Gleaned from its sources in the bowels of the Obama administration, DEBKAfile has provided the likely backdrop, and backroom deals, that have led to the tiresome and futile reunion of Bibi Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, second-in-command in the Palestinian Authority, after the Hamas leader du jour.:

“Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is misleading his ministers by presenting the direct talks opening with the Palestinians on Sept. 2 as a diplomatic victory. He has omitted to disclose that the Obama administration has reneged on the secret deals for paving the way to the talks it concluded with Netanyahu’s senior aides Yitzhak Molcho and Uzi Arad.

Part of the deal was for Israel to line up with the Obama administration’s non-reaction to Iran’s activation of its Russian-built nuclear reactor at Bushehr last Saturday, Aug. 21. The United States promised, for its part, to deliver the Palestinians to the negotiating table for face -to-face talks after dropping their pre-conditions (determination of the 1967 lines as the final borders of a Palestinian state and a moratorium on Jewish construction on the West Bank and Jerusalem).

But most of all, the secret deal obliged Obama to refrain from twisting Israel’s arm on behalf of the Palestinians should the dialogue founder – as it is widely expected to do.

Wit this deal in the bag, Netanyahu was able to showcase the Obama administration’s endorsement of his diplomatic strategy and is rejection of Palestinian demands.

However, the deal was shown to have sprung a leak in the formal announcements in Washington of Friday, Aug. 20, debkafile discloses.
Whereas Secretary of State Hillary Clinton kept faith with Israel and turned down a last minute White House demand to insert this phrase in her announcement: ‘The United States could offer bridging proposals if necessary,’ into her announcement, the euphemistic phrase turned up in special presidential envoy George Mitchell’s remarks elaborating on the Clinton statement.’”

MORE.

“We won, we’re going home! We won! Its over! America, we brought democracy to Iraq!” Bless the poor survivor of America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, who shouted these pathos- (and bathos) filled words out of “the back of his Stryker vehicle.” Jubilation among the soldiers, the second most abused and bamboozled people to have (voluntarily) taken part in the Iraq fiasco, is more than understandable. The first are the Iraqis, whom we conscripted involuntarily. (MURDER BY MAJORITY.)

I noticed that Keith Olbernmann and Rachel Maddow, who were honest about Bush’s war during the Bush years, have reversed course, declaring victory. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that 1) their guy Obama now owns the Iraq war. 2) Midterm elections are nearing.

“Amazing. We finally made it out, we made it back. We’re good. Happy to be here. Happy to go home. We got our mission done successfully and it was good to go.” So said Pvt. Nicholas Kelly. I’m chocking back the tears as I write (thinking of stuff like this, which I chronicled during the years of writing about Iraq).

Pvt. Troy Danahy of Hampton, N.H: I missed “Just America in general. I just miss grass, simple, little things, winter, snow and all that.”

After a mere week of 90 plus degrees in the shade here in the Pacific North-West, the olfactory sensations that come with the cool never fail to make my heart overflow for this beautiful landscape that is my home. Can you imagine how intoxicating the fragrance of home is to the poor men who’ve suffered the suffocating climate of Iraq, that barren, inhospitable, dangerous dump?

I’ll leave it at that. It’ll be a while before these men arrive on these shores of ours. Still, Welcome home. I’m a little tongue-tied, emotional, and teary-eyed myself.

Is it really over, or is this just another of their cruel, craven jokes?!

UPDATE: Recommended: “Iraq in the rear-view mirror” by Ned Parker. The Powers That Be have promised that the remaining troops will not see combat. I presume this means no more patrols for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices).

The Taliban did it is the spin in the media about the stoning to death of a young couple in northern Afghanistan. The many spectators who gathered to watch the stoning, as one news report alleged, were Taliban men. Executioners.

“The woman, Sadiqa, was 20 years old and engaged to another man, said the Kunduz provincial police chief, Gen. Abdul Raza Yaqoubi. Her lover, 28-year-old Qayum, left his wife to run away with her, and the two had holed up in a friend’s house five days ago, said district government head, Mohammad Ayub Aqyar.”

“They were discovered by Taliban operatives on Sunday and stoned to death in front a crowd of about 150 men,” wrote another report. “First the woman was brought out and stoned, then the man a half an hour later.”

Still other reports emphasized that the Afghan government has condemned the barbaric act and that it was the only stoning since the US occupied this backward country. (The only one that we know of.)

The New York Times gives an honest account of this blood sport:

“The punishment was carried out by hundreds of the victims’ neighbors in a village in northern Kunduz Province, according to Nadir Khan, 40, a local farmer and Taliban sympathizer, who was interviewed by telephone. Even family members were involved, both in the stoning and in tricking the couple into returning after they had fled.”

It takes a nation of lunatics to imagine they can transform a country like this one.

UPDATE (Aug. 18): “It worked with Germany, didn’t it?” I’m convinced Nora is being cynical. She can’t be comparing the nation that gave us Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms, Thomas Mann, Immanuel Kant, Mercedes-Benz, on-and-on, to the people who gave us the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (say no more). She’s being funny. Besides, American welfare didn’t rehabilitate Germany post WWII; German genius and graft did. Even with an enormously debilitating welfare state, Germans are still the most productive, ingenious people in Europe.

The first lady’s share of this week’s WND column, “The Warbots, The FLOTUS & Other Terrifying Things,” comes under the heading “PIMP MY FLOTUS”:

“A world away from her husband’s dirty little war was the first lady’s ostentatious sojourn to Spain. I must say that the Marie Antoinette metaphor for Michelle did not do it for me. Despite the motorcades and the session with the Spanish monarchs at their Marivent Palace – the mental imagine that I got was made in America; it came from reality TV or MTV. Shades of the shows ‘Pimp my Ride’ and ‘Cribs’ came to mind. Coloring my imagination was a vivid, prior mental image of the ‘sedate’ soiree the first lady held for Mexican President Felipe Calderon, down to the disco ball and the half-nude, pelvis-grinding Beyonce. (Bibi Netanyahu was confined to the cellar.)

Still sillier were demands our patrician pundits made (at least one of whom has touted one-time porn star Kim Kardashian as a role model because she does not imbibe) for Mrs. Obama’s dollars to be spent stateside, so as to boost the American economy. Michelle Obama’s income comes from taxpayers. The first family doesn’t produce anything; it only consumes American wealth. Somewhere in the U.S., productive activities have already been suspended to fund the POTUS, the FLOTUS and their lavish lives. It matters not where the first family spends the loot. …

Read “The Warbots, The FLOTUS & Other Terrifying Things.”

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material and reviews. Get your copy (or copies) now!

UPDATED: “BRING THEM HOME. BRING THEM HOME, NOW.” So says Vox Day, who perfectly captures the emotions evincied by women and children in this touching footage of “Troops Surprising Loved Ones”:

“There are few words sufficient to express the joy that one sees in the faces of the children and women in this video. But underlying that joy, one can also see an occasional glimpse of the stark terror of loss in which they have been living for months, if not years.”

If my daughter was being looked over or even chatted up by frustrated foreign soldiers out on patrol, I would be worried. The image of this stunning, fragile, Afghan girl, dwarfed by the obviously “attentive” military men, conjures the fate of Abeer Qasim Hamza. (At least in the mind of this mother.)

Naturally, Republican deadheads like Laura Ingraham and James Hirsen railed against Brian De Palma’s depiction, in “Redacted,” of the girl’s rapists and killers.

“‘Redacted’: De Palma Tells The Truth”" serves as a reminder of the hazards to Their Children of Our Occupation:

“… A mop of hair, a delicate face and big black eyes: The only image we have of her is the one plastered on her Iraqi ID card. It was taken when she was a two-year-old tot. She lived with her mother, father and three siblings in the village of Yusufiyah near Mahmoudiyah.
Unfortunately for them, their farmhouse was situated near an American traffic checkpoint. The neighbors later said soldiers would watch the girl go about her chores, and gesture lewdly. The culprits, led by ringleader Pfc. Steven Dale Green—a school drop-out with a police record; recruitment standards are being lowered to fill quotas—would stage mock raids on the family’s home during which Green fondled Abeer.
Finally, Green, accompanied by Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, Spc. James P. Barker, Pfc. Jesse V. Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, hatched a scheme to rape Abeer. In they went, shooting and killing Abeer’s parents and sibling, and then gang-raping her. When they were through with Abeer, they summarily executed her with a shot to the head.”…

In “Portrait Of An Occupied Country,” Al Jazeera intelligently analyzes how NATO (read the US) is rapidly replacing and usurping local Afghan societal structures.

UPDATE: Remember little, innocent Abeer and her family, who died a horrible death at the hands of American soldiers. May the family rest in peace; may the murderers be put to death for their crimes.

Here’s how you know the Republicans are the enemies of liberty and justice. Not a word have their megaphones among the media said about “the deaths of tens of thousands,” often at the hands of our forces, revealed in the release, by WikiLeak, “of over 75,000 secret US military reports covering the war in Afghanistan.”

FoxNews focuses on the obscure Iran-extremism connection. Fox would never jeopardize an occupation.

The Washington Times took the side of the administration by choosing to belabor its warnings about the potential harm the truth could do “to those that are in our military, those that are cooperating with our military, and those that are working to keep us safe” (namely the networks of criminals, terrorists, and warlords we are nurturing in that blighted part of the world).

Similarly—and predictably—The War Street Journal zeroed in on the administration’s hunt for a culprit, “Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst charged this month with leaking [the] classified information”— “thousands of military documents published Sunday by WikiLeaks.

I had to switch Glenn off; his sermons sans information are fit for packaging in a cheap, motivational DVD box set. But no, I heard nothing from him either that would indicate that he favored pulling back the curtain to show the facts of this war.

In fascistic fashion, other NEOCONSERVATIVES called for the arrest of the founder of WikiLeaks. “Julian Assange, once described as the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel of cyberspace, is uncompromising in his scrutiny of big business and big government.”

Kudos to Rachel Maddow’s program which told it like it is, with no regard for Obamby’s feelings.

“The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001.

As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.”

“THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ BEGINS TO EMERGE FROM THE SHADOWS,” writes war correspondent Eric Margolis.

And that’s a good thing.

Serbian historian Srdja Trifkovic is one of the finest writers on Islam. Because he tells the truth about Islam, he also tells the truth about Israel. The latter follows from the former. Sane Serbs, Nebojsa Malic is another, have clashed with Islam’s emissaries and view Israel has having been “serbed.” The rest of the paleos are in contradiction: They acknowledge Islam’s aims but refuse to see its workings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I highlighted their inconsistencies in “Paleos Must Defend the West…And That Means Israel Too.” Trifkovic’s “Israel, the West, and the Rest” continues a tradition of three:

“… our primary interests in the Middle East … are not to defend human rights, or to promote democracy, or to build a Palestinian state, or to treat Israel as an existential American ally … Secondary and peripheral [interests] must remain subordinate to the primary interests when policy outcomes come into conflict. Should we promote ‘democracy’ even if its beneficiaries are Osama and Ahmadinejad? Should we seek ‘justice’ for the Palestinians — however defined — at the cost of risking the disappearance of the state of Israel? No, heck no!

Even if an evenhanded and generous agreement were to be offered to the Arabs — including the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, an equitable sharing of natural resources, and a generous compensation package that would resolve the refugee problem — it would be unworkable in the long term — the notion of Israel’s legitimacy is simply unacceptable to traditional Islam…”

UPDATE I (June 16) : To Derek: “Israel” does not have to mimic paleos to deserve a defense against those intent on extinguishing it. However, it so happens that Israelis have “Sued NATO For 1999 Air Strikes On Serbia.” Read my post about this valiant, well-directed, self-interested effort.

We know that Israel was streaks ahead, as far as paleo political philosophy goes, in terms of its relationship not only with Serbia but with the old South Africa. Read about the latter comity.

Put it this way: Israel did not attempt to destroy these nations; the USA did.

Where does that leave paleo incongruity?!

UPDATE II (June 17): The idea, hinted at in the Comments Section, that this column privileges Israel over the US for “tribal” reasons is insulting—at least to those familiar with my positions. As I wrote to Myron the other day, when he asked that I apply the Israel test to an American issue: “I’m an American commentator, first.” I’m also the quintessential individualist. I’ve never belonged or worked for any group/tribe/church.

Why does this writer fight for the Afrikaner, Gringo Malo? Tribal affiliation? What bunk. If I knew what was good for me, I would indeed conform to Malo’s insulting caricature—the book deals would role in. I’d be rewarded for becoming what in Russel Kirk’s estimation the American mind craves: the banal and the mundane.

If anything, paleos work against their “tribe” when they agitate for the Palestinians. An Israeli did not assassinate an American senator; a Palestinian did. Muslim terrorists extolling the Palestinian cause killed 3000 Americans on 9/11. Yet it is Israelis that paleos warn us against.

And don’t dare mention the vast sums of money that go to that nest of vipers known as the Palestinian Authority. We only speak of the Jewish ponces who take from the US.

Equating my mere recognition of the justness of Israel’s existence and its struggle and what it has accomplished with tribal affiliation—this is plain pathetic, all the more so considering I have not ever recommended a foreign policy that does anything other than stay out of Israel’s affairs.

UPDATE IV: THEN THERE WERE FOUR. Thanks, Daniel, for alerting us to Derb’s brilliant piece, “Taking Israel’s Side”:

“Each of us has a mental map of the world colored by partiality, some of it reasonable, some merely emotional. If we are patriotic, we will feel more warmly towards a nation that trades fairly with us, cooperates to some degree in international projects we undertake, and shares some commonality of history, culture, or values with us. Contrariwise, of course, if you believe, as a liberal once told me he actually did believe, that your country is the most evil that ever existed, you will feel affinity with foreign nations whose leaders share that view. …

It remains the case that any fair-minded person must be an Israel sympathizer. A hundred years ago there were Jews and Arabs living in that part of the Ottoman Empire. After the Ottoman collapse both peoples had a right to set up their own ethnostates. It has been the furiously intransigent Arab denial of this fact, not anything Israelis have done, that has been the root cause of all subsequent troubles. It is also indisputably the case, as has often been said, that if Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest were to lay down their arms, there would be peace in Palestine, while if Israel were to lay down her arms, the Israelis would be slaughtered.It is also indisputably the case, as has often been said, that if Hamas, Hezbollah, and the rest were to lay down their arms, there would be peace in Palestine, while if Israel were to lay down her arms, the Israelis would be slaughtered.”

[SNIP]

The last very good point was one I made in LIAR, LIAR, ABAYA ON FIRE (2002), quoting Lorne Gunter:

“Cycle of violence” suggests a sequence of events that has no beginning or end. Do the media ever pause to pose the no-brainer the Edmonton Journal’s Lorne Gunter poses? “If Palestinians stopped their attacks today, tomorrow there would be no Israeli attacks. But if Israel stopped unilaterally, would you trust the Palestinians to follow?”

The following excerpt is from my new, Worldnetdaily.com column, “B. Hussein In History Wonderland”:

“Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak arrived in Washington this week to press flesh with the president. In an interview, Mubarak told PBS television that Barack Obama’s speech had shown him that ‘America is not against Islam.’ …

The address Mubarak was referring to was delivered by a grandiose Obama in Egypt’s capital, early in June. There, the president prostrated himself before the Muslim world, offering up prolix praise for the religion of peace – a tradition that his predecessor established. …

Given the veritable mirage of lies he conjured in Cairo, blaming the decadence of Arab countries on nefarious Western imperialist intervention in the 19th and 20th centuries, B. Hussein’s historical horizons vis-à-vis the Middle East could also do with some broadening.

A good start would be to stop relying on ‘Lawrence of Arabia’s’ homoerotic, ahisotric memoir for the facts.” …

The complete column is “B. Hussein In History Wonderland.”

If you miss the column on WND.COM, you can catch it each Saturday on Taki’s Magazine.

The excerpt is from my new column, now on Taki’s Magazine:

“Americans are still in the grips of a Bush foreign-policy hangover. Obama refocused a drunk-on-democracy country, by reminding it that ‘the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised. Either way, we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States; that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and is pursuing nuclear weapons.’”

In other words, thumping majorities in the Middle East do not necessarily coincide with American national interests. …

Iran’s leading reformist, the mullahs-approved Mousavi, backs Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and has said he would not suspend uranium enrichment. Most Iranians concur. Like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mousavi doesn’t recognize Israel. Since the Holocaust appears to have become a centerpiece—and a precondition for diplomacy—in neoconservative talking points, they might be interested in this tidbit: on Holocaust denial, Mousavi and Ahmadinejad are on the same pseudo-scientific page.”

Read the complete column, previously on WND, and now on Taki’s titled “Fighting Tyranny Should Start at Home.”

Miss the weekly column on WND.COM? Catch it on Taki’s Magazine every Saturday.

(For the purpose of this column, Majnun is madman in Arabic.)

Update I (June 19): Bob’s comments hereunder about the Iranian Supreme Leader and his powers remind me of another Big Man in another country. What’s that place’s name again? Aha! The US! Have you counted the number of newly created, Messiah-appointed and supervised fiefdoms lately? Czars, anybody? We were supposed to have a government run almost directly by the people and their representatives. I bet we have a larger Managerial State than Iran has. We’re just so good at dubbing all that it does “freedom.” Oh, and we don’t wear towels. Please! We need to look in our own political plates.

How many people would die in the streets if Americans had the gall to protest in such numbers and at such a volume as the Iranians? We lose quite a few naughty citizens to Tazers—and other “necessary”—”discipline” almost daily, except these incidents are filed as “keeping the peace,” and “guarding our liberties” against those who would destroy them (such as Anne Gotbaum, the 100 pounder She Devil).

Update II: LITTLE SATAN STRIKES. So you think we can lord our freedoms over Iran. Again: look in your own backyard. Today, on behalf of Ron Paul’s Campaign For Liberty, The American Civil Liberties Union launched a suit against a lawful criminal gang: the Transportation Security Administration. What said bandits did to staffer Steve Bierfeldt the TSA thugs do daily, even hourly. The population complies. This time they got caught out “for the ‘illegal’ detention of the Campaign for Liberty’s treasurer in April at a St. Louis airport.”

“The ACLU damned what it called a ‘troubling pattern’ of aggressive invasions of privacy by the TSA.” Don’t we know it. Bierfeldt “recorded his confrontation with the airport security agents on his phone. The audio caused waves of indignation across the Internet, as he was seemingly harassed merely for carrying cash and Ron Paul campaign material.”

Harassed? The man was cussed, sworn at, and threatened.

On March 29, 2009, Steven Bierfeldt was detained in a small room at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and interrogated by TSA officials for nearly half an hour after he passed a metal box containing cash through a security checkpoint X-ray machine. Bierfeldt was carrying the cash in connection with his duties as the Director of Development for the Campaign for Liberty, a political organization that grew out of Congressman Ron Paul’s presidential campaign.

Bierfeldt was detained and questioned as he returned home from a Campaign for Liberty event transporting proceeds from the sale of tickets, t-shirts, stickers and campaign material. Bierfeldt repeatedly asked the agents to explain the scope of their authority to detain and interrogate him and received no explanation. Instead, the agents escalated the threatening tone of their questions and ultimately told Bierfeldt that he was being placed under arrest. Bierfeldt recorded the audio of the entire incident with his iPhone.

But we call this a minor issue in the greater cause of safekeeping “liberty.” Reality check: American airports and airlines are the scariest most oppressive in the world. Want a safe, civilized flight? Fly Emirates Airlines. Who are we kidding!

Update III (June 20): Pat Buchanan and I are on the same page (no surprise there). The following are excellent strategic policy points:

“This is another reason President Obama is right not to declare that the United States is on the side of the demonstrators in Tehran or the other cities – and against the regime.

Should this end in bloodshed, Obama would be blamed for having instigated it, and then abandoned the demonstrators …If Obama cannot assist the demonstrators, why declare we are with them? That would call into question the nationalist credentials of the protesters by tying them to a power not universally loved in Iran. It would play into the hand of the regime by confirming charges that the crowds are “rent-a-mobs” like the ones Kermit Roosevelt and the CIA used to dump over the regime of Muhammad Mossadegh in 1953.”

[SNIP]

On the other hand, here’s Chuck Krauthammer, pushing for some action.

I repeat myself but, “Patriots for a sane American foreign policy ought to encourage all America’s friends, Israel included, to push back and do what is in their national interest, not ours. Those of us who want the U.S. to stay solvent—and out of the affairs of others—recognize that sovereign nation-states that resist, not enable, our imperial impulses, are the best hindrance to hegemonic overreach.”

Retired Israeli Ambassador, and BAB A-Lister, Yoram Ettinger reminds us, with reference to history, that Israel fared best when it resisted American pressure. He does it with the a dash of that unique Israeli humor. Enjoy!

Obama Pressures? No Need to Panic!
Yoram Ettinger, Ynet, June 5, 2009

President Obama’s speech in Cairo intensified psychological pressure on the Jewish State. Obama erodes Israel’s special standing in the US. He has adopted evenhandedness and moral equivalence toward Israel (a staunch democratic ally, a role model of counter-terrorism) and toward the Palestinian Authority (an ally of US’ enemies, a role model of terrorism and hate-education). He ignores Israel’s ancient history, suggesting that the justification for its existence is rooted in the Holocaust. And, he has transformed “Settlements” into the crux of the Arab-Israel conflict, although Palestinian terrorism and Arab wars against Israel preceded the 1948 establishment of the Jewish State and the 1968 establishment of the first “Settlement.”

Obama hopes that Prime Minister Netanyahu will succumb to psychological pressure. But, he cannot break Israel’s back or sever US-Israel special relationship.

Notwithstanding the Cairo Speech, the resolution of the Palestinian issue is not Obama’s top priority. The national security of the US and the political future of Obama do not depend on the fate of the “Settlements.” Obama was elected, primarily, in order to stop the monthly increase of unemployment by over 500,000 persons, the loss of homes by millions of Americans, the collapse of credit and consumption, the disintegration of American banks and the destruction of large and small American businesses. In addition, President Obama is challenged by the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential volcano which could erupt following the evacuation of Iraq, the nuclear threat posed by North Korea and Iran, a potential takeover of nuclear Pakistan by the Taliban, a possible Pakistan-India eruption, imperialist Russia and China, etc. If Obama were practically – and not just rhetorically – preoccupied with the Palestinian issue, then he would resemble a person preoccupied with tumbleweeds, while being smothered by a West Texas sandstorm.

The unique covenant between the US and the Jewish State has never evolved around the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has evolved around shared values (which precede 1948 and even 1776), joint interests and mutual threats. Between 1948 and 1992, all Israeli Prime Ministers rejected US prescriptions/ultimatum for the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The 1957 withdrawal from Sinai was an exception. However, US-Israel strategic cooperation catapulted to unprecedented levels as a result of regional reality and Israel’s steadfastness in face of pressure. For example, two unprecedented strategic memoranda of understandings were concluded in November 1983 and April 1988, in spite of brutal US pressure on Israel during the First Intifada and the First Lebanese War. These strategic memoranda were signed due to Israel’s unique contribution to vital US national security interests: war on Islamic terrorism, ballistic missile defense, restraining the USSR and regional rogue regimes, sharing of critical intelligence and battle experience, upgrading of defense and commercial industries, etc. In fact, a critical mass among the US public, Congress and even the Administration appreciates the Jewish State – irrespective of “Settlements” – for sparing the US the need to deploy tens of thousands of US military personnel and to invest annually mega-billion dollars in the eastern flank of the Mediterranean.

This 2009 psychological pressure is dwarfed by past practical and brutal pressure, which was exerted by the US and by the international community and was fended off by Israel’s Prime Ministers. In 1948, the Department of State and the Pentagon imposed a military embargo and threatened to add economic sanctions, in order to force Ben Gurion to refrain from a declaration of independence and to accept a UN Trusteeship. The Administration demanded an end to “occupation” in the Negev, the internationalization of Jerusalem and the absorption and compensation of Palestinian refugees. In 1967, President Johnson warned Prime Minister Eshkol: “If you shall act alone (in pre-empting an Egyptian-Syrian-Jordanian strike) you shall remain alone.” In 1981, President Reagan threatened Prime Minister Begin with a military embargo and a severe rupture should Israel bomb Iraq’s nuclear reactor. The US was joined by the USSR, Europe, the UN and Israel’s own Peres, Weitzman and chiefs of Mossad and Military Intelligence, who all opposed the bombing. Israel’s Prime Ministers withstood massive US and global pressure, with relatively-limited economic, military and diplomatic resources at their disposal.

A US President is a very powerful leader, but he heads one of three branches of government, which are totally independent of each other [theoretically, at least]. The US president is substantially constrained by an elaborate system of checks and balances. He does not appoint congressional leadership or candidates for congressional seats. Congress – which possesses the “Power of the Purse” – has been a consistent bastion of support for the Jewish State. The loyalty of the legislators is first and foremost to their constituents and to the Constitution, including an effective Separation of Power. Therefore, most Democrats opposed Obama’s appointment of Charles Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council. Most Democrats opposed President Clinton’s free trade initiatives, over 30 Democratic House Members voted to impeach Clinton. A Democratic majority in both chambers did not prevent a failed 1992-1994 presidency and a Democratic collapse at the 1994 election. Moreover, the relative weight of Congress rises during economic crises and the assertiveness and independence of legislators grow as congressional campaign season (which will be launched in September 2009) approaches.

Will Prime Minister Netanyahu retreat in the face of President Obama’s psychological pressure, or will he leverage the strategic and political reality in the Middle East and in the US for the mutual benefit of both the US and the Jewish State?

**
Of course, I maintain that cutting the Gordian Knot—that is foreign aid to Israel—would be the best thing for the Jewish State.