Obama (CORRUPT TRADER) told his French counterpart in reference to the Israeli PM: “you’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”
The damning assessment of the Israeli prime minister, relayed by senior White House officials to an American journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, is the most graphic sign yet of the toxic relationship between the two men, who have clashed continually over the stalled Middle East peace process.President Obama’s contempt for Netanyahu is already well known, as he amply displayed in a private meeting with then French president Nicolas Sarkozy at the G-20 in November 2011, where he reportedly told his French counterpart in reference to the Israeli PM: “you’re fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!” Obama refused to meet with Netanyahu when he visited the United States in September last year, while finding the time to appear on the David Letterman show, and has a long track record of snubbing the Israeli PM.
Writing on the Bloomberg website, Goldberg quoted Mr Obama as repeatedly saying, "Israel doesn't know what its own best interests are" in response to a spate of recent announcements for thousands of new Jewish settler homes in east Jerusalem and the West Bank on land the Palestinians want for a future state.
… "If Israel, a small state in an inhospitable region, becomes more of a pariah – one that alienates even the affections of the US, its last steadfast friend – it won't survive," Goldberg writes, paraphrasing Mr Obama's words. "Iran poses a short-term threat to Israel's survival; Israel's own behaviour poses a long-term one." Mr Obama also believes the Israeli prime minister is a "political coward" who is incapable of making concessions to the Palestinians because he has "become captive of Jewish settler lobby".
Obama’s latest comments, conveyed by Jeffrey Goldberg, take the US president’s hostility against Netanyahu to new heights, and are a major diplomatic faux pas ahead of next week’s Israeli election, which Netanyahu is widely expected to win. It will undoubtedly set the tone for his entire approach towards Israel, and will further strain relations between Washington and Jerusalem during his second term. They also reveal a remarkable degree of antipathy towards America’s closest friend and ally in the Middle East, and an unhealthy willingness to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation state. There are echoes of the president’s unwelcome intervention in the British debate over membership of the European Union last week, when the senior State Department official for European affairs specifically warned Britain against an EU exit.
Barack Obama’s sneering reference to Israel as “a small state” that is already “a pariah,” and one that may not even survive unless it changes its “behaviour,” smacks of staggering condescension, and will be music to the ears of every enemy of Israel on the face of the earth. This is not a message the president of the United States should be sending to a brave ally that faces a huge range of threats, from Iran’s nuclear programme to a host of terrorist organisations, including Hamas and Hezbollah. President Obama claims to be a friend of Israel, but his words and actions strongly suggest otherwise. And as for Israel’s best interests, they are far better defended by Benjamin Netanyahu than the current occupant of the White House, who is much happier giving America’s allies the boot than he is standing up to his country’s adversaries. Mr. Netanyahu clearly understands the nature of the threat Israel faces. Mr. Obama evidently does not.
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