Posted on 08/11/2010 6:18:08 PM PDT by Kaslin
JERUSALEM — Two photographs adorn the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Together they illuminate a portentous fact: No two leaders of democracies are less alike — in life experiences, temperaments and political philosophies — than Netanyahu, the former commando and fierce nationalist, and Barack Obama, the former professor and post-nationalist.
One photograph is of Theodor Herzl, born 150 years ago. Dismayed by the eruption of anti-Semitism in France during the Dreyfus Affair at the end of the 19th century, Herzl became Zionism's founding father. Long before the Holocaust, he concluded that Jews could find safety only in a national homeland.
The other photograph is of Winston Churchill, who considered himself "one of the authors" of Britain's embrace of Zionism. The Balfour Declaration of 1917 stated: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." Beginning in 1923, Britain would govern Palestine under a League of Nations mandate.
Netanyahu, his focus firmly on Iran, honors Churchill because he did not flinch from facts about gathering storms. Obama returned to the British Embassy in Washington the bust of Churchill that was in the Oval Office when he got there.
Obama's 2009 speech in Cairo, courting the Arab world, may have had measurable benefits, although the metric proving this remains mysterious. The speech — made during a trip when Obama visited Cairo and Riyadh but not here — certainly subtracted from his standing in Israel.
In it, he acknowledged Israel as, in part, a response to Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. Then, with what many Israelis considered a deeply offensive exercise of moral equivalence, he said: "On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland."
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
I’m glad to hear Bibi doesn’t like foreign aid and would end it if he only had the votes in the Knesset.
Foreign aid is heroin. It is no better for Israel than it is for your average banana republic. It was the aid and loan guarantees the U.S. got them hooked on that enabled successive administrations to force them to cut their own throats with this fifteen-year joke of a “peace process.”
“I wish Obama was as strong and patriotic a leader as Neville Chamberlain.’
After Chamberlain met with Hitler, he privately conceded that Hitler was ‘half mad’. When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, Chamberlain recognized his mistake and began Britain’s arming for war, placing them on a much better footing by September, 1939, when Poland was invaded. Roosevelt also promised in his campaign of 1940 to keep us out of the war. Churchill ordered the attact on Galipoli in WWI. Greatness is so often just a matter of timing. Maybe someday fate will draw Obama to that one village that is in desperate need of an idiot, and he will find his destiny.
Because Churchill was a staunch supporter of the creation of Israel. Now it makes total sense.
Idi Amin on Slim Fast..
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Yes.
And in Obama, America has its own Mussolini.
George Will has lost all perspective of history, touch with reality, any credibility as a journalist, this mindless drivel a very sad commentary on his state of existence.
I hope not. It would have been better for them to have had the war pre-Obama.
Even the swing voters in Israel know that voting against Netanyahu at this point would constitute national (as well as personal) suicide. Obama in the White House is the strongest undergirding Bibi needs. For a hopefully illuminating parallel, Churchill was raised to PM because of Hitler’s zany antics, and almost as soon as Hitler was dead, Churchill was dumped in favor of Clement Atlee.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the time he wasn't the right leader at all.
“Because Churchill was a staunch supporter of the creation of Israel. Now it makes total sense.”
Bingo. Churchill had some warts, but he’s among my heros.
I like that he was depressed and still forced himself up out of bed and got things done. Sheer will impresses me.
I agree. Netanyahu wanted General Barak as Defense Minister.
x - Bad parallel to PM Netanyahu who was the best Finance Minister Israel ever had.
sc - hope they keep Bibi on for his economic prowess
Thanks dervish!
I loved Bibi's pointed remark to a diplomat as noted at the end of Will's article....."You live in Chevy Chase, DON'T PLAY WITH OUR FUTURE!
Leni
I’m wondering if Will was recently in Bibi’s office to see the pictures. If so, I’d like to hear more about his visit.
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