful that the price will be too heavy to be borne. The price is not too heavy to be borne, now. A broad attack on the Palestinian Authority. To bring them to the point of being afraid that everything is collapsing…

Woman: Wait a moment, but then the world will say “how come you’re conquering again?”

Netanyahu: the world won’t say a thing. The world will say we’re defending.

Woman: Aren’t you afraid of the world, Bibi?

Netanyahu: Especially today, with America. I know what America is. America is something that can easily be moved. Moved to the right direction.

Child: They say they’re for us, but, it’s like …

Netanyahu: They won’t get in our way. They won’t get in our way.

Left-wing Israeli columnist Gideon Levy also wrote about the tape in the newspaper Haaretz:

This video should have been banned for broadcast to minors. This video should have been shown in every home in Israel, then sent to Washington and Ramallah. Banned for viewing by children so as not to corrupt them, and distributed around the country and the world so that everyone will know who leads the government of Israel. Channel 10 presented: The real (and deceitful ) face of Binyamin Netanyahu.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6KLFrye9Xk]

Protests meet Netanyahu in New York

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Anti-occupation activists protest a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York on Thursday 8 July, 2010. [Photo: Jared Malsin

New York – Some four hundred people held dueling protests for and against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as he spoke the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Thursday.

Police hustled protesters behind two sets of wooden barricades, across Park Avenue from the Council, giving noticeably more hassle to the pro-Palestinian group.

On the pro-Palestinian side, a lively group marched up and down the sidewalk, chanting “Netanyahu, you can’t hide/your support for Apartheid,” and “Obama, it’s time/stop Israeli war crimes.” They held signs saying “End the siege on Gaza” and “End your silence.”

Bob Carpenter, an activist with the group Veterans for Peace told Palestine Note that he attended the demonstration because “I’m a Jew, and as a Jew, Israel embarrasses me.”

He pointed to Israel’s deadly assault May 31 on a convoy of ships carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip. “The attack on the flotilla in international waters, that was something that can’t be accepted by humanity, and it was condemned by almost every country, except this one, the United States.”

“I’m not anti-Israel,” he said, “I believe that everyone can live together.” But he said American military aid to Israel “has to stop. There has to be a new vision.”

A protester named Fred Bergen, from the Bronx, said, “I’m outraged by the continuous siege of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.” He said he attended the protest to show his opposition to “US imperial support for Israel.”

The pro-Palestinian side was joined by a contingent of members of the anti-Zionist Hasidic sect Neturei Karta, dressed in traditional black ultra-Orthodox garb and chanting “Judaism yes, Zionism no, the state of Israel must go.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JLlea2S4yA]

Across 68th street, one of the pro-Israeli demonstrators puzzled at the Neturei Karta, saying, “the Palestinians will kill them faster than we will.”

Several members of the pro-Israeli crowd, which diminished after an hour, said Israel should be allowed to build settlements in the West Bank and defended the attack on the Gaza flotilla.

Dov Hikind, a member of the New York City Council said he faulted President Barack Obama, who met Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, for placing “continuous pressure on Israel.” He said that while the tone of Tuesday’s meeting was warm, he was appalled at what he said was poor treatment when Netanyahu visited in March, with no photo-op and no press conference. “Dictators from third world countries would have treated [Netanyahu] better,” he said of Obama.

He said the flotilla raid was “unfortunate” but that the Gaza blockade is justified in order to “stop weapons from getting to Hamas.”

Asked what he would say to the pro-Palestinian demonstrators across the street, Hikind said he was not opposed to all of them but, “There are people on the other side of this issue who support terrorism and they can go to hell.”

One protester on the Pro-Israeli side held a sign saying “Israel is great” and a black tee shirt emblazoned with a picture of a pistol and and the words “Don’t mess with the Mossad,” referring to the Israeli spy agency. He told Palestine Note: “Israel is great for a number of reasons. First of all it provides protection to gays and bisexuals. Me, I’m bisexual. I’ve dated a few guys, and in Arab countries I’d be in jail for that.”

Netanyahu’s nuclear no-show

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Avner Cohen, the expert on the Israeli nuclear program who eloquently spoke with me last week about the Kam-Blau affair, has an interesting piece in Foreign Policy. He argues that Netanyahu’s spectacular last-minute decision not to attend Obama’s landmark nuclear summit reflects “fears, lack of trust, and a deep sense of international isolation, all characteristic features of Netanyahu’s foreign policy.”

He continues:

To be frank, Israel’s policy of nuclear opacity is perceived by today’s world community, including Israel’s friends, as something that perhaps made political sense decades ago but that has turned into a political anachronism which is increasingly hard for the international community to swallow. The problem is not the question of Israel’s nuclear possession, but rather Israel’s refusal to acknowledge it. The more Israel is viewed as a cautious, responsible nuclear nation, the harder it is to accept its policy of nuclear opacity as internationally appropriate.

I am coming around to Cohen’s point of view, that the current Israeli government, faced with a US administration disgruntled about settlements, and world opinion swayed by the Goldstone report, genuinely feels isolated and threatened.

Cohen’s thesis reminds me of a Gideon Levy column from last year, where he pointed out the absurdity of FM Avigdor Lieberman “boycotting” a reception at the Chinese embassy over China’s support for the Goldstone report. Levy:

China, France and J Street will somehow get by despite these boycotts, Turkey will also recover from the great vacationers’ revolt, and we can expect that even the Swedes and Norwegians will recover from Israel’s loud reprimands. But a country that attacks and boycotts everyone who does not exactly agree with its official positions will become isolated, forsaken and detestable: North Korea of today or Albania of yesterday. It’s actually quite strange for Israel to use this weapon, as it is about to turn into the victim of boycotts itself.

This is along the same lines of what Cohen is pointing out: the bunker mentality in Israel will prove to be undoing. Netanyahu’s and Lieberman’s sense that they are “under attack” even by their most important allies is what will in actual fact isolate them.

This is what I wanted to point out in my column in the Huffington Post yesterday: not that there has been some kind of paradigm shift wherein the foundations of the Israeli state are being undermines, but that politically, Israel’s right wing government thinks it is in a corner.

What will come of this? As a friend put it to me yesterday, historically, nothing good has come of right-wing Israeli governments thinking they are in a corner. We can only hope that the worst will not come to pass.