...Mr Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, Hagai Ben-Artzi, who called Mr Obama an anti-Semite on Israeli radio last week; nor by reports that the Prime Minister himself has referred to David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, both senior White House staff, as “self-hating Jews”. He has denied the reports.
Nice... after all the UN vetoes, billions of dollars in aid/trade, and all the military tech we have given them over the decades, Israel comes to our capital and gives a big middle finger to the administration over the settlements row.
They say that Jerusalem is theirs, ALL theirs, because the Bible said so. Well, the last time I checked we didn't live in a theocratic world, and the Bible is not an internationally ratified document establishing legal borders. If we did live by the Bible, Maine lobster fishermen would be unemployed, and stoning to death would replace lethal injection. They said that the Jewish homeland was in Israel thousands of years ago, and so they have claim to it today. Well if that is the case, then basically all of the New World and Australia need to change hands. Peoples get conquered, displaced, and some are lucky to return, but it's not their "divine right". The Basques, Tibetans, and Kurds are waiting for their autonomous homelands too. If prior residency is the only criterion, then the Turks, Italians, Babylonians/Assyrians (whomever their modern ethnic descendants are), Greeks, and of course Palestinians have claim to the land known as Israel too. Ironically, Israel was also occupied by Persia, so does Ahmadinejad have as much claim to it as Netanyahu? And speaking of Ahmadinejad: we chastise Iran for being a pariah nation, stubbornly defying international consensus to continue nuclear development and threaten security in the region. Isn't Israel behaving exactly the same way with respect to settlement expansion? Of course they usually get a pass in the mainstream media, but Iran is public enemy number one. I am not defending Iran's actions, but the discrepancy of response is obvious.
I'm tired of Israeli exceptionalism.
“Jerusalem is not a settlement, it’s our capital,” [Netanyahu] told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) gala dinner. “Almost half the Jewish population of Jerusalem lives just beyond the 1949 armistice line, five minutes from the Knesset.”
Well according to the UN, East Jerusalem is a settlement. It technically belongs to the Palestinians since 1949. Although Israel captured it in the 1967 war, no major power recognizes the area as part of Israel, the US included.
The Aipac annual dinner traditionally gives pro-Israel hawks their most sympathetic US audience, but it does not speak for the whole Jewish lobby. J Street, a liberal Jewish think-tank established last year, took out a full-page advertisement in Monday’s New York Times to declare: “It’s time for Israel to stop allowing extremist settlers and their sympathisers to endanger not only the friendship of the United States but also the very future of Israel.”
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