Bibi’s Media Strategy
Via Spencer Ackerman, Mike Calderone reports on Benjamin Netanyahu’s meetings with journalists:
Now I’ve heard some more of the big name journalists who met with the Israeli Prime Minister on Monday: George Stephanopoulos (ABC), Chris Wallace (Fox News), Jeffrey Goldberg (The Atlantic), David Brooks (New York Times), Bill Kristol (Weekly Standard), Clarence Page (Chicago Tribune), and Doyle McManus (Los Angeles Times).
There was also a crew from the Washington Post: Jackson Diehl, Jim Hoagland, David Ignatius and Charles Krauthammer.
There’s some diversity in there, but overall a distinctly right-of-center tilt. That’s interesting, considering that all the levers of government are in Democratic hands. Normally, an Israeli Prime Minister attempts a strategy of bonding/courtship of the political powers that be. This seems more like a meeting roster for an “outsider” strategy, in which Netanyahu is expecting the administration to do things he doesn’t like, and then to try to mobilize the US domestic opposition to slam Obama for it and make him back down.
39 Responses to “Bibi’s Media Strategy”
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May 19th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Unfairly slamming Obama has worked for Dick Cheney, why not Bibi?
May 19th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
With respect to your post about doing vs. saying (beyond nomination of personnel – hasn’t Obama mostly TALKED so far, instead of actually DONE things (from day-1-Gitmo to zombie banks)), what is your take on what Rice has done in the security counsel recently? At least diplomatically they’re trying to mobilize something.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Question: is there anything not despicable, racist, and barbaric that Zionists have done in the last several decades – except, perhaps, for their equivalent of autobahns and volkswagens?
No, they have not. Why? Simple: Zionism is a disgrace.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
everybody else has rolled obama.
why wouldn’t bibi think that he could do the same.
that is the problem with presenting yourself as the guy that everyone gets along with.
sooner or later, everyone gets the idea that they can take advantage of you.
now, in obama’s case, that appears to be true.
but even if it is not true, it is definitely not a good impression to leave on the world stage.
taking someone down, getting a big republican scalp on his wall, would do wonders for his image on the world stage.
indicting cheney or rumsfield or any of that gang would make lots of folks rethink the view that he is…what did sarkozy say…naive…
May 19th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
“except, perhaps, for their equivalent of autobahns”
Their equivalent of autobahns are highways that Arabs aren’t allowed to drive on. That’s pretty despicable, too. Even worse, Israel won’t even put up signs to tell the Arabs which roads they aren’t allowed to drive on. Instead, they just seize the cars of Arabs who make a mistake. Their reasoning is that if they put up signs, people would take pictures of the signs, and that would make Israel look racist. Gee, you think?
As for Bibi, he’s making a smart move. His position is indefensible to those who don’t already walk in lockstep with Israel. Trying to defend it would only make him look silly.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Zionism is not the same as Likud-post-1967 policies.
Decrying Zionism is technically the same as saying Israel should not exist. Is that realistic? Or appropriate on this blog? I mean, I can’t stand Netanyanu, the denial of events in 48, and post 67 policy, and I can’t stand post-67 actions by Palestinian political leaders either. Terrorism is not an effective response to anything.
But I think after a holocaust and centuries of persecution, that a state was necessary in some form….therefore I am a Zionist.
Gray area, folks. It’s not black and white.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
This isn’t rocket science. Bibi is waiting out Obama’s first term.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
“Terrorism is not an effective response to anything.”
That’s not true. It worked for the Irish, and it worked for the Zionists. And it worked for a while with the LTTE, but recently failed spectacularly. But five years ago, it certainly looked like it was working for the LTTE. It worked fairly well for the Viet Cong. And it worked well enough for the PLO to get a seat at the table, at least. I don’t think you can really argue that terrorism is less effective than traditional warfare, which usually fails. And those that use terrorism use it because traditional warfare is already out of the question. It’s a tactic of necessity, and sometimes it works. We’d use it too if we didn’t already have the world’s most potent military. But even we use it anyway, but only in covert proxy wars. It’s the most cost effective means of asymmetrical warfare. And that’s why people still do it.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
“This isn’t rocket science. Bibi is waiting out Obama’s first term.”
Bingo! We have a winner.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Re abb1
The Fakestinians are sub-human slime off the bottom of the cesspool whose contribution to humanity consists of filth, squalor, and disease. Their former leader, Yasir Arafart, died of AIDS.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Re fostert
Terrorism doesn’t work if the victims are willing to be ruthless in their efforts to eradicate it. Prime example, the late dictator of Syria, Hafaz Assad, very effectively eliminated terrorists in the Syrian City of Hama by surrounding the city with several hundred artillery pieces and subjecting it to a two day bombardment that killed in excess of 20,000 people, which we proudly refer to as Hama Rules. Brutal but effective.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Boy, you are so excited about the idea of President Obama finally showing those rude Israelis what for, aren’t you? Reading tea leaves…
May 19th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
“Terrorism doesn’t work if the victims are willing to be ruthless in their efforts to eradicate it.”
That’s right, but most governments haven’t being willing to do it. Israel has, but they never faced an existential terrorist threat. The Sri Lankan government just took down the most dangerous terrorist force in history. It really was existential. And Turkey has at least contained the PKK, which was the second most dangerous one (now the first with the LTTE gone). But the PKK is still an issue in Turkey. And let’s face it, there’s a HUGE water issue there, and water is pretty much all that Turkey has. For Turkey, the conflict with the PKK is every much a survival issue as what Israel faces. The difference with Turkey is that the US doesn’t back them up as much (and indirectly supplies the PKK). The other difference is that Turkey has actually given in on some of their more unreasonable positions. Israel will never do so. With Israel, it is simple: the lands between the Jordan and the Mediterranean will be inhabited by Jews, and the Arabs will leave. Sri Lanka wants stability, Turkey wants water, and the Israelis want land, water, stability, and anything else they can get.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
I’d also add that passive resistance doesn’t work if the enemy is willing to be ruthless. Gandhi admitted that his techniques only worked because the English claimed to have a sense of decency. If Gandhi were facing the Israelis or the Turks, he’d be dead of acute terminal lead poisoning in a second. And that lead poisoning would be injected in a .223 round at supersonic velocity from a very nice rifle.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
And in the end, Gandhi did die of acute terminal lead poisoning. But it was a Beretta handgun, I think. Probably 9mm. But when you’re killed by a gun, you don’t worry so much about the caliber.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Re fostert
The Islamic extremists in Hama were not existential to the Assad regime. They were an annoyance at best but dictator Assads’ patience with annoyances was extremely limited. Very much unlike the various Israeli governments who have shown far too much patience with the Fakestinian pests. A dose of Hama Rles would have settled the Fakestinian terrorists once and for all.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
“Very much unlike the various Israeli governments who have shown far too much patience with the Fakestinian pests.”
The Israelis are not patient. For every lame rocket the Palestinians launch, the Israelis do an air strike with real bombs and real planes. And they maintain to traditional 10-1 kill ratio that is traditionally considered necessary to subjugate a population. The Israelis have a problem in that they are trying to defend land that they stole. If they want to convince people that they have a right to defend the 2/3 of Palestine that England granted them, maybe they shouldn’t do it by taking more land. The original grant was unfair, the takings after that were even more unfair. And now you think the Palestinians should commit suicide by granting them the rest? Well, they will commit suicide because it’s the only option now. But they will do it with bombs that kill Israelis. The Israelis have given them no option.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Frank C.f:
I’ll repeat my recent post:
The zionists knew, while still in Europe, that there were over 700,000 Arabs in Palestine and that Jews owned less than 10% of the land there. And they said Palestine was “a land without people for a people without land.”
They knew that ethnic cleansing would be required to establish a Jewish state.
They were lying then and they have never stopped lying.
There is zero reason to believe anything the zionists say.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
The sooner Obama realizes that Jizzrael is morally indefensible the better we get to the core of the problem. Yes you guess it right: the criminal and genocidal zionists.
The land belongs to the Palestinian. The very creation of Jizzrael was a wrong historical mistake.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
How can on defend a country like Jizzrael that has violated more international laws than ALL UNITED NATIONS MEMBERS COMBINED!
May 19th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Aren’t we talking about the same Netanyahu who turned to Jew-hater Jerry Falwell to undermine President Clinton? I’m surprised a meeting with John “Provoke a massive attack on Israel to kick off the End Times” Hagee wasn’t on the agenda this time.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
“the Fakestinian pests”
And quite frankly, it shows a real disdain for your fellow human beings to refer to them in a manner that is different than how they would refer to themselves. “Fakestan” is not only just wrong to say, it’s completely historically illiterate. They were always a distinct culture living in a distinct region. Well, ‘always’ meaning the last two thousand years. But that’s pretty much forever in human terms. In biological terms, ‘forever’ encompasses the last 150,000 years, and in only last 70,000 years did we ever leave Africa, our common homeland. And it’s pretty obvious that we white guys had common ancestors in Turkey long before the Turks ever arrived.
But if you want to talk about the Palestinians being a fake culture, then explain to me how they are fake having lived there ever since the Jewish diaspora. And obviously America is totally fake, but explain to me how the French culture might be more real than the Palestinians given that the French are a much more recent culture. And given that the Israelis didn’t arrive in Palestine until the late 19th century, how are they they even remotely a real culture?
Look, I want the Jews to have a piece of the Biblical land. And I do think they deserve a piece of it. But you cant just come back after 2,000 years and say: “Oh you guys have to leave because we have a book that says we own it.” The people who have been living there since the Jews gave it up deserve a majority of it. I’m willing to give the Palestinians only a third of what they deserve, but they need to have some guarantees that the Israelis won’t bomb the shit out of them, and they need to know that whatever they have they can actually keep. The Israelis won’t really offer that. The Israelis think that they can give up on a place because they weren’t strong enough to defend it, and then come back and take it away from people who where.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Jizzrael is populated mostly by the likes of SLC.
Can anyone honestly say they can show any love for the citizens of that nefarious country?
May 19th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Hmmm, my last comment was referencing of some other comments that seem to have been removed (along with one of mine). And that’s wrong. People should be allowed to offend each other. Of course, I mean no offense in my comments (unless I explicitly mean to offend them and that’s always clear), but anyone is welcome to be offended and I don’t care. I’m concerned about that removal.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Oops, it’s still there. It was probably a problem with my reader.
May 19th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
hasn’t this been the republican strategy since Jan? How’s that working?
I think Obama is being unestimated, thankfully, by bibi.
He thinks he’s playing with a rookie and naif. Just like the gop has done.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:12 am
Actually, while it sounds almost impossible to believe, it’s quite true: all of the Zionist – in Israel and outside are exactly like SLC. SLC is what Zionism is, no more no less.
Here you go:
I’ll note that plenty of racist swine here don’t have a problem talking about “Arabs as a demographic time-bomb” either. Racist swine like Frank C.f above. Because this is what being a Zionist requires him to think, and there is no way around it.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:31 am
Re Fred and abb1
I love fucktards like Mr. Fred and Mr. abb1 who do more to inadvertently support the State of Israel then all the pro-Israel commentors on this blog.
Re fostert
We have hashed and rehashed the issue of the origins of the Palestinians who were living in Palestine at the time of the Balfour Deceleration. When the American writer Mark Twain visited Palestine in the early 1879s he found the area almost depopulated. The City of Jerusalem appeared to have fewer inhabitants then his native Saint Joseph, Mo. The fact is that most of the Palestinian Arabs who were present at the time of the Balfour Decleration were themselves recent immigrants or the descendants of recent immigrants. The influx was mainly due to the interest shown in the region by the German Kaiser and the resulting interest of the British Government who spurred development which attracted the aforementioned immigration.
However, be all that as it may, the argument that Jewish settlers displaced Palestinians, even to the extent that it may be true, no more labels them thieves then the displacement of Native Americans by European settlers labels the latter thieves. If we are going to require that the Government of Israel go out of business, as demanded by the Israel bashers on this blog, then we must also demand that all the current governments in the Western Hemisphere also go out of business and return the land to the original native inhabitants, if one can find them.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Why, I really don’t have anything against Israel. It’s a shame that this unfortunate country is ruled by the despicable cult called Zionism.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:31 am
And there you have it in a nutshell: The Palestinian Arabs’ aspirations to national self-determination — Wilsonian idealism. The Jews’ aspirations to national self-determination — a “despicable cult.”
The rich irony of decrying Israel’s “unfortunate” fate in being ruled by this “cult,” rather than, say, in the peace-loving, democratic, and progressive manner of its neighbors Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia et al., is simply the cherry on top.
May 20th, 2009 at 11:57 am
There are no “Palestinian Arabs’ aspirations”, Larry. I’m sure even a racist swine like you should be able to understand that Palestinian people have the right to self-determination.
As long as you keep seeing Jews, Arabs (as an ethnicity), etc. and keep assigning political significance to these silly categories – you will remain a racist swine that you are. In your case, I’m afraid, this means: till the end of your natural life.
But don’t worry, Larry: your grandchildren won’t give a fuck about any ‘Jews’ or ‘Arabs’; not any more than about ‘angels’ and ‘demons’.
May 20th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Re abb1
Fakestinians, being sub-human slime of the bottom of the cesspool whose only contributions to humanity are filth, squalor and disease deserve only Hama Rules. And murdering rapist abb1 deserves the same.
May 20th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
SLC’s outbursts of vulgar antisemitism are really in bad taste, I must say. Not that it’s unexpected, coming from a Zionist and all, but it certainly makes a very unpleasant reading, not to mention conveys no useful information.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Re abb1
SLC’s outbursts of vulgar antisemitism are really in bad taste, I must say. Not that it’s unexpected, coming from a Zionist and all, but it certainly makes a very unpleasant reading, not to mention conveys no useful information.
Unlike Mr. abb1s’ vile and uncalled for personal attacks on Mr. Birnbaum no doubt.
May 20th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
It wasn’t uncalled for. The phrase “the Palestinian Arabs’ aspirations to national self-determination” is a fine example of racist slur – why “Palestinian Arabs“? What difference does it make whether indigenous Palestinians are Arabs or Eskimo? None, unless you’re a racist (classical antisemite), which Mr. Birnbaum most certainly is. And so, naturally, I called him on that.
Ironically, Mr. Birnbaum himself, I suspect, is probably partially an ethnic Arab (aka Semite). His (and your) hatred of your own (albeit partially) ethnic group is a highly comical phenomenon, I must say.
But in fact I probably was a bit unfair to Frank C.f, and for that I apologize. Even though Frank C.f is a self-proclaimed Zionist, I’ll admit that it doesn’t necessarily make him a racist swine; he may be only an idiot who doesn’t understand all the implications of Zionism as a political movement. So, there. My apologies, Frank.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Re abb1
Zionism today, Zionism tomorrow, Zionism forever.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
The really sad thing about the State of Israel is that in the end, it was just not a very good idea. Strictly from a practical standpoint. Don’t even need to drag out the Bible, or the holocaust.
There were many jews who believed, prior to the establishment of the state of Israel, that it was a bad idea, and that Palestine was a bad place to try the idea. Because, you know, there were already a bunch of people living there.
The central assumption of the zionists at that time was that the natives were unsophisticated and could be managed. Like the British in India – a sophisticated (more advanced) people would prevail over a less advanced people. The whole idea was very much of the 1800’s – by the time it was realized it was about 100 years too late to work out well.
So now it exists a tragic error, and no one really knows how to fix it or undo it, how to stop the inexorable processes that are in motion. Look at the demographics, the notion of a’jewish state’ is out of step with the the facts of the place. It is also out of step with the times (secualrism and racial and cultural mixing on a global scale), but that’s another topic.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:14 am
So Jizzrael’s prime minister calls Obama’s plan stupid and childish.
Shouldn’t we stop sending these insufferable douchebags any aid RIGHT NOW?
Let’s see if stopping 3000000000 dollars to NatanMOTHERFUCKINGYahu’s government is childish and stupid too or not.
Once a Jizzrael always Jizzrael.
May 21st, 2009 at 8:28 am
[...] David Ignatius came away from his meeting with Bibi Netanyahu convinced that the key stumbling block to Israeli acceptance of a Palestinian state is something [...]