Tonight Obama was interviewed on Fox by Bret Baier. Why Obama opted to appear on Fox might cause one to think it was an act of desperation considering Obama's former view about FOX not being a real media outlet.
In any event, Baier tried to pin Obama down on several health care questions and our facile president performed an artful dodge equal to any gifted politician capable of verbal skills. By long answers Obama chews up time and that way relieves himself of responding and permits hiom to control. Obama obviously hopes long winded answers will be interpreted as erudition, when in fact, he is simply engaged in subterfuge. The news and media folks seldom challenge Obama or probe as Baier did. Also when Obama responds 'let me be clear' prepare for obfuscation.
Obama acknowledged he too was incapable of stating what was in the health care bill soon to be voted on but we should all take comfort in the fact that it will be posted, all 2000 plus pages, on a web site for all to see and study assiduously for 36 hours! Now that is what I call transparency.
Obama did convince me he believes he can double count while claiming he is intellectually honest and mathematically accurate. Obama also explained, in a contorted fashion, why Louisiana gets a $100 million gift because of Hurricane Katrina. Intellectual honesty seems a virtue beyond our president's pay grade.
When the question about our frayed relationship with Israel came up, Obama made sure to pour water on the troubled waters. He stated all was well and it was simply a disagreement between unshakable friends.
No president, until Obama, has told Israel they cannot expand in their area of Jerusalem. The dressing down given Netanyahu by our petulant Secretary of State is not a way to strengthen the relationship. Rather it served to demonstrate to Obama, Hillary's loyalty as a team player.
One thing for sure, Netanyahu and Israel can take comfort from the fact that Iran will not be allowed to achieve nuclear status because Obama will prevent that from happening - so sayeth the messiah! This is the same president who backed away from GW's agreement with Poland etc.
The problem is Obama's word has proven basically worthless.
Many do not believe Israel is a friend worth having. Many believe we get nothing in return for the billions we send Israel. Many believe Israel's 'intransigence' towards Palestinians is why we have jihadist terrorism. Those who maintain these views will not be persuaded by anything I and/or others say about facts so I will not try.
For those who feel otherwise but are upset by the timing of Israel's settlement announcement I share their angst because it was an act of insensitive timing. That said, Obama's overreaction is amazing and seems to be because he wants to create another Pinata episode. Obama habitually governs by setting up straw men, shifting blame and being untruthful.
In the case of health care legislation Obama has tagged insurance companies as demons for their outrageous raising of premiums. Again another Pinata attempt to bully and be dishonest. Insurance companies are not without blame but there are also circumstances that explain many of their actions. Again, the truth lies between but never according to Obama - his word is magical.
In the final analysis, Jonathan Tobin poses a compelling question about Biden's wounded pride. (See 1 below.)
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Does Obama want to determine the make-up of Israel's government?
Ever since Clinton, Democrat presidents and their advisers have been meddling, actively meddling, in Israeli politics.
A reporter close to Obama writes since Israel cannot be shaped to bend as long as Netanyahu's government includes two Far Right parties it thus is Obama's desire to bring moderate Livni into the government.
Obama may be excused for being amateurish when he initially traveled abroad after becoming president but that dog no longer hunts. Obama knows what he is about and it appears to be calculated recklessness.(See 2, 2a and 2b below.)
Daniel Laufer's anatomy of a crisis and other commentary.
It is easy to start one's discussion from a wrong premise and thus, come to a wrong conclusion that fits your own pre-conceived thought process.
Obama, is not the first president to make settlements an issue but he has heightened it and, as noted, Israel's part of Jerusalem has never been deemed a settlement and expansion there was never a disputed matter until Obama made it such. Yes, bad timing to bring it up during Biden's visit but factually it is purposeful over-reaching by this administration which now wants to use the flap as leverage to bludgeon Netanyahu and Israelis.
With friends like Obama, Poles, Czechs and Israelis don't need enemies. (See 3, 3a and 3b below.)
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America's debt level gets scary but not to Obama who relishes piling more on top of more. Again, Obama's reckless contempt for rating agencies will fly back in our face one day - only a matter of time. (See 4 and 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth?
By Jonathan Tobin
What prompted yesterday's violence in Jerusalem's Old City? Though the stone-throwing and disruptions resulted in only eight Israeli security personnel being wounded and a similar number of Palestinian casualties, the context of the American diplomatic offensive against the Jewish state must be seen as an incentive for the Palestinians to do their own part to ratchet up the pressure. While the Obama administration is using its hurt feelings about the announcement of building homes in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem to put the screws to the Netanyahu government, the Palestinians have their own game to play here. And since Washington has decided to go all out to falsely portray the Israelis as the primary obstacle to peace, it should be expected that the supposed victims of the new housing — Palestinians who are in no way harmed by the building of new apartments — will seek to keep events churning.
The rumors filtering through the Islamic world about supposed "threats" to the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount are clearly efforts to foment violence — reminiscent of the bloody 1929 riots which led to Arab pogroms against Jews living in Jerusalem and Hebron and of the fake controversy over Ariel Sharon's walk on the Temple Mount, which Yasir Arafat used as cover for launching the second intifada. The Jerusalem Post reports that busloads of Arabs are heading to the capital to "protect" the Temple Mount against mythical Jewish attempts to undermine the mosque's foundations. They appear to be referring to this week's rededication of the Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, whose destruction by Jordan's Arab Legion in 1948was a symbol of the expulsion of Jews from the Old City. The mere act of reasserting the Jewish presence there is viewed as an affront by a Muslim world that still refuses to accept Israel's legitimacy.
The point here is that while the Obama administration's huffing and puffing about the insult given by Vice President Joe Biden last week may be about an effort to undermine the Netanyahu government, their decision to brand all Jewish building in the city as illegal and as reason for American rage means something very different to the Palestinians. The ultimatum delivered to Netanyahu by Secretary of State Clinton, in which she demanded that the housing plan be rescinded, is viewed by many Palestinians as American support — not only for their ambitions for a redivided city but also for the expulsion of the Jews from all of East Jerusalem.
Even more to the point, the attacks on Israel emanating from Washington in both on- and off-the-record interviews with administration officials, may be tempting the Palestinians to do more than throw stones. An isolated Israel looks like a vulnerable Israel to the Palestinians, and that has always served as an incentive to further violence. And since neither the Palestinian Authority nor Hamas have any intention of following up Clinton's demands by actually negotiating for peace in good faith, they may decide that now is the perfect moment to exploit Obama's rage by raising the stakes with a mini intifada or with acts of terrorism, since they may think Washington will now oppose any Israeli counterattack or retaliation.
Biden may have had a genuine beef with Netanyahu for the blunder over the timing of the announcement but does this man, who has always touted himself as "Israel's best friend in the Senate," really want an argument over his injured pride to serve as the excuse for a new round of bloodshed? Do those left-wing American Jews, like the J Street lobby, who are now calling for more pressure on Jerusalem understand the possible cost of their signal to the Palestinians that Israel's democratically elected government has lost its only ally? Those Americans who are heedlessly stoking the fires of resentment against Israel may soon have more to answer for than merely prejudicial attacks against Netanyahu.
2)Goldberg: Obama wants Livni in coalition
By GIL HOFFMAN
US President Barack Obama’s administration’s recent pressure on Israel is designed to force Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to add Kadima to his coalition instead of Israel Beiteinu or Shas, influential American columnist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in a story published on Tuesday.
In a column in The Atlantic magazine titled “What Obama is Actually Trying to Do in Israel,” Goldberg, who is close to Obama, said the president wanted to cause a rupture in Netanyahu’s coalition that would necessitate bringing in Kadima. He said he spoke about the matter with officials in the White House.
“I’ve been on the phone with many of the usual suspects (White House and otherwise), and I think it’s fair to say that Obama is not trying to destroy America’s relations with Israel; he’s trying to organize Tzipi Livni’s campaign for prime minister, or at least for her inclusion in a broad-based centrist government,” Goldberg wrote.
“I’m not actually suggesting that the White House is directly meddling in internal Israeli politics, but it’s clear to everyone – at the White House, at the State Department, at Goldblog – that no progress will be made on any front if Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right party, Israel Beiteinu, and Eli Yishai’s fundamentalist Shas Party, remain in Netanyahu’s surpassingly fragile coalition.”
Livni’s spokesman declined to comment about the column, but Kadima MK Shlomo Molla, who is her close ally, warned Obama and his advisers against interfering in Israeli politics.
“We don’t need Obama’s help,” Molla said. “But we agree that the current coalition is bad for Israel and for US-Israel relations and that if Livni was working with Obama, there would be much more trust from the White House.”
Coalition chairman Ze’ev Elkin (Likud) responded by complaining about Livni’s behavior during the current crisis with the US.
At a Kadima rally in the North on Tuesday night, Livni accused Netanyahu of “weakening Jerusalem” by “acting stupidly.”
“Had the opposition acted in a statesmanlike manner, Israel would not be under such international pressure,” Elkin said. “Israel is a democracy, and only its citizens will decide what our coalition will look like.”
Representatives of the parties in Netanyahu’s coalition took offense to Goldberg’s characterization of them as “gangsters (Israel Beiteinu), messianists (Habayit Hayehudi) and medievalists (Shas and United Torah Judaism).”
Israel Beiteinu MK David Rotem said Obama should “check how many gangsters he has in his own government.”
He called the prospect of Kadima replacing Israel Beiteinu in the coalition “wishful thinking on the part of the reporter.”
“With all his problems, Obama should be too busy to run our government,” Rotem said.
A Shas official noted Goldberg’s Jewish name and said that “even in Medieval times, Jews were their own worst enemies.”
2a)The Crisis: Was Obama's confrontation with Israel premeditated?
Yossi Klein Halevi
Suddenly, my city feels again like a war zone. Since the suicide bombings ended in 2005, life in Jerusalem has been for the most part relatively calm. The worst disruptions have been the traffic jams resulting from construction of a light rail, just like in a normal city. But now, again, there are clusters of helmeted border police near the gates of the Old City, black smoke from burning tires in the Arab village across from my porch, young men marching with green Islamist flags toward my neighborhood, ambulances parked at strategic places ready for this city's ultimate nightmare.
The return of menace to Jerusalem is not because a mid-level bureaucrat announced stage four of a seven-stage process in the eventual construction of 1,600 apartments in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem. Such announcements and building projects have become so routine over the years that Palestinians have scarcely responded, let alone violently. In negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, the permanence of Ramat Shlomo, and other Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, has been a given. Ramat Shlomo, located between the Jewish neighborhoods of French Hill and Ramot, will remain within the boundaries of Israeli Jerusalem according to every peace plan. Unlike the small Jewish enclaves inserted into Arab neighborhoods, on which Israelis are strongly divided, building in the established Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem defines the national consensus.
Why, then, the outbreak of violence now? Why Hamas's "day of rage" over Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority's call to gather on the Temple Mount to "save" the Dome of the Rock from non-existent plans to build the Third Temple? Why the sudden outrage over rebuilding a synagogue, destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948, in the Old City's Jewish Quarter, when dozens of synagogues and yeshivas have been built in the quarter without incident?
The answer lies not in Jerusalem but in Washington. By placing the issue of building in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem at the center of the peace process, President Obama has inadvertently challenged the Palestinians to do no less.
Astonishingly, Obama is repeating the key tactical mistake of his failed efforts to restart Middle East peace talks over the last year. Though Obama's insistence on a settlement freeze to help restart negotiations was legitimate, he went a step too far by including building in East Jerusalem. Every Israeli government over the last four decades has built in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem; no government, let alone one headed by the Likud, could possibly agree to a freeze there. Obama made resumption of negotiations hostage to a demand that could not be met. The result was that Palestinian leaders were forced to adjust their demands accordingly.
Obama is directly responsible for one of the most absurd turns in the history of Middle East negotiations. Though Palestinian leaders negotiated with Israeli governments that built extensively in the West Bank, they now refused to sit down with the first Israeli government to actually agree to a suspension of building. Obama's demand for a building freeze in Jerusalem led to a freeze in negotiations.
Finally, after intensive efforts, the administration produced the pathetic achievement of "proximity talks"—setting Palestinian-Israeli negotiations back a generation, to the time when Palestinian leaders refused to sit at the same table with Israelis.
That Obama could be guilty of such amateurishness was perhaps forgivable because he was, after all, an amateur. But he has now taken his failed policy and intensified it. By demanding that Israel stop building in Ramat Shlomo and elsewhere in East Jerusalem—and placing that demand at the center of American-Israeli relations—he's ensured that the Palestinians won't show up even to proximity talks. This is no longer amateurishness; it is pique disguised as policy.
Initially, when the announcement about building in Ramat Shlomo was made, Israelis shared Vice President Biden's humiliation and were outraged at their government's incompetence. The widespread sense here was that Netanyahu deserved the administration's condemnation, not because of what he did but because of what he didn't do: He failed to convey to all parts of his government the need for caution during Biden's visit, symptomatic of his chaotic style of governing generally.
But not even the opposition accused Netanyahu of a deliberate provocation. These are not the days of Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli prime minister who used to greet a visit from Secretary of State James Baker with an announcement of the creation of another West Bank settlement. Netanyahu has placed the need for strategic cooperation with the U.S. on the Iranian threat ahead of the right-wing political agenda. That's why he included the Labor Party into his coalition, and why he accepted a two-state solution—an historic achievement that set the Likud, however reluctantly, within the mainstream consensus supporting Palestinian statehood. The last thing Netanyahu wanted was to embarrass Biden during his goodwill visit and trigger a clash with Obama over an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
Nor is it likely that there was a deliberate provocation from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which runs the interior ministry that oversees building procedures. Shas, which supports peace talks and territorial compromise, is not a nationalist party. Its interest is providing housing for its constituents, like the future residents of Ramat Shlomo; provoking international incidents is not its style.Finally, the very ordinariness of the building procedure—the fact that construction in Jewish East Jerusalem is considered by Israelis routine—is perhaps the best proof that there was no intentional ambush of Biden. Apparently no one in the interior ministry could imagine that a long-term plan over Ramat Shlomo would sabotage a state visit.
In turning an incident into a crisis, Obama has convinced many Israelis that he was merely seeking a pretext to pick a fight with Israel. Netanyahu was inadvertently shabby; Obama, deliberately so. According to a banner headline in the newspaper Ma'ariv, senior Likud officials believe that Obama's goal is to topple the Netanyahu government, by encouraging those in the Labor Party who want to quit the coalition.
The popular assumption is that Obama is seeking to prove his resolve as a leader by getting tough with Israel. Given his ineffectiveness against Iran and his tendency to violate his own self-imposed deadlines for sanctions, the Israeli public is not likely to be impressed. Indeed, Israelis' initial anger at Netanyahu has turned to anger against Obama. According to an Israel Radio poll on March 16, 62 percent of Israelis blame the Obama administration for the crisis, while 20 percent blame Netanyahu. (Another 17 percent blame Shas leader Eli Yishai.)
In the last year, the administration has not once publicly condemned the Palestinians for lack of good faith—even though the Palestinian Authority media has, for example, been waging a months-long campaign denying the Jews' historic roots in Jerusalem. Just after Biden left Ramallah, Palestinian officials held a ceremony naming a square in the city after a terrorist responsible for the massacre of 38 Israeli civilians. (To its credit, yesterday, the administration did condemn the Palestinian Authority for inciting violence in Jerusalem.)
Obama's one-sided public pressure against Israel could intensify the atmosphere of "open season" against Israel internationally. Indeed, the European Union has reaffirmed it is linking improved economic relations with Israel to the resumption of the peace process—as if it's Israel rather than the Palestinians that has refused to come to the table.
If the administration's main tactical error in Middle East negotiating was emphasizing building in Jerusalem, its main strategic error was assuming that a two-state solution was within easy reach. Shortly after Obama took office, Rahm Emanuel was quoted in the Israeli press insisting that a Palestinian state would be created within Obama's first term. Instead, a year later, we are in the era of suspended proximity talks. Now the administration is demanding that Israel negotiate over final status issues in proximity talks as a way of convincing the Palestinians to agree to those talks--as if Israelis would agree to discuss the future of Jerusalem when Palestinian leaders refuse to even sit with them.
To insist on the imminent possibility of a two-state solution requires amnesia. Biden's plea to Israelis to consider a withdrawal to an approximation of the 1967 borders in exchange for peace ignored the fact that Israel made that offer twice in the last decade: first, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted the Clinton Proposals of December 2000, and then more recently when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert renewed the offer to Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas, says Olmert, never replied.
The reason for Palestinian rejection of a two-state solution is because a deal would require Palestinians to confine the return of the descendants of the 1948 refugees to Palestine rather than to Israel. That would prevent a two-state solution from devolving into a bi-national, one-state solution. Israel's insistence on survival remains the obstacle to peace.
To achieve eventual peace, the international community needs to pressure Palestinian leaders to forgo their claim to Haifa and Jaffa and confine their people's right of return to a future Palestinian state—just as the Jews will need to forgo their claim to Hebron and Bethlehem and confine their people's right of return to the state of Israel. That is the only possible deal: conceding my right of return to Greater Israel in exchange for your right of return to Greater Palestine. A majority of Israelis—along with the political system—has accepted that principle. On the Palestinian side, the political system has rejected it.
In the absence of Palestinian willingness to compromise on the right of return, negotiations should not focus on a two-state solution but on more limited goals.
There have been positive signs of change on the Palestinian side in the last few years. The rise of Hamas has created panic within Fatah, and the result is, for the first time, genuine security cooperation with Israel. Also, the emergence of Salam Fayyad as Palestinian prime minister marks a shift from ideological to pragmatic leadership (though Fayyad still lacks a power base). Finally, the West Bank economy is growing, thanks in part to Israel's removal of dozens of roadblocks. The goal of negotiations at this point in the conflict should be to encourage those trends.
But by focusing on building in Jerusalem, Obama has undermined that possibility too. To the fictitious notion of a peace process, Obama has now added the fiction of an intransigent Israel blocking the peace process.
The administration, according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Yedito Aharonot, is making an even more insidious accusation against Israel. During his visit, wrote Yediot Aharanot, Biden told Israeli leaders that their policies are endangering American lives in Afghanistan and Iraq. The report has been denied in the White House. Whether or not the remark was made, what is clear today in Jerusalem is that Obama's recklessness is endangering Israeli--and Palestinian--lives. As I listen to police sirens outside my window, Obama's political intifada against Netanyahu seems to be turning into a third intifada over Jerusalem.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and a contributing editor of The New Republic.
2b)Israel-bashing Hill is loyal - to a fault
By MICHAEL GOODWIN
A favorite guessing game for the last year concerned Hillary Rodham Clinton. Is she a true Obama loyalist, or is she a double agent, pretending to be a team player while plotting a 2012 challenge?
Game over. Given the zeal with which she picked up a flame-thrower in the administration's war with Israel, her allegiance is no longer in doubt.
By enthusiastically holding Israel to the same double standard that its enemies always do, she made her bones as a member of the Obama Family.
Worse, she told the world about it. Boasted about it, actually. As gang initiations go, it was a trophy moment.
So much for the "friend of Israel" pose she struck while seeking Jewish votes and money in her campaigns for the Senate and the White House.
In one sense, Clinton's dressing down of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a return to her pre-Senate days. In 1999, as first lady, she stayed silent, then played kissy-face with Suha Arafat at a West Bank event where the terror leader's wife accused Israel of gassing Palestinian women and children.
Running for the Senate and then representing New York, Clinton worked hard to overcome that mistake. She reassured voters that she understood the United States cannot simultaneously be an honest broker in the Mideast and Israel's most reliable friend and ally. One must choose, and she chose, conveniently, to stand with the Jewish state against its hostile neighbors.
The neighbors are still hostile, but now so is Clinton. Her 43-minute tirade against Netanyahu -- a private call that her office promptly disclosed to the media -- was directed by the president himself. He apparently did not believe that Vice President Joe Biden's harsh condemnation of a plan to build 1,600 apartments in East Jerusalem was sufficient, and so ordered his secretary of state into action.
In this case, obedience was not a virtue. The president was wrong, and she has magnified his mistake, turning an Israeli blunder into a full-scale crisis. The proof of the error is the strut of the usual suspects who always find Israel a useful scapegoat for all that's wrong in the world.
There is a déjà vu feeling about the Obama White House, too. Once again, it has displayed a bad habit of abusing America's friends while trying to mollify our adversaries. It's tough love, without the love.
It was indeed stupid of Israel to embarrass Biden, who went to Jerusalem to deliver important and welcome news. His declaration that "the United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, period" aimed to remove growing doubts about US policy, doubts that might still lead to an Israeli military strike.
Clinton and Obama created those doubts by suggesting we were preparing to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.
Meanwhile, they kept pressing Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, arguing that a peace deal would remove the issue from the jihad agenda and make it easier for Arab nations and Europe to get tougher on Iran.
The linkage makes no sense and has never sat well with Israelis, most of whom know that even so-called moderate Palestinians are not ready to accept Israel's right to exist. Now Washington has proved that Israelis are not suffering national paranoia.
The phone call to Netanyahu and Clinton's demands yesterday that he prove he is committed to peace confirm Israel's worst fears. As commentators there are noting, Obama and Clinton don't go ballistic and claim "insult" when Syria spurns US efforts and openly courts Iran, or when Palestinians celebrate as "martyrs" terrorists who kill Israeli civilians.
Of course, Israelis are familiar with the sting of a double standard. The only shock is that it's coming from the president and secretary of state.
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3)Anatomy of a crisis: Daniel Laufer explains how east Jerusalem construction decision snowballed into crisis
The recent headlines regarding the Israeli government’s announcement of 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, characterized as humiliating to visiting US Vice President Joe Biden, were completely lacking in substance. Even more than the usually unremarkable and hyperbolized news stories emanating from the Middle East, this seemingly unremarkable story was embraced with enthusiasm by critics of Israel as yet the latest proof of Israeli intransigence and double-speak blocking regional peace.
There has never been an Israeli government that questioned the future of the Jerusalem neighborhoods built over the Green Line. Therefore, there is nothing novel about the Israeli announcement because Israel has never considered any part of the city of Jerusalem a settlement.
In Israel’s first-ever moratorium on new housing construction in the West Bank, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly stated that east Jerusalem was not included by the policy.
These facts, however, did not obstruct the creation of an international “crisis” and a strain on US-Israeli relations. Whilst paragraph after paragraph of sound bites filled newspaper columns, the majority of the story reported boiled down to mere rhetoric.
The brouhaha, everyone should be reminded, stems from a standard municipal process not even in the purview of Israel’s national government. Before VP Joe Biden’s visit, the Palestinians were being urged by the US to restart negotiations regardless of Israeli construction in Jerusalem. Now they’ve responded to the first ever construction freeze with even greater demands of the Israelis. Initial reports have the US actually guaranteeing the demands would be met.
What suddenly made Ramat Shlomo an obstacle to peace? What changed?
The media are an easy target. Certainly the cycle of comment and counter-comment that facilitated the current rounds of snowballing is a function of media-coverage on any number of topics, especially during what may have been a slow news week. Reporting without a strong anchor in context and with an air of exaggeration is also deserving of criticism, but ultimately the media’s role in developing the chain of events has been minor.
Those who need to be called to task are the decision-makers.
Sacrificing truth for rhetoric
Israeli decision-makers have for too long been immersed in a political culture that views no point as too cheap to score, no attack too extreme. The attitude doesn’t just demonstrate disrespect to Israel’s voters, but as their country’s very public representatives, such irresponsible behavior would have damaging ramifications on the country’s image even if Israel didn’t find itself embattled in the realm of international public opinion. They may not be ultimately to blame for what ensued in the wake of their comments, but sharp-tongued Israeli politicians were the initial shaper of the club that has been used to bludgeon their own country, and some introspection on their part is in order.
What disappoints far more is the very central role of the international players in this incident.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might not be expected to behave any differently, but exactly those parties that ostensibly want to help create a stable and peaceful Middle East must not act with as little forethought and responsibility as they have here.
Assuming that the EU, Quartet, and US don’t actually believe the Palestinian reaction that Ramat Shlomo construction entails “confiscating more Palestinian lands, demolishing houses and arresting and starving Palestinians,” then their toleration and encouragement of what in the past was dismissed as ranting in no way connected to reality is both wrong and indicative of a very dangerous precedent.
Anyone trying to solve real problems has to address reality as it exists on the ground. Ignoring that for convenient clichés and sound bites reflective of an artificial paradigm à la the Palestinian statement doesn’t just distance resolution of the conflict. Such path merely continues the same phenomena present for decades in international forums, an infamous product of which is the UN General Assembly’s “Zionism is racism” resolution. The approach sacrifices truth for rhetoric and is largely responsible for so many of the complications that have been actual obstacles to Middle East peace.
Those parties genuinely interested in fixing what is broken need to take a step back and ask themselves why there is such a gap between the language that they issue and the reality that it is meant to describe. Only if they begin to rationalize between the two and so prevent future pseudo-crises will they be able to encourage constructive movement towards the peace that everyone says they want.
3a)Obama: hard on Israel, easy on China
By Charles Lane
Clearly, President Obama blew his famous cool when Israel announced new apartments in East Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Biden last week. The U.S. response -- White House advisor David Axelrod called Israel’s move an “affront” and an “insult” -- included some of the harshest official language in recent memory toward a country with which the United States was not actually at war.
However, I’m not sure Israel’s gesture, provocative though it may have been, was even the most offensive thing a foreign government did or said with regard to the Obama administration in the last week. In Beijing Sunday, China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, launched an anti-U.S. tirade that made the president’s objective of economic harmony with Beijing seem even more unattainable than a comprehensive Middle East peace.
Rejecting President Obama’s rather tepid call, delivered just days earlier, for a “market-oriented” Chinese currency policy, Wen accused the U.S. of “trade protectionism,” alleging that Washington wanted to force the Chinese yuan up, and the dollar down, “solely for the purpose of increasing one’s own exports.”
This remark, heavy with consequences for the U.S. economy and American jobs, was not only a direct sneer at the president -- it was an insult to his intelligence, and everyone else’s for that matter. If anyone has been artificially depressing its exchange rate to boost exports, it’s China. As a growing consensus of governments recognizes, a change in China’s policy would benefit not only U.S. exporters but global trade in general.
The Obama administration’s response? Officials look forward to “an open channel of communication...and fostering a good bilateral relationship,” a State Department spokesman told the Wall Street Journal.
3b)Israel Plays with Fire
by Leslie H. Gelb
Israel’s right-wingers are congratulating themselves on their announcement of new construction in East Jerusalem during Vice President Biden’s visit last week. They think this stance, so unwelcome in Washington, this public and gratuitous insult to America’s negotiating position in the region, will compel President Obama to back down. They reinforced this notion Tuesday through Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaffirmation of the building plans—plus the insult of announcing yet additional building plans. They’re very wrong. Israel’s move was stupid, dangerous, and self-defeating. Worst of all, it seriously damaged Israeli-American relations and American power in the Middle East. Israeli leaders will not like the way their little power slap plays out. And it is they who should be figuring out how to make the necessary amends—and soon, before further contamination sets in.
Why on earth did the Israelis do what they did to Biden and reaffirm and double it on Tuesday? The only explanation I can think of is that they didn’t care.
Let me say up front that I am a strong supporter of Israel. To me, the United States’ tie with the Jewish nation is both emotional and strategic. Israel is a “strategic aircraft carrier” for America in a chaotic part of the world. Washington should never cast doubt on its commitment to Israel’s security. But Israel is not America’s sole vital interest in this treacherous terrain. If Israelis further complicate an already complicated Middle East, it won’t be good for the United States or for Israel.
Make no mistake, the insult badly damaged America’s power in the eyes of Muslim leaders and others around the world. To be sure, almost all of these leaders have an exaggerated and unrealistic notion of America’s control over Israel. Washington has much influence there, but not control. In any event, the working supposition is that if any nation can bring about peace between Israel and the Palestinians, it is the United States because it alone has real influence over both parties. The Israeli slap in Biden’s face seriously undermined that perception of American influence, and thus America’s power. The disposition of Arab leaders and others to go along with American plans for future talks between Israelis and Palestinians will be seriously eroded. Others will be far less inclined to give Washington the benefit of the doubt. The result will be far more pressure by Muslim and European leaders for Washington to get tough and tougher with Israel. More toughness won’t work and will simply lead to more anger and frustration all around. The only ones who will benefit from this will be the political extremists and terrorists.
Israel’s slap in America’s face also will encourage the belief that Washington can be pushed around. In particular, vicious rumors are already afoot saying the Israelis wouldn’t have done this unless they believed Obama was weak and would back down. And if this was Israel’s assessment of the American president—and who knows Americans better than Israelis—why wouldn’t others seek to test Obama’s mettle as well?
Israelis who are rejoicing in their insult would do well to imagine Tehran’s reaction to their shenanigans. President Ahmadinejad and his cohorts must be thinking that if the Israelis can push Washington around, so can they. Who could be happier than the Revolutionary Guards to see America being treated as a limping power? And if Israeli leaders thought about what has just happened with any clarity, they would see that they have jeopardized America’s power in dealing with Iran’s evolving nuclear capability.
All this damage to American power in the region can be repaired over time—if there is no deterioration in America-Israeli relations as a result of the insult. But that is precisely the ultimate risk and danger caused by the foolish affront. Some Israeli leaders may, crazily, believe that their political position in the United States is so solid that they need not worry about Americans or an American administration becoming less supportive of Israel’s interests. But they should not be so sanguine. Americans, like others, are living in perilous times. Economic woes at home will lead to less patience with rebukes from abroad, especially from friends like Israel. It will be easier for Israel’s opponents in America to raise questions about U.S. military and economic aid to the Jewish state. Increasing numbers of U.S. policy experts who argue that Israel is more part of the problem than the solution for the United States in the Middle East will find more receptive audiences among frustrated Americans. This is no time for Israel’s leaders to test the depth and stability of America’s support for their country.
So why on earth did they do what they did to Biden and reaffirm and double it on Tuesday? The only explanation I can think of is that they didn’t care. They could not have been blind to the American reaction. They could not have seriously imagined that Obama, or any president of the United States, would not react sharply to Israel’s rebuke. Further, they had to know that the blowup would imperil resumption of the “proximity” talks, where the two parties would talk to each other not directly but through the United States. But the failure of these talks is exactly what these Israeli right-wingers desire. They wanted to scuttle the talks. To them, the talks could lead only to Israeli concessions on the West Bank and ultimately East Jerusalem itself. They wanted to nip this threat in infancy before it gained any momentum.
They even have a chance of succeeding in this self-defeating wish. The Obama administration and Israeli leaders are very angry at each other. Words are being tossed about publicly like “condemnation” (by the American side), and private mutterings are much more salacious. Washington is making stiff demands on Israel to rescind the building order for East Jerusalem and to declare all “core issues” on the negotiating table, including the status of Jerusalem. The Netanyahu government on Tuesday appeared to reject these demands, even after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton uttered some kind words about the enduring close relationship between the two countries. But the dominant fact today is the Israeli rejection of American requests for Israel to help get the negotiations with the Palestinians back on track.
Such tension and splits can please only enemies of the United States and Israel. Both sides have to move quickly to head off further escalation. First moves have to be up to Bibi. His government started the problem, and he has to begin ending it. At a minimum, he has to declare that the offending announcement is being withdrawn indefinitely. He does not have to make any specific concessions on East Jerusalem, but he at least has to issue a rescinding of the building order. On a much deeper level, Israelis have got to stare a basic reality in the face: For sure, Israel has the military might to fight to the death, but it is American power that gives them a realistic hope of survival as a Jewish state without having to fight to the death. For America’s part, the Obama administration has to stop issuing any more condemnations or further public criticisms. The point by now has been well made and its repetition would lead only to cascading nastiness. The White House should maintain silence while Israelis consider what their right-wingers have done to them. In this cooling-down environment, Israelis will surely come to the right decision—that the United States of America is far more important to their security than holding on to an announcement that says they will begin construction of almost 2,000 new housing units in the Israeli section of East Jerusalem.
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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4)America's Debt Gets Scary
by Charlie Gasparino
The country’s top-notch credit rating is in danger of being downgraded, Moody’s is warning—and if a ratings agency that completely failed to predict the financial crisis is sounding the alarm, we should all be afraid.
Here’s how you know the massive amounts of debt compiled by the Bush administration, and the even greater debt loads promised as part of Barack Obama’s agenda, is reaching crisis proportions: Even the Wall Street bond-rating agencies are now sounding the alarm bells.
At issue is a report issued by Moody’s Investors Service that says the triple-A rating on U.S. government debt might someday be a thing of the past. The triple-A rating is, of course, an opinion, but one that carries a lot of weight in the bond markets. It is Moody’s belief that the chances the U.S. federal government will default on its debt are zero and that investors who hold U.S. bonds are guaranteed their full interest and principal payments.
The current warning shouldn’t be taken lightly, precisely because ratings agencies like Moody’s have been so late in the past. Calling attention to the country’s debt level must mean we are really heading for trouble.
In its report, the ratings agency still puts those chances at zero, but it adds that based on the sluggish economy and all of Washington’s new spending promises, the zero-percent probability of default is starting to look less and less likely in the years to come.
As someone who has covered ratings agencies and their role in the markets for two decades, I can tell you that they are masters of doublespeak because they’re constantly in cover-my-ass mode. The agencies are far from objective prognosticators; they publish ratings for investors, yet they are paid by entities that issue debt, meaning their bias is to go easy on bond issuers.
The U.S. government—as far as I know—doesn’t pay Moody’s or any of the other agencies, but the report calling into question the U.S. triple-A rating contains all the ass covering the rating agencies are famous for. Consider this: While Moody’s was raising the notion of a downgrade of U.S. debt based on the massive debt the country has accumulated and will accumulate in the coming years—causing the stock markets to fall in early morning trading—the agency also said the U.S. still has the ability to cover debt-interest payments with current revenue, though that revenue may not be enough given the weak economy and increased spending.
Of course, the U.S., like other highly indebted countries, can take steps to lower its debt load (i.e. higher taxes and cutting spending) though Moody’s says those steps “will test social cohesion.” You get my point.
Meanwhile, the raters’ track record in predicting a crisis of this magnitude is pretty weak, as well. Many of those esoteric bonds that were held on the books of the banks and later destroyed the financial system in 2008 because they were worth pennies on the dollar were rated triple-A. The raters, for example, gave Orange County, California, high grades before its bankruptcy in 1994, failed to see the bond-market implosion in 1998, and had no idea that the housing market was catering in 2007, until it cratered, and the bonds backed by risky mortgages were defaulting and spreading a virus that, save for a government bailout, would have destroyed what was left of the financial system.
That said, the current warning shouldn’t be taken lightly, precisely because ratings agencies like Moody’s have been so late in the past. Calling attention to the country’s debt level must mean we are really heading for trouble.
So what would it mean for a downgrade? First, higher borrowing costs.
Lower ratings mean that the chances of default are greater, and to compensate for that risk, investors demand higher interest rates. So in addition to higher taxes to pay for the huge costs of health care, cap and trade, and everything the president has in store, expect even higher taxes to pay off the new and more expensive debt needed to finance these programs.
There is also a prestige issue. The U.S. Treasury bond, long regarded as the gold standard in the global bond markets, would lose its luster, reflecting a broader unease about U.S. economic might. Part of the reason why rich people and companies around the globe invest in the U.S. is because it’s a safe haven—a place that pays its debts and respects business. That respect will fall more than a couple of notches with any downgrade.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has been quoted as saying that he doesn’t expect the U.S. to lose its triple-A rating. After all, can’t we just print money? Yeah, we can, though that would lead to hyperinflation. Also I can’t take too seriously anything Geithner has to say. After all, this is the guy who said adding $800 billion to the deficit would stop unemployment at 8.5 percent.
Charlie Gasparino is a senior correspondent for Fox Business Network. He is a columnist for The Daily Beast and a frequent contributor to the New York Post, Forbes, and other publications. His new book about the financial crisis, The Sellout, was published by HarperBusiness.
4a) Bankrupting of the United States Bonds
By Steven Malanga
In January the U.S. Treasurer, Rosie Rios, traveled to Dallas to join local officials at the construction site of a new convention hotel being built with money raised through Build America Bonds. The purpose was to celebrate the success of the so-called BABs, which are federally-subsidized bonds created by the 2009 stimulus package.
Of course, what no one at the Dallas "celebration" pointed out is that the $388 million in BABs that the city floated with federal aid were necessary because no private developer would cough up the money for the risky project. In fact, local officials wanted to build the controversial hotel because years of frenetic, publicly financed convention center construction by cities had saddled the country with much more meeting space than it needs, and now meeting planners are telling cities they must to ante up money for additional amenities, like new subsidized hotels, or risk losing business.
This is what passes for success in Washington these days, where apparently any level and manner of publicly subsidized debt for any kind of dubious project is considered a home run.
"There's nobody that I know who does not view the Build America Bonds program as an enormous success with the possible exception of one person," John Buckley, majority chief counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee, told a rapt audience of state treasurers in Washington recently. The one critic that Buckley was referring to is Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, who has objected to the big fees that Wall Street firms have been getting for underwriting BABs.
But the real objection to BABs is far more substantial. These bonds are enabling our already overburdened states and cities, which heaped on debt at a record pace in recent years including back when they were running budget surpluses, to pile it still higher, even as their budgets now groan under bulging debt payments. Moreover, at a time when private firms are scrambling for investment, BABs just further the misallocation of resources already characteristic of municipal finance by luring money away from private investment and into grand (and often misguided) government building schemes that can't attract private capital.
Washington included BABs in the stimulus package after the municipal bond market seized up in 2008, when insurers who back munis ran into difficulty and investors balked at the deteriorating financial condition of cities and states. The feds rushed in with BABs, which are somewhat different from traditional municipal bonds that provide a tax break to the buyer. BABs, by contrast, give a direct subsidy from Washington to states and cities, which use it to issue bonds that feature attractively high interest rates. The bonds appeal to a whole new class of investor which can't benefit from the tax-free nature of munis, such as big pension funds or overseas buyers. So far, cities and states have heaped on some $64 billion in new debt thanks to BABs, and now the Obama administration has proposed making this "temporary" component of the 2009 stimulus program permanent, at least for the next 10 years.
But although the actual cost of the program to the U.S. Treasury will be small compared to other budget busters, the mentality that sees BABs as a grand success is symptomatic of what's wrong in Washington right now. Since 2000 state and local debt outstanding has grown 60 percent after adjusting for inflation to $2.3 trillion, a faster rate of debt accumulation than American households took on over the same period (and we know how that worked out). In California, the cost of servicing state debt has increased 143 percent in 10 years to $6 billion and is projected to increase to about $10 billion in several years. New York State's outstanding debt has soared to a whopping $120 billion, according to a local watchdog group, the Citizens Budget Commission, which estimates that within just four years the cost of serving that debt will consume 10 percent of the state's budget.
Washington touted BABs as a way for states and cities to keep investing in essential infrastructure, but that ignores how governments actually borrow these days. While state and local debt is soaring, the portion of debt used for traditional purposes like transportation or utilities projects has remained relatively constant. Instead, municipalities have pumped money into "state capitalist" projects like subsidized convention centers and hotels, arenas and sports stadiums which often have little economic impact beyond the short-term construction jobs they produce.
States and municipalities have also used debt for some of the most egregious fiscal practices, like floating bonds to finance pension obligations and make pension funds seem more fully funded then they actually are.
Even in cases where governments are using BABs to fund more traditional projects, the new bonds are often just enabling dysfunctional state and local fiscal practices to continue. For instance, among the so-called BAB ‘success' stories touted by the Obama administration in January was $750 million in borrowing by New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority for investments in Gotham's subway system. Congressman Charlie Rangel and the Treasury Department's chief economist showed up at an MTA construction site to ‘celebrate' that success.
But as my colleagues Nicole Gelinas and E.J. McMahon pointed out last month, the MTA is in grave financial peril and could bring down all of New York State finances, in part because state legislators have absconded with taxes designed to support the transit agency and forced the MTA to issue debt to finance more and more of its capital needs. It's a process that's happening around the country as fewer and fewer essential projects get built on a pay-as-you-go basis with tax dollars and more and more are constructed with borrowing, a pattern that's unsustainable.
BABs also provide yet another taxpayer-subsidized incentive for investors to divert capital that might otherwise be channeled into private initiatives. A study in the early 1990s by economist Peter Fortune published in the New England Economic Review estimated the social cost of tax-free munis was billions of dollars in lost private sector output in the U.S. economy because of dollars diverted from private investment. I imagine the cost is far higher now, and BABs will increase it even more because they provide yet another type of investor with the incentive to snap up subsidized government debt with money that might otherwise be invested in stocks or corporate bonds or private equity.
But apparently this isn't a problem in today's Washington, where no amount of debt seems worrisome, and where the best investment is apparently investment in government. This is how Washington now defines success.
Steven Malanga is an editor for RealClearMarkets and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute
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