Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu arrived in the United States Sunday morning on his way to diplomatic charades with President Barack Obama on a stage where each player suffers consequences for telling the truth.
The Prime Minister also is up against a media that, according to Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh, is full of lies almost across-the-board and especially when it comes to reporting on President Obama.
The president set the agenda in his speech to the United Nations last week, when he said that the Iranian nuclear threat and the Israeli-Palestinian Authority dispute are the two biggest issues threatening world peace.
When he puts a nuclear bomb in the hands of the Ayatollahs on the same scale as Israel’s effort to remain a state in the face of Palestinian Authority demands, and gets away with it thanks to a cooperative media, there is a limit as to what “truths” Netanyahu can tell. If Obama had told the truth and said that the PA is a pimple and that Iran is a cancer, the world might be better place, but he might lose his Nobel Peace Prize.
As Prime Minister Netanyahu boarded his plane late Saturday night, he said, “One must talk facts and one must tell the truth. Telling the truth today is vital for the security and peace of the world and, of course, it is vital for the security of the State of Israel.”
That is a tall order.
Newly-elected Iranian president Hassan Rouhani played out his script excellently in the United Nations, praising the United States as a “great nation” and calling for negotiations over its nuclear program.
Most media lapped up the speech and went ga-ga over the fact that the President of the United States of America spoke directly with an Iranian president on the telephone for 15 minutes for the first time in years.
That is the truth.
It also is just about equally meaningless, but as Hersh said in a weekend interview with the London Guardian, The New York Times spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would.”
Concerning the media in general, Hersh said, “It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama].
“They [media]… work out how to re-elect the president.
“Do you think Obama’s been judged by any rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for. What’s going on [with journalists]?”
When it comes to covering Israel, Hirsh’s comments are an understatement. Whatever truths Netanyahu will say will be met with the comebacks already stored in the “Screw Israel” folder.
The Guardian “revealed” Sunday that Prime Minister Netanyahu will hand over to President Obama new evidence that Iran is on its way to the Big Bomb.
Been there, done that. Israel has been disclosing evidence for years, and it only encourages the chorus to sing “engagement at any cost.”
Given the White House’s fiasco after President Obama said he would attack the Assad regime because of its use chemical weapons, the Prime Minister knows darned well that Obama will guarantee that Israel that it has nothing to worry about. The United States is behind Israel. All the way – until push comes to shove.
Thoroughly condemned, and correctly so, by the media for making the United States look like a pussycat against Assad and Russia, President Obama stumbled on “engagement” with Iran as the perfect antidote for his lost prestige, and the heck with Israel. He will cross that bridge when he comes to it – or he won’t.
On the Iranian issue, Netanyahu will tell the truth. It will be printed in the newspapers the following day and will quickly be used to wrap the fish.
Netanyahu will be challenged, correctly, with the accusations that Israel has nuclear weapons, which of course exist, and he will have to put on some zany stunt as payment for keeping it an open secret.
Prime Minister Netanyahu will not dare tell the truth about the Palestinian Authority, which announced on Saturday it has put Haiti and Grenada in its pocket, stuffed with more than 130 countries that it says now recognize it is a country.