Matt Yglesias

Jan 13th, 2009 at 10:25 am

Olmert Claims to Control US Foreign Policy

condoleezza_rice_1.jpg

Ehud Olmert, harcore anti-Zionist, Israeli Prime Minister, and Jew-hating bigot seems to feel he has a lot of political clout in the United States:

In an unusually public rebuke, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush.

“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ” Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”

Israel opposed the resolution, which called for a halt to the fighting in Gaza, because the government said it did not provide for Israel’s security. It passed 14 to 0, with the United States abstaining.

Mr. Olmert claimed that once he made his case to Mr. Bush, the president called Ms. Rice and told her to abstain. “She was left pretty embarrassed,” Mr. Olmert said, according to The A.P.

The State Department has some not-terribly-convincing denials out. But one way or another it seems both telling and unseemly that Olmert is going around bragging about this.






78 Responses to “Olmert Claims to Control US Foreign Policy”

  1. cleek Says:

    how shocking. i’m shocked.

  2. tg Says:

    The question is, will Obama be any different?

  3. George Says:

    It seems like it would be simple enough to check: did the prez “[get] off the podium” at the time in question?

  4. patriot games Says:

    I’m shocked that born again christian zionist militarists who think that bombing and torturing muslims will make them compliant in Iraq and Afghanistan would support israel’s campaign in gaza.

    shocked.

    the amazing thing is that olmert’s phone call was even necessary to begin with.

  5. DJ Says:

    Hmmm…either Olmert is a complete moron or Israel really does have incredible pull.

    Let’s see if he’s forced to walk this back. Bush may be leaving office but he’s still president. I can well imagine the Obama team joining Bush in teaching Olmert that you never EVER diss the POTUS.

  6. Mikeb302000 Says:

    I can’t wait to see how the relationship between the US and Israel shapes up under the new administration. It’s going to be a great ride, I have a feeling.

  7. otto Says:

    It’s almost as if there was a strong domestic incentive to respond to this sort of diplomacy which doesn’t exist for the demands of leaders of other states.

    Clemons:
    http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2009/01/defending_condi/

  8. El Cid Says:

    If you’re going to accept the story, which includes the suggestion that Bush Jr. told Condi to vote ‘no’ (a few U.S. accounts), or not (the Ha’aretz account below), it’s still interesting that in the end Condi had Khalilzaid abstain.

    Typically this is the standard U.S. veto of any such criticisms of Israeli militarist activities. Even the Israeli press was expressing the shock of officials at how there had been “a serious diplomatic malfunction“:

    …[T]he process that led to the passing of the resolution points to Jerusalem’s failure in handling the issue. Israel objected to having the war end in a Security Council resolution similar to the one that ended the Second Lebanon War. This is probably why Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni – who led those who oppose an agreement for fear it might legitimize Hamas – opted to stay at home instead of heading over to the UN headquarters in New York.

    Israel made a similar mistake a few years ago, when it refused to appear before the International Court of Justice in the Hague when it reviewed the separation fence. And the problem with this decision is that he UN, like the justices in Hague, ruled without taking Israel’s position into account.

    A situation like this makes Israel dependent on the United States. But U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice supported the UN Resolution and assisted with its formulation. Livni was in contact with Rice in an attempt to soften its wording.

    At the last minute, at 3:30 A.M., Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also intervened with a desperate phone call to President George W. Bush, requesting that the United States veto the resolution. Bush refused, simply instructing Rice to abstain from the vote.

    One doesn’t need to know all the details to realize that a late-night phone call between national leaders is the result of a major malfunction in the diplomatic handling of state matters, which reveals a problem in the relationship between Israel and the United States.

    If it were not for Bush’s friendship, the United States would have joined the supporters of Resolution 1860.

  9. joe from Lowell Says:

    It is a fact that Rice helped craft a resolution she later abstained from. Sounds weird.

    Sounds weird by any standard except for UN politics. In that context, it sounds perfectly ordinary.

    We got the resolution through, got credit for making it happen, and still let the Israelis save face. That’s everything Rice wanted.

  10. DJ Says:

    US abstaining from the resolution means nothing much at all. As long as the US didn’t veto it, you have a virtually unanimous resolution on the books so Rice got exactly what she wanted. Olmert is just trying to make lemons from lemonade. The interesting question is whether he’s allowed to publicly humiliate the POTUS for domestic political purposes.

  11. Peter K. Says:

    We got the resolution through, got credit for making it happen, and still let the Israelis save face. That’s everything Rice wanted.

    Yeah, but still looks like Israel and Iran are going to go at it. I sympathise with the State Department and Obama.

  12. JimboSlice Says:

    “Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” – Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.

  13. Don Williams Says:

    The White House and Congress issued a joint denial, stating that Israel does NOT control US foreign policy.

    As clarification, The statement went on to note that it is the billionaire supporters of Big Oil and the Israel Lobby who control US foreign policy. With some input from the 19 or so families who own Israel and who don’t like to pay retail for F16 jet fighters.

  14. Rich in PA Says:

    I think this shows that Olmert is nuts. The US has always abstained fromo these kind of resolutions, under both Democratic and Republican presidents.

  15. raft Says:

    i don’t have anything insightful to say about U.S.-Israeli relations, but good god olmert is a buffoon.

    the guy makes George W. look like Julius Caesar.

  16. daveNYC Says:

    “I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ” Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”

    Talk like this is really going to help Israel win friends in the United States. Bush is an ass, and I find the picture of Olmert making him his bitch to be amusing, but bragging about it like this is just stupid.

  17. raft Says:

    question: who is the bigger clown?

    Ehud Olmert or Kwame Kilpatrick?

    i am undecided.

  18. Bullsmith Says:

    Honestly, the speech from Olmert is astounding, and we all know the government’s response will amount to “Thank you Sir, may I have another?”

  19. Bullsmith Says:

    I find it odd that so many think these comments make Olmert look like a clown. Since this clown is able to boss the President of the United States around at will, and boasts about shaming the Secretary of State at the United Nations, what does that make America’s leaders? Midget clowns?

  20. DJ Says:

    “olmert is a buffoon.

    the guy makes George W. look like Julius Caesar.”

    I had the same reaction about Aznar and Berlusconi after the Madrid bombings, that they made W look really good in comparison.

    So I’d say buffoonery seems par for the course for leaders unaccustomed to being taken seriously by the rest of the world.

  21. Chris Dornan Says:

    Is it just me, but why do I get the suspicions that the Ziocons may be overreaching themselves.

  22. El Cid Says:

    Clearly Kilpatrick is the bigger clown, but the matters surrounding Ehud Olmert are significant on the world stage, whereas those surrounding Kilpatrick are not.

  23. makkale Says:

    During the campaign, Hillary said, in effect, that one of the jobs of the President of the U.S. is to do what Israel tells them to do. The fact that this was not considered a gaffe or an embarrassment tells you how bad the current situation is.

  24. Glenn Says:

    Well, while I find Olmert’s story to be perfectly believable, let’s also remember that the reason he is stepping down as PM is that he has, shall we say, only a passing familiarity with truth and integrity.

  25. Hyperion Says:

    But, but i saw Richard Perle on CSPAN last night patiently explaining to his audience that the state dept has been handling diplomacy for the last several years and will continue to do that in the Obama admin….so why keep pretending that change is about to occur? evidently he does not think the actual diplomats make a difference. of course in condi’s case, that is correct.

  26. Peter K. Says:

    If Israel controlled the U.S. we would have sold them bunkerbusters and allowed them to fly through Iraq to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites.

    I know certain people get off on obsessing about Neocons, but still.

  27. KCinDC Says:

    Al, regardless of the truth of Olmert’s story, the point is that he feels comfortable humiliating the president of the United States publicly, which is amazing.

  28. cleek Says:

    Talk like this is really going to help Israel win friends in the United States.

    Israel already has all the friends it needs in the US. besides the near-unanimous support of both major political parties and the press, what more does it need ?

  29. jim in austin Says:

    It strikes me that this bit of kabuki was primarily for internal Israeli political consumption. It really doesn’t matter if it was true or not. It was the sitting Israeli government wringing the last drop of usefulness from Bush and his administration before the game changes next week, probably for the worse in their view.

  30. Flo Says:

    I think Condi is ready to get the hell back to Stanford and cheer on her new friend Barack Obama.

  31. lutton Says:

    hunh…Bush was in my neighborhood (in Philly) last week; must have been the ’speech’ interupted. He was at our local elementery school on the 7th anniversary of the NCLB signing. I wonder if anyone of the participants (there was a round table discussion, plus a speech to some of the students) can verify an ‘interuption’ during the procedings?

    I’ll ask around.

  32. Dungheap Says:

    I wonder how much this has to do with reports that the Bush Administration rebuffed Israeli requests for assistance with an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

  33. John Says:

    Even if this is true, it surely doesn’t seem to be much of a symbol of Israel’s influence if they can’t get Bush to veto the resolution.

    Beyond that, to Hyperion: evidently he does not think the actual diplomats make a difference. of course in condi’s case, that is correct.

    For the most part, the diplomats who do the actual work are the same – career foreign service officers. Presumably Perle is contending that “Arabists in the State Department” or some similar bugbear have been controlling foreign policy since his buddy Rummy got the ouster, and will continue to do so under Obama. I’m not sure this is particularly untrue. Since 2007, Bush administration foreign policy has been considerably saner and seemingly more competent than heretofore. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Obama and Clinton don’t change that much on most subjects.

  34. joe from Lowell Says:

    Can you imagine if this story had been told ABOUT the Israeli Prime Minister instead of BY the Israeli Prime Minister?

    What do you think Al would have to say then?

  35. Persia Says:

    He was at our local elementery school on the 7th anniversary of the NCLB signing. I wonder if anyone of the participants (there was a round table discussion, plus a speech to some of the students) can verify an ‘interuption’ during the procedings?

    Was he reading “My Pet Goat?” Because then I know the story’s bull. Once G.W. starts a kid’s story, he just can’t stop!

  36. Bloix Says:

    Joe from Lowell has it exactly right. I don’t know what Olmert is bragging about. He wanted the US to veto the resolution. Rice crafted a resolution that the US could live with, and Bush let it pass in spite of Olmert’s urgent appeal to kill it. Now Olmert is desperately spinning when he should be keeping his mouth shut.

  37. onceler Says:

    what’s absolutely pathetically sad here is whatever propaganda of the highest order has been going on domestically in Israel that makes the people think there that being able to get Bush to jump when Olmert says so is some kind of feat, or somehow useful. do they not know that Bush is nearly universally reviled here?. this is also scary-level megalomania on Olmert’s part, yikes!

  38. onceler Says:

    “If Israel controlled the U.S….” no, no, no. point well missed. “controlled” is crazy talk, of course no sane person thinks that Israel ‘controls’ the US. they just have a massively undue amount of influence and input. of course there was little to no chance of Bush directly authorizing the sale of nuclear bunker busters to Israel, since it would never have passed Congress and would have been even more embarrassing for Bush than most other recent events. what’s worrisome is the fact that they would even be thinking or asking about it, when it is a verifiable fact that Iran is NOT actively manufacturing nuclear weapons. a country in the position Israel is in feeling able to just ask about launching pre-emptive nuclear war against Iran is a dangerous thing.

  39. otto Says:

    This video of pro-Israel demonstrators in NYC is amusing/disturbing.

    http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/01/max-blumenthal-exposes-the-jewish-crazies-in-new-york-.html

  40. SLC Says:

    Unlike Bush, Olmert will not escape the long arm of the law. Like the blogs resident ex-con Richard Steven Hack, Mr. Olmert will be an involuntary guest of the state for a period of time.

  41. Joe Strummer Says:

    It seems like it would be simple enough to check: did the prez “[get] off the podium” at the time in question?

    Umm, even if this is not literally true – which it probably isn’t since it’d be odd for the president to be hustled off stage for any reason even, if one recalls the kindergarten in Florida, 9/11 – the point is that the U.S. did abstain and Olmert claimed to have demanded (and won) that abstention.

  42. El Cid Says:

    I think the task of Israeli influence over U.S. foreign policy would be much more difficult if U.S. and Israeli elites weren’t already so converged on goals and methods. Generally, U.S. elites like what Israel does, whatever the consequences that we ordinary plebeians may think may arise from its actions. And Israeli elites generally like being the U.S.’ junior ally for influence, power, and violence in the region.

  43. deep thoughts Says:

    During this comment section some clown said, in effect, that Hillary is an Israel stooge. The fact that another commenter posted the exact same quote 15 minutes later and was not embarrassed by their own buffoonish trollery tells you how bad the current situation is in the cut and paste world

  44. Farid Says:

    God bless Stephen Walt. Read his book and weep for your nation folks.

  45. John Emerson Says:

    It’s like Olmert was reading from a script written by the American Nazi Party. That guy must have no sense at all, or be incredibly malicious in some way I don’t understand.

  46. Henry Says:

    # SLC Says:
    January 13th, 2009 at 12:23 pm

    Unlike Bush, Olmert will not escape the long arm of the law. Like the blogs resident ex-con Richard Steven Hack, Mr. Olmert will be an involuntary guest of the state for a period of time.

    I wish we could sent Bush to join him, so he can keep him as his bitch.

  47. Henry Says:

    Anyway, if you think that this would affect US-Israel relations you are mistaken.

    Since they bitch-slapped the US with the attack on the USS Liberty, and we did nothing but excuse them, they know they have us in their pocket, they can do whatever they want.

    It all reminds me of master-blaster relationship where a smart midget harnesses a moronic giant.

  48. Henry Says:

    forgot the link

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max_Beyond_Thunderdome

  49. TH Says:

    I’m not anti-Israel, but the first U.S. leader to tell an Israeli leader to fuck off in this sort of situation will have my eternal support.

  50. SLC Says:

    Re Farid

    Stephen Walt is a yellowbelly and a sap sucking cowardly douchbag with a yellow stripe down his back a foot wide. His fellow Harvard professor, Alan Dershowitz, has challenged him to debate the claims made in his book on numerous occasions and scumbag Walt has refused.

  51. daveNYC Says:

    @Henry: I am insulted that you would think that we need a link to remind us who runs Bartertown. Especially since we’re all big fans of biofuels.

    His fellow Harvard professor, Alan Dershowitz, has challenged him to debate the claims made in his book on numerous occasions and scumbag Walt has refused.

    I wouldn’t want to be in the same room as Dershowitz either. While there’s the potential for a quality debate over the book, do you really think Dershowitz would do anything more than point his finger and scream “Nazi!” at the top of his lungs?

  52. pseudonymous in nc Says:

    Israeli pols have been drinking deep at the Bush retirement party, and Olmert went from merriment — photocopying his backside, bombing Gaza — to being an ugly drunk — calling Bush his bitch.

  53. pseudonymous in nc Says:

    And Dershowitz is as trained in bluster and bullshit as this blog’s most prominent weirdo genocidalist.

  54. Open Minded Says:

    At least nine hundred people, maybe half of them civilians, have been killed in Gaza so far, the overwhelming majority presumably killed by Israel (some people, more than we probably know right now, have been killed by Hamas, mainly Fatah activists in revenge killings). This number, nine hundred, is large, and it brought to mind another conflict between a Western army and a Muslim insurgency, the one portrayed in the book and movie “Black Hawk Down.” Roughly one thousand Somalis were killed by American forces over the twenty hours or so of the First Battle of Mogadishu (eighteen American soldiers, of course, were also killed).

    I couldn’t get an accurate read on how many of those Somalis were civilians, so I called my colleague, Mark Bowden, who wrote the book. He said that eighty percent of the Somali deaths were of civilian. Eighty percent! Roughly eight hundred people. I asked Bowden if he thought this meant that American forces in Somalia had committed war crimes. Andrew has been leading an interesting discussion about whether or not Israeli actions in Gaza constitute war crimes, and I’ve been trying to place Israeli actions in a broader context. Bowden agreed to help me by providing his own understanding of civilian deaths in asymmetric warfare. Here’s some of what he had to say:

    “If you feel the need to go to war against an enemy that is not as powerful as you are, one of the tactics of the weaker party is to hide among civilians, and use the global media to advertise the horror of the onslaught. People on the receiving end of the bombs greatly exaggerate the casualties and get photographers to take the most gruesome of pictures, and at the same time, the people in charge of the stronger power try to minimize the number of casualties. If you live in a democracy, then public opinion really matters, and reports of dead children swells the criticism of the war. If you live in a dictatorship, then you don’t care what the people think. Israel is a democracy and it cares about the way the rest of the world feels. It gets hurt by killing civilians, so for moral and practical reasons, they’re trying very hard to avoid it.”

    “I believe that culpability for these casualties is very much with Hamas. Take this leader, Nizar Rayyan, who was killed with many of his children. He knew he was a target. If I knew that I was a target, I sure as hell wouldn’t have my children near me. It’s a horrible and cynical choice he made. But if your enemy is a sophisticated manipulator of public opinion, then this is one of the many downsides of choosing to go to war. Israel knows that.”

    “The parallel with Mogadishu is that gunmen in that battle hid behind walls of civilians and were aware of the restraint of the (Army) Rangers. These gunmen literally shot over the heads of civilians, or between their legs. They used women and children for this. It’s mind-boggling. Some of the Rangers shot civilians, some of them inadvertently and some of them advertently. They made the choice to shoot at crowds. When a ten-year-old is running at your vehicle with an AK-47, do you shoot the kid? Yes, you shoot the kid. You have to survive. When push comes to shove, faced with the horrible dilemma with a gunman facing you, yes, you shoot. It’s not just a choice about your own life. If you don’t shoot, you’re saying that your mission isn’t important, and the lives of your fellow soldiers aren’t important.”

  55. brewmn Says:

    Open Minded, here’s a suggestion for you and Mark Bowden: stop treating third world countries like they’re you own personal toilet, and maybe they’ll stop attacking you.

  56. pseudonymous in nc Says:

    “Open Minded” is just plagiarizing Jeffrey Goldberg, who is a walking conflict-of-interest on this topic.

  57. Farid Says:

    SLC

    There’s nothing left from your beloved Dershowitz. His debates with Dr Finkelestine and Professor Chomsky made it crystal clear that Dershowitz is at best a second rate lawyer from Brooklyn.

    Dershowitz doesn’t have enough attention span to aggregate information and draw conclusions. What is his biggest achievement? ’nuff said.

  58. more in sorrow Says:

    Open Minded (@62) quotes, that is does not endorse but rather reports, his colleague Mark Bowden as writing:

    I believe that culpability for these casualties is very much with Hamas. Take this leader, Nizar Rayyan, who was killed with many of his children. He knew he was a target. If I knew that I was a target, I sure as hell wouldn’t have my children near me. It’s a horrible and cynical choice he made. But if your enemy is a sophisticated manipulator of public opinion, then this is one of the many downsides of choosing to go to war. Israel knows that.”

    So now living with one’s family is a cynical choice, at least if one was Nizar Rayyan. Presumably he did know he could be, even certainly was, tragetted. Bowden’s bad reasoning comes in the next phrase, in which Bowden suggests his sort of reasoning universally applicable and possible.

    NB, someone ordered the attack, someone undertook the attack and must have known that civilians were likely to get hurt, if not killed. Yet by Bowden’s reasoning “the culpabilty… is very much with Hamas” despite those who gave and undertook these orders being members of the Isreali military and ultimately Isreal’s political elite.

    There is a certain cynicism here too. Perhaps we should recall that on an earlier occassion, during another one of the nasty periods, another Hamas leader died when the Isrealis bombed the apartment building he was sleeping in the middle of the night. A number of other folks died in the same attack. Shimon Peres was sent out to say that Isreal would never do this sort of thing (bombing apartment builds in a densely populated city in the middle of the night) if they knew that there were civilians present; this sounds to me like what Nizar Rayyan was doing.

    We’re back to the very grounds of MYs discussion of having stones thrown at him while he was riding his bicycle and the possibility of using a bazooka in response. We’re back to the whole question of occupation, resistance to occupation and the obligations of the occupier towards the community of nations if not the occuppied.

    Isreal could have had a two state solution if Ehud Barak has actually offered sovereignty; he didn’t unless one really thinks that two security cordons cutting across the West Bank amounts to Palestinian sovereinty. No doubt, EBarak had his reasons, such as an upcoming election and the Isreali right undertaking provocative actions, but with that failed proposal the schismogenic sequences we now observe kicked off and now have a not very pleasant trajectory.

    I make no argument for Hamas. But arguments like Bowden’s and actions like PM Olmert’s bragging (the original subject of this thread) make it impossible for me to support the Isreali state’s actions.

  59. mpowell Says:

    I think the context matters a lot. Israel is killing a lot of civilians in Gaza right now. What are they protecting? How many Israeli lives will it save? I don’t think the answer is hundreds.

    There are wars where it would be acceptable to incur these kinds of civilian casualties in the pursuit of legitimate military goals. But you can’t just choose two situations and compare the number of civilian deaths without considering the important of the strategic goals being pursued.

  60. Garavaglia Says:

    While Bush was not democratically elected (either time), Hamas was. Who are the real enemies of humanity?

  61. Farid Says:

    So basically Ehud Motherfucking Olmert is basically saying that the president of the United States is his bitch.

    Read Israel Lobby by Stephen Walt. He said all these two years. Criminal zionist has been and is controlling the white house for ages.

    Time to expel some folks with dual loyalty?

  62. Aleister Says:

    Shameful! Can’t they deny now that Israel, through the deep pockets of their lobbies, influence (to put it lightly) US foreign policy? Regardless if it’s true or false, just the fact that the PM of Israel dares to say something like this… is bad enough. Wake up people, we’re all financing Israel! What a disgrace.

  63. Farid Says:

    Aleister

    The only way forward is to charge all AIPAC members for treason; dismantle this genocide enabler machine PERMANENTLY and ultimately join 168 countries that have denounced the apartheid state of Israel.

    Surely it can’t be the case that only Israel and the US are right and the rest of the world are all wrong.

    I gotta say Olmert stuck it to the Bush up to hilt. World can hear his balls slamming into Bush’s ass.

    Is this America?

  64. Trevor Says:

    So you mean those imflammatory cartoons showing a hook-nosed ogre dangling an Uncle Sam puppet from a string are true? If you told this story to shabbas goy Tim Rutten of the L.A. Times he would defecate on your shoe. According to him – mention of the neocons, AIPAC, Walt and Mearshimer ad nauseum…puts you in the same camp as Julious Striecher.

  65. Farid Says:

    Personally I think Norman Finkelstein has contributed a lot more than anyone else in shedding the light on Israel/Palestine conflict than anyone else.

    AIPAC’s attempt to keep us in the dark has failed miserably so far.

  66. Arlington Says:

    Olmert’s remarks make me think of a mouse-elephant joke that is too crude and stupid to actually bother repeating here, but you probably know the one that I mean.

    The very cynical part of me, which is probably going to hell, sometimes thinks that if the horror in Gaza and Olmert’s buffoonish posturing keep Kadima/Labor in and Bibi out, they may actually amount to a lesser evil in the long run.

  67. CondoMice Says:

    This is big news and a really stupid thing to say on record. Really raises the issue how much control Israel has on the U.S. The statements also do not help the on going destruction of the perception of America.

    For those paying attention, this is not the first time an Israeli PM assert something similar, so it must be true.

    “Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will
    do that… I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry
    about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control
    America, and the Americans know it.”
    Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol
    Yisrael radio.

  68. Daniel Says:

    The attitude and actions of Ehud Olmert are certainly nothing new. What is new is that Olmert was so brazen in bragging about his actions. After all the money and arms that the US has given to Israel over the past several decades the Israelis treat this country with contempt. From the Lavon Affair, the USS Liberty, Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli “Art Students” celebrating 9/11, and the continuous demand from the Israelis and their proxies in the US that America sacrifice its security, respect, and the blood of its sons to expand Israeli hegemony Israel has continued to treat the US with utter contempt and disrespect. Enough is enough. Israel is not a friend or ally of the US, and it is time the American people woke up to this fact. For starters, we should end all foreign aid to Israel (and Egypt, Colombia, etc). It is utterly immoral to take the money of the American taxpayers and give it to a foreign nation, especially one so ungrateful and contemptuous of the US. Second, we should stop shielding Israel in the UN. Israel should be held accountable for its crimes and brutality against the Palestinians. Despite what the neocon-liberal Borg Collective would have us believe, the interests of Israel and America are not the same and it is not antisemitism to point out that Israel is a terrorist state.

  69. ese guey Says:

    obama wont be the same
    the Israelis will kontrol him too

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