MK Shelly Yachimovich who is both the chairperson of the Labor Party and head of the Knesset opposition parties, warned Prime Minister Netanyahu that he’s picking too many fights with the Obama Administration, putting Israel in a disadvantage.
“We’ve opened a front against the United States,” Yachimovich told Israel Radio Sunday morning. “That’s our great weakness, and that’s our mistake.”
Referring to the growing gap between Israel and the U.S. on the Iran nuke issue, Yachimovich warned that it’s obvious the Americans “are sick and tired of us, and they’re saying very harsh things—about the freeze Israel is insisting on maintaining, and about the fact that the status quo is not a permanent thing, and it can reach a very tough escalation should there be no new developments in the talks with the Palestinians.”
About the failed Iran talks in Geneva, the Labor leader expressed the same concern as everyone else regarding the fact that the deal in the making does not end the Iranian nuclear program, only puts it on hold in return for removing economic sanctions. But then she made a sharp turn that almost gave this reporter whiplash, saying it was all because of Israel’s failure to give in to American directives on returning to the pre-1967 boders.
Gliding effortlessly from the Iranian talks to Judea and Samaria, making the direct connection in a way that most politicians at least attempt to conceal, the Labor party leader basically said Israel must give up any and all resistance to the American line, or face the unpleasant consequences.
“It’s a situation of a quarrel and a strife which Israel cannot afford,” Yachimovich insisted. “Creating several confrontations with the U.S. is unhealthy for us, it’s not good for our security, not good for our diplomacy, it’s not good for Israel.”
In other words, the goal of Israeli foreign and defense policy is to ingratiate the United States, and anything that gets in the way of Washington’s satisfaction is bad for Israel.
Yes, the Labor party has come a long way from the days when some of its current members sang the praises of Comrade Stalin, Sun of the Nations, who would bring revolution and prosperity to the oppressed American workers.
It’s the same spineless adulation, but now it’s for Comrade Obama…
Both Yachimovich and the man who’s trying to unseat her as party chief, Labor MK Yitzhak Herzog, expressed vociferous objections to Netanyahu’s plan to reinstate MK Avigdor Lieberman as Foreign Minister, possibly because Lieberman has a spine, one heck of a spine, really, considering the 17-year legal ordeal he has emerged from unscathed last week.
Speaking on Saturday, Herzog actually repeated the same Yachimovich line, but in a more pathetic fashion, if that’s even imaginable. He actually said, according to Israel radio, that the Netanyahu policy has failed and that he has been unable to persuade the world powers to support it, and “had he combined his position with a brave political process [with the Palestinians, he might have reached deeper into their hearts.”
Yes, boys and girls, the contender for leadership at Labor suggested in so many words that maybe—only maybe—an Israeli decision to give up Judea and Samaria would have convinced the world powers to keep the sanctions going against Iran until they surrendered their nuclear program.
In the immortal words of Groucho Marx, “Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you: he really is an idiot.”
Pro-Palestinian Meretz Chairperson Zehava Gal-On also called on Netanyahu not to appoint Lieberman to his old post, because he would weaken even further Israel’s already fraying ties with its friends and allies in the world, and, worst of all, would “have a destructive influence on the negotiations with the Palestinians.”
Gal-On said reinstating Lieberman would be tantamount to placing an explosive charge under the peace negotiations table.
Definitely the kind of imagery a PLO-supporter would use.