Comments on: Potemkin Outpost Follies

By: Well, Now That’s Settled « Around The Sphere

Well, Now That’s Settled « Around The Sphere — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:30:36 +0000

[...] Gershom Gorenberg on what’s happened since the Barack/Bibi meeting: So Bibi comes back to Israel, declares in that proud strong Bibi voice that he told Obama that Jerusalem will never be divided (hint to outside observers: that’s the voice Bibi uses after an uncomfortable experience of his own weakness). And then, just to show that he does take U.S. opinion into account, he sends a bulldozer to a Potemkin outpost. (Barak, not wanting to look like a wimp himself, says, “The evacuation is not related to U.S. pressure but to the obligations of Israeli society to itself.”) [...]

By: Y. Ben-David

Y. Ben-David — Sun, 24 May 2009 09:20:48 +0000

Cabinet Minster Moshe (Boogey) Yaalon (fomer Chief of Staff of the IDF) appeared on television and said, openly, that NO ONE in the world can tell Israel not to build in the settlements. It seems to me that this is the first time in many years that a senior governmental figure openly defended the YESHA settlement enterprise. Starting at the time of Oslo, 15 years ago or so, even the Likud became embarrassed to talk about them. It seems that with Oslo making an agreement with the PLO, instead of making a deal with local Palestinians, that the very legitimacy of Israel and Zionist movement was brought into question leading to the situation that the “progressives” in the Zionist camp have tried to avoid speaking about Jewish rights in the country at all. It got to the point that everytime Arab spokesmen would say the very existence of Israel is aggression against the Arab world, the most Israeli spokesmen would say is “let’s not talk about the past, let’s talk about peace” which in effect says that the Arab claims against Israel are just. Now, new thinking is coming out in the Zionist camp and I can only say that it is most welcome. What is especially interesting is that Ya’alon comes out of the Labor Zionist camp and not the “Revisionist-Herut-Likud” side. Very encouraging.

By: Y. Ben-David

Y. Ben-David — Sat, 23 May 2009 18:55:11 +0000

Netanyahu certainly has no choice but to get rid of the settlements if even the waiters of his “kosher dinner at Blair house” don’t like them. Really? Is that supposed to indicates some sort of political trend? Well, I hate to tell you this, but the “right” won the election and the “right” traditionally supports the settlements. We of the “right” didn’t elect him to get rid of them just to make you “progressives” happy.

By: Opinion Wire » Throw the dog a bone, continued - The Imperator

Opinion Wire » Throw the dog a bone, continued - The Imperator — Sat, 23 May 2009 16:00:11 +0000

[...] Gorenberg takes aim at Netanyahu: Bibi, it appears, sought a gesture that would show good will toward the Americans, but so [...]