McCain Takes on Obama Over Israel
[Guest post by DRJ]
John McCain says President Obama shares some blame for the Israel flotilla controversy:
“This is another step in a chain of unfortunate events beginning with President Obama’s insistence there be a freeze as a precondition for peace talks [with the Palestinians]; a freeze on settlements in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, not a settlement,” he said on Fox News on Tuesday night. “The mistaken belief that pressuring Israel on settlement freeze would somehow move them closer and show the Arab world that they were putting pressure on Israel has backfired.”
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“The fact is that this nation has stood by Israel,” he said. “And now, people around the world, including Israel’s enemies, are not so sure.”
The Israelis have also released a new video of the flotilla raid that shows activists throwing stun grenades at the Israeli soldiers and hosing them with water:
— DRJ
McCain is so done, but it is nice to see somebody getting up in the thin-skinned empty-suit dirty socialist pezzydent’s grill.
daleyrocks (1d0d98) — 6/2/2010 @ 5:00 pmPeople seem to forget what Bush, Sr. and Baker did in the wake of the first Iraq war in an attempt to pressure Israel. So far, Obama hasn’t gotten anywhere near the level of pressure that was exerted back then to try to stop the settlements (and of course they went on despite those efforts).
And expecting Israel to freeze building even in Jerusalem as a sign of good will is actually a fairly reasonable piece of diplomacy, if you want to give the Palestinian moderates (if such exist) a chance to actually move the ball on their side.
And the momentum against Israel among Europeans has been building since the US invaded Iraq; anti-US feelings allowed a freer flow of anti-Israel feelings, and targeting Israel was a way of targeting the US by proxy.
If anything, the flotilla signalled that Obama’s policy was producing results by tilting intraPalestinian dynamics back towards al Fatah; Hamas needed to do something dramatic, and its European supporters were of course quite willing to help out. Had even one ship gotten into Gaza, that would be precedent for more, and of course one can be sure that if Hamas didn’t have weapons being ferried in on this flotilla, it would have them on future ones. And by making sure one ship was ready for violence, the usual martyr script can now be played out, and Hamas will be try to get as much out of it as it can–if nothing else, at least make Egypt give up its share of the blockade.
kishnevi (feba14) — 6/2/2010 @ 6:12 pm“People seem to forget what Bush, Sr. and Baker did in the wake of the first Iraq war in an attempt to pressure Israel.”
kishnevi – Maybe it’s easier to focus on today rather than events of 20 years ago which can’t be changed.
daleyrocks (1d0d98) — 6/2/2010 @ 8:08 pmGeorge H.W. Bush and James Baker aren’t my idea of principled conservatives. Their principles were whatever worked for that moment.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 6/2/2010 @ 8:15 pmKind of like Obama.
DRJ (d43dcd) — 6/2/2010 @ 8:15 pmMcCain is just worried about his next election. Had he done this during the campaign maybe I would not despise him as much as I do.
JD (de02cc) — 6/2/2010 @ 8:19 pmGood for McCain making a stand. (Isn’t he running for something???…) I was surprised to read Biden’s reasonable comments. I have to wonder if this is another going off script moment.
“I think Israel has an absolute right to deal with its security interest. I put all this back on two things: one, Hamas, and, two, Israel’s need to be more generous relative to the Palestinian people who are in trouble in Gaza,” Biden said, according to a transcript of the interview, in which he went on to discuss Hamas’s control of Gaza:
“[The Israelis have] said, ‘Here you go. You’re in the Mediterranean. This ship — if you divert slightly north you can unload it and we’ll get the stuff into Gaza.’ So what’s the big deal here? What’s the big deal of insisting it go straight to Gaza? Well, it’s legitimate for Israel to say, ‘I don’t know what’s on that ship. These guys are dropping eight — 3,000 rockets on my people,'” Biden said.
Dana (1e5ad4) — 6/2/2010 @ 8:20 pmGeorge H.W. Bush and James Baker aren’t my idea of principled conservatives. Their principles were whatever worked for that moment
Indeed. But I was simply pointing to the fact that the US was even more openly nonsupportive of Israel at that point, without any apparent bad consequences to Israel. But possibly to Bush, if he lost Jewish votes because of it.
kishnevi (feba14) — 6/2/2010 @ 9:54 pmA simple question: How many people has Hamas killed? Hom many teenage boys has the IDF murdered? And the latter is all ‘ALL’ done on our dime by racist tribal peckerwoods. Just a fact that too many don’t want to see including simple minded John McCain. Maybe the VC kicked him in the head a few too many times?
David Brown (69f4e8) — 6/3/2010 @ 11:44 amWell, David, just how many ways did you intend to use to show that the only “peckerwood” in question was you?
SPQR (26be8b) — 6/3/2010 @ 12:05 pm