Don't Take Netanyahu to the Woodshed

Often commentators who refuse to address real criticism of Israel always conflate the issues to the "red lines" as you have here.

Supposedly, no Israeli Prime Minister can stop the "settlements" when you write:

"...the administration's early decision to confront Netanyahu publicly over settlements, making absolutist demands that no Israeli prime minister could accept..."

Balderdash! Have you any idea how ludicrous that sounds when you apply it elsewhere?

You seem to be saying that no Israeli Prime Minister can be expected to adhere to agreements such as the Road Map. Mahmoud Abbas is not making a new condition, it's in Phase I of the Road Map!

General Dayton has high-praise for the Palestinian security forces he's been training, and by all accounts Abbas has done a pretty darn good job at keeping things quiet and abiding by the terms of the Road Map.

You also seem to be saying that no Israeli Prime Minister can ever be expected to adhere to international law and UN resolutions.

Is it logical to make such a claim and then cry about Iran?

Why would Iran or any other country in the Middle East bother to adhere to UN resolution and international law if Israel gets to repeatedly, and noisily (Goldstone Report) avoid conforming to international law and continuing to ignore it?

Rosen, each and every one of the "settlements" are illegal. It is illegal for an occupier country to transfer its civilian population into territory it occupies.

This is not debatable. UN Secretary Ban Ki-Moon spent much of September of this year telling a "succession of Israeli ministers" that all of the "settlements", including in East Jerusalem are illegal. (The "annexation of East Jerusalem, also illegal.)

Are you really claiming that Israel can simply refuse to follow the law and keep on stealing land and resources from the Palestinians?

Because it sure sounds like it. As the saying in the region goes, the Palestinians are trying to negotiate the division of a pizza even as the Israelis are gobbling it up.

Not at all. It's time to be firm with Israel. The USA gives Israel billions of dollars a year. Why? What has this gotten us? Anyone who questions this is accused of being anti-Semitic. But this doesn't acknowledge that such blind devotion to one state stinks of Israeli chauvinism. We're past talking about criminal acts like suicide bombings, and aggressive wars against Israel. It's time to start talking seriously about a state with '67 borders. There is NO reason at ALL for Israel to continue constructing new settlements until it's decided officially which ones remain in Israeli possession, and which ones don't. And preferably, only a small number would remain in Israeli hands.

So why does Netenyahu have to continue being such a prick? Why are Israelis so flippant about civilian casualties on the other side (unlike the US, which is taking overt steps to minimize civilian casualties at the expense of the lives of American soldiers)? Abbas and Obama are waiting for Israel to make serious movements towards peace, and Israel, as the powerful partner in this equation, needs to make serious concessions.

Then Netanyahu needs to start by giving reasons for the US to trust Israel.

Bibi was a mess the first time around and he is a mess the second time around. If Bibi has to crawl on his hands and knees to Obama, let him.

Netanyahu has spent many long months doing everything in his power to subvert Obama's peace initiatives, defying the demand to freeze settlements and inciting American and Israeli public opinion against the President and against peace.

Where Obama rallied near-universal international support for his vision of rapid progress towards a real two state solution and genuine Israeli-Arab peace, Netanyahu dug in his heels and fought every step of the way.

Israel has refused President Obama's request to adhere to the "road map" and stop construction in Jerusalem and in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Israel has not met its road map obligations and continues to argue over the terms of the agreement - as if it never adopted it.

Netanyahu's concept of a separate Palestinian state alongside Israel with limited powers of sovereignty and his uncompromising position on the future of Jerusalem were tantamount to dictating the terms of peace negotiations.

The settlement freeze is not a 'precondition' as Israel and AIPAC lackies are campaining for, but an obligation Israel undertook when it signed on to the 2003 international roadmap for peace plan.

Oh and in case you didn't notice, we don't care about Iran. Iran is not a threat to the US. The Iran issue is 100% Israeli. We fought your war in Iraq and that is enough.

Unlike Iran, Israel simply has way too much to hide and wants to keep it that way.

When is Israel going to sign the NNPT and allow IAEA inspections ? Which Iran has done.

Israel wants Iranian nuclear transparency? Then Israel better be just as transparent.

Israel has zero credibility to say anything about Iran when it has demonstrated that she is the greatest threat to the peace and security of the Middle East.

It's continuous preemptive attacks against its neighbors are just one example,let alone its barbaric treatment of the Palestinian people for 60 years.

It's not Iran that preemptively invades, threatens, taunts, and warmongers their neighbors. That's Israel.

Go back to AIPAC Rosen, your ilk are not wanted here anymore.

Let's put it to vote and see how many Americans want to continue supporting the world's biggest welfare client, Israel ?

Israel has committed war crimes with US arms according to the Goldstone Report.

THEREFORE, our Arms Export Control Act COMPELS us to suspend ALL military aid to Israel.

US taxes for US citizens!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Each day we send 13 million dollars to the racist apartheid war criminal state of Israel

It's not an either or for us or anyone--you can engage in discussions while taking a position you know the other won't accept. In this case, the position that the settlements must eventually go. Clearly, as long as they are there, unless there is a truly massive land swap of some really wonderful land, they will be not just an irritant but a cause of continued strife.

It also encourages the settler movement which tends to be racist in their relations with the neighbors on whose land they squat and then occupy and then build--the result historically of such behavior is always bloodshed.

Obama may even wish to be stronger--to say to Israel, great, you want to expand, to make a more permanent problem--then no more aid, credits etc.
Let's face it Israel is not a third world country. Why are we sending them aid and giving them credits? After all, they sell munitions to Russia, never sanction their troops when they kill US servicepeople or UN personnel--favors, schmavors!

Israel also has to allow trade with the Gaza strip. If you lived there, saw your kids school bombed, then no textbooks because of some punitive campaign, you'd be as ticked off at Israel as at any arab group. Community punishment never works with the logic it's initiators think it will.

On a more positive side, Obama should encourage frankness among the arabs--they've done little to help the Palestinians develop alternate routes to get their goods to market, alternate markets for Palestinian goods. That's something they should do. They want to help Palestine? Why don't they have a "buy Palestinian" campaign in their countries? Why don't they help Palestine develop it's infrastructure etc? (With a clear message to Israel--bomb the infrstructure they build, as Israel did with Lebanon, and we will not give you aid or armaments).

It's time for Israel to follow South Africa into the twenty first century. If it wants to sit there as a glowing reminder of the western empires of the 19th century, then we should let it do so without our help.

"With Obama's "trust" ratings among the Israeli public sunk below 10 percent, compared with ratings in the 70 to 80 percent range for past presidents like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush,"

And what harm to United States Mr. Rosen you think that might cause?

Hasn't the US relationship with the Apartheid been a one way street so far and hasn't US shed enough blood for the sake of the Apartheid? Isn't US presence both in Iraq and Afghanistan rooted back to Tel Aviv? Hasn't the Apartheid been a liability to this country during the last sixty one years? The apartheid have yet to acknowledge and take full responsibility for the attack on US liberty that left thirty seven Americans dead.

Can you summarize any personal and civil responsibilities you have performed that would represent the interests of United states or be consistent with the American values?

Faramarz Fathi

As a former supporter of Israel Bibi, AIPAC and their right wing have turned many if not most US including many Jews against them.

They need to stop new settling and remove most of the settlements and recuce restrictions on the west bank bor the US should let them go. The only thing they do is cause us trouble time and time again.

They could have peace but not how they have acted in the last 10 yrs.

Please just shut up - you are not an Aemrican, never was. An Iranian secret agent for the mullahs in sheep clothing, much more likely.

The very underpinnings of the Apartheid Zionist state have recently been called into question by a Professore from Tel Aviv University:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966952.html

"According to the Tel Aviv University historian, Prof. Shlomo Sand, author of "Matai ve'ech humtza ha'am hayehudi?" ("When and How the Jewish People Was Invented?"; Resling, in Hebrew), the queen's tribe and other local tribes that converted to Judaism are the main sources from which Spanish Jewry sprang. This claim that the Jews of North Africa originated in indigenous tribes that became Jewish - and not in communities exiled from Jerusalem - is just one element of the far- reaching argument set forth in Sand's new book.

In this work, the author attempts to prove that the Jews now living in Israel and other places in the world are not at all descendants of the ancient people who inhabited the Kingdom of Judea during the First and Second Temple period. Their origins, according to him, are in varied peoples that converted to Judaism during the course of history, in different corners of the Mediterranean Basin and the adjacent regions. Not only are the North African Jews for the most part descendants of pagans who converted to Judaism, but so are the Jews of Yemen (remnants of the Himyar Kingdom in the Arab Peninsula, who converted to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe (refugees from the Kingdom of the Khazars, who converted in the eighth century).
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Unlike other "new historians" who have tried to undermine the assumptions of Zionist historiography, Sand does not content himself with going back to 1948 or to the beginnings of Zionism, but rather goes back thousands of years."

more at:

http://inventionofthejewishpeople.com/

You are telling that to me, really, you who frequent and taint with your odious presence JPost as well? You lieing impostor, BRITISH squatting in the USA? Who would have thought that old anti-Semite wh**e? I am not American, or British like you, but Hungarian you cave dweller. Do you know at all where Hungary can be found on a map?

Well Chris your tired swat smell efforts by citing this book as a Messiah-driven magic just make you look even more stupid. Sand's book is a vague and abstract theory, an interpretation, nothing more, nothing less. It's downright comical and very childish how you are brandishing this volume like a clown. For every copy of Sand's book there are dozens which have alternative theories by established and serious historians.

"It is a matter of record that Mahmoud Abbas participated in 18 years of direct negotiations with seven Israeli governments, all without the settlements freeze that he now insists is an absolute precondition to begin even low-level talks."

In which time the settlements and their associated infrastructure grew epxonentially. What do you suggest, that Abbas shuld allow settlements to grow for another 18 years? Maybe, just maybe, he has wised up to the problems of his previous approach.

The "man" by the name of "Chris_T:

"Thanks for confirming my reasonable assumption of you as a racist anti-Semitic loon. As such you have no credibility, the pathetic rubbish peddled here by equally despicable negationist anti-Semites (Jewish and non-Jewish) notwithstanding. Dream on, hater.

On another note: you really outdid yourself this time. You are a moron. I laughed my socks off when I read about the Mulims flexing their muscles concerning American foreign-policy. If, let's suppose, you asked this question from tens of millions of Americans, what would THEIR reaction be? Especially now in these American jihadist-loaded times, right now! You are a hilarious guy, aren't you "Chris_T"? Great sense of humour chap. Fundamentlly, the ONLY thing you've proven is that you are either a Muslim, or a pathetic ass-licker of one. But American? Hardly... You fool no one, pathetic Muslim agent.

Call it what it has been and is.... Stealing. As in thou shall not.... Hopefully Obama will get this right and tell the Israelis it's time to get real.

Courtesy of incredible diplomatic ineptitude on the part of President Obama, relations between the US and Israel are more than strained -- I hesitate to use the word "hostile. Israel is being treated like a banana republic instead of a sovereign nation, and certainly not like a valuable ally. Frankly I am stunned at the rapid and negative turn of events in the Mid-East. I now have second thoughts about the man I supported, voted for, and have been rooting for -- President Obama. His waffling on Iran, his indecisiveness concerning Afghanistan, his shabby treatment of the Israeli Prime Minister, his broken promises (or, to be more charitable, his unfulfilled verbal commitments), and the increasingly uneasy feeling that our President is over his head and out of his element. I yearn to be proven wrong. I want President Obama to be a truly great President. I shall keep wanting. Let's see how things go.