Who is a Chickenshit? Senior White House Officials say Netanyahu, That's Who!

Jafar M Ramini Salem-News.com-Oct-30-2014 

Is this the straw that broke the camel’s back?

Image by Carlos Latuff

(LONDON) - It seems, at last, that the intransigence, arrogance, disrespect and disdain that Mr. Netanyahu and most of his cabinet colleagues have shown towards their benefactors in the USA have proved to be too much to bear for the Obama Administration, including Mr. Obama himself.

Senior officials have called Mr. Netanyahu ‘a chickenshit prime minister’, ‘a coward’ and ‘a man more interested in his own political survival than peace.’

No one can blame them. Ever since Harry S. Truman decided to adopt the illegitimate child that is Israel, America has extended every possible courtesy and support to the Israeli cause. As a matter of fact, America has given Israel more than $120 billion dollars in aid. One hundred and twenty BILLION dollars.*

Add to that, the continued supply of state-of-the-art weaponry, the blanket protection in the international, diplomatic and political arenas and the actual involvement of the USA forces in proxy wars on behalf of Israel ...and you would have thought that Israel, to say the least, would be grateful.

Not a bit of it.

Israeli prime ministers, foreign ministers and defence ministers have continuously referred to America in disparaging terms, from Moshe Dayan through Arial Sharon to the present prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Moshe Dayan memorably said, “Our American friends give us money, give us arms and give us advice. We take the money, we take the arms and we ignore the advice.”

Arial Sharon famously told his then foreign minister, Shimon Peres, “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”

And now Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have taken his disrespect and disregard for the Obama US administration to new heights.

This is manifested in language that is less than respectful every time Mr. Netanyahu visits The White House and lectures Mr. Obama, in full view of the international press, on how to run his foreign policy.

Every announcement of illegal settlement construction, particularly in East Jerusalem takes place literally on the doorstep of The White House.

“We view settlement activity as illegitimate and unequivocally oppose unilateral steps that prejudge the future of Jerusalem,” said Jen Psaki, spokesperson for the US Department of State.

Then what does Netanyahu do? He announces yet another 1000 illegal settlements in East Jerusalem.

“Anti-settlement rhetoric is disconnected from reality,” Netanyahu is reported to have said, “as the French build in Paris and the British build in London the Israelis build in Jerusalem. We will continue to build in Jerusalem.”

He goes further when he implies that Israel does not need the approval of The White House to do what it needs to do in order ‘to protect Israel’.

His latest move has been to threaten to by-pass the President completely and go straight to Congress. Disrespect? Arrogance? Over confidence? Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

According to White House insider, Jeffrey Goldberg in ‘The Atlantic’, successive Obama administration officials have called Netanyahu ‘recalcitrant, myopic, reactionary, obtuse, blustering, pompous', and “Aspergery,” implying that the Israeli prime minister suffers from a mental illness.

Mr. Goldberg assures us that these are verbatim descriptions. “I keep a running list”, he says.

The remarks are particularly telling in having been made to Goldberg, a Washington insider who has interviewed both Obama and Netanyahu, and who warned that US-Israeli relations were in a “full-blown crisis” that could only get worse after the midterm elections.

Look at what Netanyahu’s defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon had to say about Mr. John Kerry, US Secretary of State. He called him, ‘obsessive and Messianic’ saying he hoped Kerry “gets a Nobel Prize and then leaves us alone.”

The Americans are certainly not alone in feeling fed-up with Mr. Netanyahu’s intransigent behaviour and disregard for international rule of law.

The spokesperson for Lady Ashton, Head of EU Foreign Affairs, said “The European Union could only condemn such an ill-judged and ill-timed decision if the plans for the building of 1000 units in East Jerusalem went ahead."

Let’s not forget what the former French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is now actively working on his comeback into French politics, said to Mr. Obama after meetings with Mr. Netanyahu.

“I cannot bear Netanyahu,” he said, “The man’s a liar.”

Obama reportedly responded, “You’re fed up with him. I have to deal with him every day.”

My friends, especially my American friends, I have always pointed out to you the dangers of Zionism and said that you are occupied too.

I call upon you once more to redeem your country from the clutches of Zionism and corporate America. Come midterm elections please vote in the people who will serve your interests and those of your country not those who put Israel’s interest first.

Time for America to be the land of the free again.

Resource: *http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/U.S._Assistance_to_Israel1.html

JAFAR M RAMINI OCT 30 2014

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Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer, commentator and analyst on Middle Eastern affairs living in London.

He was born in Jenin, northern Palestine, was educated in England and spent the early years of his working life in the Arabian Gulf and Saudi Arabia. He has traveled far and wide, searching for the answer to a question that still eludes him.

Why does the United States of America support the Zionist line in such a blind folded way while ignoring the legitimate rights of the indigenous Palestinian people? Particularly as the Palestinian people harbour no ill feelings towards America and its people nor has ever caused them any harm. It is, Jafar says, a conundrum.