NETANYAHU MISREADS THE MOMENT, TOTALLY

NOVANEWS
by Philip Weiss
Netanyahu’s speech to AIPAC last night reminded me of Pat Buchanan’s famous culture wars speech in the ‘92 Republican convention, when he cooked his goose and then-President Bush’s too. Netanyahu is equally out of touch with the political zeitgeist. The U.S. Secretary of State comes into AIPAC and says, we need movement on the settlements because it’s killing our image worldwide, General Petraeus and Joe Biden were reported to have made even stronger statements on that score last week; and look, Netanyahu comes to the lobby and says Jerusalem is ours forever, Jerusalem is not a settlement. He made no movement at all.
Plus the weird Holocaust bender: FDR and Churchill didn’t save my people, the Jews of Europe, so we have learned not to rely on great men, but reserve the right to defend ourselves. Israel on its own, defiant, crazy.
Netanyahu believes in the Israel lobby even more than Walt and Mearsheimer do. He seems to think Jews run America. But even shrewd AIPAC’rs know the writing is on the wall, and this delegitimization thing everyone at AIPAC complains about reflects the world’s impatience with Israeli occupation and oppression, and still AIPAC’s speakers serve red meat about Jerusalem undivided. Not one bone thrown in the direction of the Obama administration. The theme of the conference is, Jerusalem is not a settlement. (F— you, Obama.)