If the re-elected Obama administration has not quite shown its true colors, it’s given the world a peek. As former UN Ambassador John Bolton observed, the Palestine Authority could not have swung a UN vote for “observer” status without the passive support of Washington. After Israel responded to the Palestinian end-run around the Oslo Agreement by approving 3,000 new apartments in a Jerusalem suburb, five European countries–Spain, Britain, Denmark, France and Sweden–formally reprimanded Israel by summoning its ambassador, an unprecedented diplomatic step. As the Daily Telegraph wrote Dec. 4, the gang of five did so in connivance with the Obama administration.
The newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, quoted unnamed Israeli diplomats as saying the outcry could not have occurred without the complicity of the Obama administration, which has profound differences with Mr Netanyahu over settlements.
“We would not be mistaken to say that Europe was acting with Washington’s encouragement,” the paper’s commentator, Shimon Shiffer wrote. “The White House authorised Europe to pounce on the Netanyahu government and to punish it.”
One Israeli official told the Daily Telegraph that while the US was unlikely to have ordered such a move, it may have signalled approval.
“It’s more likely that they [the Americans] have been informed and have not raised any objection, but also showed some understanding and maybe even more,” he said. “There’s probably an understanding between the US and the Europeans that this is the right thing to do at this point.”
But it really doesn’t matter what Britain, Spain, Denmark, France and Sweden think. There’s only one European country whose opinion matters, and that is Germany — where Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received a warm welcome from Chancellor Angela Merkel. Washington sandbags America’s closest ally while Berlin gives it backing. The world is changing. Obama’s strategic withdrawal, while lamentable, has one good side: it limits Obama’s capacity to do damage.
Here is how Akiva Eldar read the Netanyahu-Merkel meeting in AI-Monitor, a Middle Eastern news site that tilts towards the Arab viewpoint:
The summoning of Israel’s ambassadors to the European capitals in the wake of the decision to approve the construction of some 3,200 housing units between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim took place only after those countries rejected Israel’s demand that they vote against the admission of Palestine as a nonmember observer state of the UN. The parties to the left of the right-wing Likud Party as well as some political pundits portrayed Germany’s decision to abstain at the UN General Assembly vote and its strong protest against the decision regarding E1 as a colossal diplomatic failure. They called the crisis in the relationships with Chancellor Angela Merkel — Israel’s greatest supporter in Europe — as a monumental failure by Netanyahu’s government.
But lo and behold, at the end of that week, Israeli voters saw Netanyahu sporting a broad smile while standing next to Merkel at the press conference in Berlin shortly after their meeting. The prime minister had good reason to feel content with his host; the headlines that had previously reported a rift with Germany were supplanted by the chancellor’s wishy-washy statement that “with regard to the settlements, we agreed to disagree. That topic has been addressed time and again, yet this doesn’t prevent us from exchanging similar views on security issues that are important to Israel […] As close partners, we can convey our assessment whether it would be correct or incorrect to promote the two-state solution, and there’s disagreement on this point.” Merkel explained that “Israel is a sovereign state that will make its own decisions.”
“When an important state such as Germany brushes a flagrant violation of the law and international consensus under the red-carpet treatment it gives Netanyahu, it in fact endorses the joint Likud-Beitenu slate as well as the settlements in the eyes of the Israeli voter,” Eldar fulminated.
The conservative daily Die Welt, the newspaper closest to Chancellor Merkel, interviewed Netanyahu at length and gave the Israeli prime minister space to make a full and eloquent defense of Israel’s position. Like Merkel, the Die Welt journalists registered their regret over expansion of “settlements,” but in the context of softball questions. All this praising by faint damn is of great help to Netanyahu.
What explains Chancellor Merkel’s sympathy towards Israel? Part of it is simple righteousness. Mrs. Merkel rose through the democracy movement in East Germany during the last years of the Cold War — she speaks Russian with Vladimir Putin — and came to believe in democracy the hard way. Second, the German chancellor is a righteous Gentile who believes that Germany has a special obligation to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. She has demonstrated this again and again, for example, by intervening to insure that b’rit milah — Jewish ritual circumcision– remained legal in Germany despite attempts to prohibit it. And third — and in this case most important — Mrs. Merkel is a practical woman of high intelligence, trained as a scientist and toughened by years in political life. She has no patience with Obama’s utopianism.
Germany is changing. Its economy is doing reasonably well despite the European recession, because it is exporting more to Eastern Europe, Russia and China. A recent opinion poll asked Germans to name the world’s most important economy. Sixty percent said China and only 30% said the United States. As Germany acts in its own economic interests in the absence of American leadership, it will continue to gravitate towards strong and vibrant countries such as Israel and disengage from hopeless losers like Spain — or the Arabs. Nothing succeeds like success, and Israel’s reception by the practical Mrs. Merkel is further proof of its standing in the world. A lot of things will change in the next couple of years. I just don’t know whether we’ll hear about them here in the United States.
@ Vinnie
True that
Hey, it isn’t hard to give Israel better treatment than Obama would.
@ jew:
jew Said:
http://www.jcrelations.net/Goldman%2C+David.557.0.html?L=3
David P. Goldman has written on the subject of music and religion in the Rivista Internazionale di Musica Sacra, The Musical Quarterly, and other scholarly journals. He taught history of music theory at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, and music appreciation at Queens College of New York. As a choral accompanist and harpsichordist, he has performed numerous works of Christian music. He is professionally active as an investment banker in New York, and writeull column for the global edition of Forbes magazine. Mr. Goldman attends Park Avenue Synagogue in New York.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/KD18Aa01.html
jew, David Goldman is on your side.
she is as righteous as churchill who proclaimed himself a friend of the Jews and gave 75% of our Land to the arabs. i am ashamed to read such a nonsense from a person who probably finished high school. obviously the writer has NO knowledge about german culture, mentality and history what’s over.
the germans are infinitely patient. after the biggest shame a nation ever faced (in 1945 germans were transported in trains by the allies to the concentration camps and were forced to pass by hills of naked Jewish dead bodies – even a german, who is well known for his lack of sentimentality, could hardly ever forget such an experience). therefore, for several decades the germans simply shut up and repeated what ever the allies wanted them to repeat. and by the time they started working like fools – knowing that money rules the world around. they lived simple lives and worked hard, and only two decades after WWII they became the richest country in europe.
also the germans are excellent psycologists. they read the french psyche like an open book. the french were (and still are) arrogant, persuaded that nobody is as beautyful, elegant, eloquent and cultivated as they are. germany officially gave to france elugies about the high french culture, and demanded in return the french-german friendship. while on german TV the germans could see french cinema and french documentaries – which were officially presented to the german citizen as achievements of a great nation named france – in france you could see WWII movies portraiting the germans as wicked, ugly, fat and silly. the germans knew of course of all of this, and did never complain – on the contrary, they played the game, excepted the bad guy role, knowing that he who laughs last laughs best. i have been living both in france and germany. in paris’ cafes i could hear the most vulgare comments about germans every time when a german tourist finally left the cafe, but in berlin or frankfurt i never heard such a thing after a french tourist left a german inn. the germans simply shut up – knowing that this is the price they have to pay in order to restart at zero (and continue where they were forced to stop, yes!).
with regard to the Jews the germans have proven themselves as excellent psychologist, too. twice a year, the entire german state payed verbal tribute to the Jews: at reichskristallnacht and at the liberation day of auschwitz. german politicians lamented about “what the nazis did to the Jews” (note well that the “germans” were completely innocent, the “nazis” did it – i have asked hundreds of germans why they did nothing against the holocaust, and they ALL answered the same: “we dedn’t know about it”, yes in every single german city all Jews disapeared miracoulasly and nazis occupied their appartments, and they did not know it…), german politicians eluged assimilated Jewish writers, artists and scientists for their achievements to the german state, german TV portraited the Jews before the “holocaust” as innocent pacifist intelligent and successful “german citizens”, who were butched “by the nazis” for no reason. the Jewish hearts in germany but also in Israel began slowly but surely to melt like ice in the sun. assimilated Jews of german descent and other assimilated Jews as well started spreading the idea that “the germans have changed”. assimilated Jews HAVE to believe that the nations have finally changed – since otherwise there would be no perspective for their existence (for the orthodox Jews this is completely differeent, since we have no problem with the idea that all wicked nations be annihilated if they refuse to repent sincerely).
and angela merkel?! she is the daughter of a protestant cleric from hamburg (west germany) who chose by his own to immigrate to communist east germany where he enjoied special treatment like two cars and free travelling to western countries. angela merkel finished her PhD in east berlin where she held a position in the secretary for communist propaganda. when she saw the days of communism coming to an end, she switched positions and became engaged in the anti-communist protest movement and broke with her father. she finally attracted attention from chancelor helmut kohl who began preparing her to succeed him in office (since he was already quite old). once having succeeded her mentor, she began promoting policies contrary to her mentor and the latter stopped talking to her for a long period of time. after the nuke catastrophe in japan, she learned from the newpapers that german public opinion was against nuclear energy, and litteraly the next day she proclaimed that from now on all german nuclear power plants would be shut down within ten years or something. she began turning her conservative “christian democratic party” (CDU) to the left in order to remain in power, to the point that there is hardly a difference between her party and the social democrats. even family values have been abolished in the CDU under merkel’s reign, giving homosexual couples the same tax reductions as heterosexual couples. angela merkel is a person without values. she wants to be in power. nothing else. she has no children. nobody will follow her when she disappears. maybe she believes that her name will be engraved in world’s history for ever, and that might be more in her eyes than bilogical descendency.
merkel and Israel?! merkel continues the way germany started after WWII. she knows that the thing which assimilated Jews need the most is love from germany, and those Jews satisfy with verbal love without any check in real life! while after WWII the germans equally needed the love of the assimilated Jews, today merkel found out that the secular state of Israel is much more in need for goy love than germany needs Israel’s sympathy, given the fact that it has become politically correct to bunch at Israel without restrains. so merkel acomplishes her routine exercices about the “unbreakable german-Israeli friendship”, and immediatly afterwards begans bunching on Israel in the same way as all other european nations: “i demand that any building in the settlements be frozen”, “i strictly condemn the Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied palestinian terrotories” etc… she is part of the quartet which promotes an arab terror state in Eretz Israel, she arms and trains the “palestinian police”, gives tanks to the saudis and islamist egypt, condemns Israel in the UN and her FM does not walk out when A-jad gives a speak… because she knows very well who is in need of the statement “angela merkel is a real friend pof Israel” – it’s not her, it’s BB.
well, in some twenty years of so the larva will devore her flesh, and her bones will remain for another period of time. but her sole will disappear the same day with her breath – like the vanity of her mind.