The administration of President Barack Obama has launched what officials termed a psychological warfare campaign meant to topple Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sources in the administration and Congress asserted that the White House and State Department have sought to destabilize Netanyahu's government by forcing him to agree to an indefinite freeze on Jewish construction in the West Bank and most of Jerusalem as well as the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2012. They said the campaign sought to replace Netanyahu with opposition leader and former foreign minister Tsipi Livni.
"Bibi is extremely vulnerable to pressure," a source familiar with the White House effort said. "We know this from his first term in office and believe he will collapse this time as well."
The sources said the administration's strategy aimed to de-legitimize Netanyahu in his government and right-wing constituency. They said Obama and his aides have sought to portray Netanyahu as a weak and unstable politician who will destroy relations with Washington as Israel seeks U.S. support for a military option against Iran.
"There seems to be a general belief in the circle around the president that the democratically-elected government in Israel is drunk at the wheel," Steven Rosen, a veteran pro-Israeli lobbyist now with the Middle East Forum, said. "They clearly will use pressure tactics to bring Israel around."
In April 2010, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk began a series of attacks on Netanyahu in the Israeli media. Indyk, a former assistant secretary of state under then-President Bill Clinton, has called for the toppling of Netanyahu while his right-wing partners accept a more pliant prime minister.
"Indyk was sent by Obama and encouraged by his American Jewish supporters, particularly [former Rep.] Robert Wexler, to do this," the source said.
In January 2010, Wexler resigned from Congress to become head of the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation. The center was founded by Obama supporter Daniel Abraham and a delegation met Netanyahu in February.
The sources said the administration's campaign has included invitations to Defense Minister Ehud Barak to the White House, where he met with Obama on April 26. Barak has been regarded as the most pro-U.S. minister in Netanyahu's Cabinet and has been lobbying ministers to accept Obama's proposals.
"It's not going to be easy to turn this thing around," Rosen told a briefing on April 21. "Some of my friends in Jerusalem believe this crisis will go on for an extended period."
The anti-Netanyahu fervor has alarmed pro-Israeli members in Congress, particularly from the Democratic Party. Several of the Democrats have reported a sharp drop in funds by Jewish donors for congressional elections in November.
"This [campaign against Netanyahu] is counterproductive and has to stop," Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who has threatened to issue a condemnation of the White House, said.
Some in the pro-Israeli community detect an anti-Semitic tinge to the White House campaign, despite the involvement of Jewish aides. On April 21, National Security Advisor James Jones stunned an audience at the pro-Israel Washington Institute when he told a joke of a Jewish merchant who tricked a thirsty Taliban fighter into buying a tie.
"I wish that I had not made this off the cuff joke at the top of my remarks," Jones later said. "I apologize to anyone who was offended by it. It also distracted from the larger message I carried that day: That the United States' commitment to Israel's security is sacrosanct."
Former State Department official Aaron Miller said Obama has surrounded himself with aides who blame Netanyahu for the suspension of the Arab-Israeli peace process. Miller said many of the aides had encountered Netanyahu during his first tenure as prime minister from 1996 to 1999.
"They had seen the Benjamin Netanyahu movie before and were determined not to let their chance at Middle East peace end the same way," Miller said in the magazine Foreign Policy. "Confronted with Netanyahu again, Obama and his team needed no encouragement to talk tough on the growing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, an issue that experts inside and outside government were clamoring for Obama to raise as the first step in his renewed push for peace. Fresh from his victory on health care, he's [Obama] king of the world again and in no mood to let the king of Israel frustrate his plans."
Wild Thing's comment.........
A little something about BiBi:
Netanyahu was born in 1949 in Tel Aviv to Zila and professor Benzion Netanyahu, the middle child of three children. He was initially raised and educated in Jerusalem. Between 1956 and 1958, and again in 1963-67, his family lived in the United States in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia, where he attended and graduated from the Cheltenham High School and was active in a debate club.
Obama wants someone he can control - someone as leader of Israel who will stand by and do nothing as Barack Obama gives all of the promised land to the Muslims.
Bibi refuses to be a puppet- so Obama is trying to get rid of him and install someone who will not utter a peep while the Muslims steal Jewish land and drive the Jews into the sea.
8 comments:
I hate to say this, but Israel needs to start looking for support elsewhere. They could look to India, Russia, maybe even China for help. Obama is intent on destroying Israel, and Netanyahu is the only one who can stop him.
Let me go one further: it would be a gross mistake to have Israel align with ANY of those listed countries and Israel knows this. Without the US, Israel is essentially on its own. And with this administration, they'd likely be better off. The question is, how long can they survive in the life raft, adrift in a huge sea, by themselves, surrounded by sharks on every side?
BZ
The sad thing is that Bibi is showing signs of backing down. I thought he would hold firm, but who knows.
Debbie
Right Truth
http://www.righttruth.typepad.com
The left have always been yearning to reduce Israel to the state of middle-eastern shithole and they've always done everything they could to achieve this. They want the muslims to finish off the Jews, they're just a bit coy about admitting it publicly.
Funny thing is that Obama is playing with fire here. If Bibi falls and there are new elections, it won't be Kadima, Labour or any of the far left groups (They only have 3 seats combined.), it will be Likud under Begin, Shas, or Our Nation under Lieberman. Any one of the 3 will kick Barry S's ass.
This could be a good thing!
Debbie is speaking the sad
reality here. Bibi just caved
in on legitimate construction
and now it will get very ugly.
I wish Israel would nuke Iran
and Syria to give the one and
only proper response. Harsh,
risky and brutal, yes. But
Islam and the Islamofascists
will stop at nothing to kill
every Jew and destroy Israel
There will be no peace as long
as Islam survives. If anyone
thinks getting rid of Israel
or giving the loser arabs a
state they never have deserved,
will bring peace, they are very
mistaken.
I concur with many of the assessments above and I shudder at the awful treatment perpetuated by this administration towards the great state of Israel, in particular the odious manner both Pres Peres and PM Netanyahu have been treated.
However, with all due respect, there is a major, glaring fallacy in this narrative.
That is to say, that Kadima Chair Livni, is some sort of lay down Sally, on the Iran issue.
On the contrary, she has repeated and publicly stated that there is NO difference whatsoever on the Iranian front between Likud and Kadima.
That she is more flexible on East Jerusalem due to Bibi's internal coalition partners, is arguably correct, though the buildings/area in question were NEVER part of any agreement since Oslo.
Livni is a former Mossad agent, the daughter of an Israeli freedom fighter and an acolyte of the magnificent Ariel Sharon, whom handpicked her.
Carlos: It was Sharon who orchestrated the horror known as the Gaza withdrawl.
Livni is the same, she will sell out her nation if she can keep her job.
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