On Iran, listen to the euphony between crackpot right-wing raving in Israel and the crackpot raving of the American Likudniks

Haaretz illustrated the Yossi Verter piece referenced below with this remembrance of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu addressing Congress last March at the invitation of aspiring American Likudnik House Speaker "Sunny John" Boehner.

"Sometimes it’s hard to know where Sheldon Adelson, the biggest Republican donor, ends and Netanyahu begins."

-- Haaretz's Yossi Verter, in "Netanyahu lost his
Iran bet, but his next gamble may be disastrous"

by Ken

The braying jackasses of the American Right take on a somewhat different rhetorical character when their chorus is led by the Likud-firsters whose primary allegiance is not to the American Republican Party but to the Israeli Likud. The rhetoric tends to take on a graven-on-Mt. Sinai character, with an in-our-face confidence in and commitment to the lies and delusions the American Likudniks pull out of their stinky behinds which pretends to biblical certainty. (If you need to have your image refreshed, check out any post by washingtonpost.com's designated right-wing gargoyle, Jennifer Rubin.)

Not surprisingly, the nuclear deal with Iran came into the world as an automatic target of the jenniferrubinites. Since most of these people are as lazy as they are stupid and dishonest, which is to say plenty lazy, they probably still don't know what's included in the agreement, but that never mattered. As I was saying the other day, they don't have to know what's in it to know that it's the awfulest agreement in the history of agreements, and the parties to it -- well, let's be blunt, that Kenyan dupe-or-devil Obama -- have either stupidly or knowingly betrayed all decent folk, not to mention striking a dagger to the heart of Israel.

All of this was a given. Does this sound familiar at all?

Even before the details of the agreement were known, and without having any idea what was or wasn’t included, senior Likud officials were firing cannon shells through the electronic media. Talking points that had been sent to them in advance contained three main points: 1. The agreement is bad, terrible, and awful; 2. If not for Netanyahu, the situation would have been much worse, much earlier; 3. The opposition is to blame and ought to be ashamed for not being supportive enough/for being critical now/for not standing tensely quiet at the side of the prime minister, meaning the State of Israel.

The specifics here relate to Israeli politics, and so isn't familiar because the jenniferrubinites don't acknowledge Israeli politics, only the politics of the crack-brained devils of Likud.

The paragraph is from a piece written midweek last week by Haaretz's Yossi Verter, headlined "Netanyahu lost his Iran bet, but his next gamble may be disastrous," with an even more provocative deck: "After the deal was announced, the prime minister's appearance was that of a desperate gambler who had lost everything. But now he wants to wreck what’s left of U.S.-Israel relations."

Here's how Yossi began his piece:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks defeated. He was ashen-faced on Tuesday next to the Dutch foreign minister at their joint press conference in Jerusalem; his appearance was that of a desperate gambler who had lost everything. The Iranian nuclear agreement, against which he had vigorously and repeatedly warned, had become a fait accompli. The deal over which he had declared political war on the president of the United States, while breaking all the rules of diplomatic relations between friendly countries, had become a reality, for better or worse.

Now I don't suggest that Haaretz represents views that are held universally in Israel, but I suspect that anyone conditioned by the bullying rhetoric of the American Likudniks may be surprised to learn that on Bibi Netanyahu's home turf he's not regarded as a biblical sage but as a grubby and often dangerous politician.

"The prime minister himself," Yossi wrote, "hastened Tuesday to call on the opposition to 'put petty politics aside and unite for the State of Israel's national interests,' as if the Iranian nukes hadn't served as an effective political weapon for him during every recent election campaign." Does this sound familiar? With the American Right too, if you're beating the drum for hard-core right-wing ideology, you're speaking truth on behalf of the national interest, whereas any disagreements are dismissed as "petty politics." (Of course if such disagreements happen to touch on any possibility fallibility in the Likud worldview, you're also automatically branded an Enemy of Israel.)

Yossi actually gives Bibi "credit for stubbornly putting the nuclear issue on the global agenda, significantly contributing to the intensified sanctions on Iran."

On the other hand, he lost his brakes when he did not hesitate to hook up with the Republican Party in its campaign against U.S. President Barack Obama. Sometimes it’s hard to know where Sheldon Adelson, the biggest Republican donor, ends and Netanyahu begins.

Which brings us to what Bibi is up to now.

Netanyahu’s spokespeople said he plans to “kill himself” pursuing the last remaining option for scuttling the deal – preventing its ratification by the U.S. House of Representatives – by persuading Democratic congressmen to defect to the Republican camp and vote against their president. The destruction and devastation he avoided inflicting on the nuclear facilities scattered throughout Iran, he now wants to wreck on what’s left of U.S.-Israel relations. Here we again see his compulsive gambler syndrome: After losing his pants, he’s now putting his underwear on the roulette wheel in a move that experts on American politics say hasn’t much of a chance.

I'm not so sure that this gamble is a sure loser. The American Likudniks and the rest of their right-wing brethren, not to mention the great Right-Wing Noise Machine, know how to press buttons with the American public which can whip up a lot of influential hysteria. It's Yossi's judgment, though, that "in this context, the call by Likud ministers for 'internal cohesion that's been lacking until now' sounds pathetic." And he asks:

Why exactly is Netanyahu demanding that Labor’s Isaac Herzog, Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid, Meretz’s Zehava Galon and Yisrael Beiteinu’s Avigdor Lieberman join him? So they can share responsibility for the worsening of the fight between Israel and the leader of the free world?

Yossi proceeds to describe a political moment in Israel that again sounds grubbily familiar:

Herzog and Lapid were competing with each other on Tuesdayto show whose patriotism was greater. Lapid drew first with an interview he gave to a foreign television network. But Herzog landed a crushing blow on him by tweeting that he had spoken with the prime minister and would soon be traveling to the United States “to advance a package of security measures to suit the new situation.”

Perhaps Herzog has been named defense minister and nobody told us. Perhaps something else is going on between him and Netanyahu, and under the pretext of the “new situation,” the chairman of Zionist Union plans to bring his party into Netanyahu’s government.

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Israel Pulling The Strings?

Obviously, that's Engel in the middle

AIPAC managed to get its most subservient congressman, New Dem Eliot Engel, elected Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. If you want to hear what the extreme right parties in Israel are behind, just pay attention to what Engel says. He's their spokesperson. He doesn't care what his constituents in Westchester and the northern Bronx say; he's the Likud's man on the scene first and foremost. If Assemblymembers Jeffrey Dinowitz or Amy Paulin are as smart as they appear, they're starting to think about a primary challenge to Engel. Engel would win in Tel-Aviv, hands down, but what about Scarsdale, Riverdale, Mount Vernon, Yonkers and Rye? That remains to be seen... I hope.

Israel is kind of laying low, at least publicly. They are whipping their congressional supporters but they can't be too loud of it scares America's Arab client regimes. But Netanyahu wasn't thrilled that Obama went to Congress and he's making it clear he wants action-- and he wants it now!

Behind an official wall of silence, Israel is signaling it wants the U.S. to strike Syria sooner rather than later, fearing that continued inaction could hurt American credibility in the region.

Yet at the same time, Israel appears to have little desire to see Syrian President Bashar Assad toppled, on the theory that a familiar foe is preferable to some of those who might replace him, especially the Islamist extremists who are increasingly powerful in the rebellion.

These contradictory forces have put Israel in a delicate position as the U.S. contemplates military action. In public, Israeli leaders have said little about President Barack Obama's handling of the Syria crisis. But following his decision over the weekend to postpone military action by seeking the backing of Congress, the signs of confusion and consternation appear clear.

"I have full faith in President Obama's moral and operational stance. I recommend patience," President Shimon Peres said in a radio interview Monday, seeking to calm a nervous public. "I am confident that the United States will respond in the right way to Syria."

Israeli leaders have been careful about voicing their thoughts about what the U.S. should do, wary of creating any perception that they are meddling in either American politics or the civil war in neighboring Syria.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked a junior Cabinet minister who publicly criticized Obama. In a radio interview, Housing Minister Uri Ariel compared the American foot-dragging to Western inaction during the Holocaust. He also said American inaction sent a message to terrorists and hostile governments that there was no price to pay for using nonconventional weapons.

Netanyahu ordered his Cabinet to keep their opinions to themselves, stressing the need to behave "responsibly" at such a sensitive time.

But in a meeting last week with the visiting French foreign minister, Netanyahu himself called for a tough response to Syria, saying the world's reaction to the use of chemical weapons would have deeper implications for the international handling of Iran's nuclear program.

Israel, along with many Western countries, believes Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, and Netanyahu has repeatedly raised concerns that international pressure to curb the Iranian nuclear program has been insufficient.

"Assad's regime has become a full Iranian client and Syria has become Iran's testing ground," Netanyahu said. "Now the whole world is watching. Iran is watching and it wants to see what would be the reaction on the use of chemical weapons."

For this reason, many Israelis reacted with disappointment after Obama announced over the weekend that he would seek a congressional vote before a use of force against Assad. Israeli newspapers and commentators criticized the American leader for appearing weak and indecisive.

"You can't count on someone who isn't sure of himself," said Hanna Tzikli, a resident of northern Israel.

Israelis have expressed their desire for American action with a mixture of moral and strategic concerns. Watching civilians die from poisonous gas is painful in a country built on the ashes of the Holocaust, in which the Nazis sent countless Jewish victims to their deaths in gas chambers.

Israel's fondest hope is that an American attack on Syria triggers a response from Iran that causes the U.S. to bomb that country. American neoCons agree 100% and are pushing Obama towards going further than he-- or the U.S. military-- wants to go.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU CLAIMS 9/11 WAS GOOD FOR... ISRAEL

Neocons-- like fascists-- transcend national borders. And like Rove, Bush, Cheney and the rest of America's criminal political elite, Israeli politician (and leader of the far right Likud Party), Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to exploit the tragedy of 9/11 and use it for his personal and political advancement. Yesterday's Ma'ariv reports that Netanyahu actually told a university audience that the attacks on NY were "beneficial to Israel."

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq," Ma'ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events "swung American public opinion in our favor."

Netanyahu reportedly made the comments during a conference at Bar-Ilan University on the division of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Someone should ask McCain about his pal's statements so we can watch him tap-dance some more.