Israel
March 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In mid-2011, as you may recall, President Obama sought to bring peace to the Middle East through his proposal that Israel should return to its 1967 borders in exchange for being annihilated by its enemies. Has Obama’s thinking on the subject advanced? Aaron Klein suggests that it has not. We’ll have to check back after Obama’s big speech to Israeli students, from which he has thoughtfully barred the students of
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March 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I watched President Obama’s arrival in Israel at Ben-Gurion Airport this morning (this afternoon in Israel, I guess), live on CNN. Obama was welcomed by President Peres and Prime Minister Netanyahu, who rolled out the red carpet for him (screenshot below). Obama’s remarks, so it seemed to me, were pitched to show that there is no daylight between the United States and Israel. They might have been persuasive if you
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March 18, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Today’s Washington Post (print edition) proclaimed that “Obama’s trip to Israel aims to fix missteps.” But for what purpose? The Post suggests that Obama needs to fix the mistakes of his previous approach to Israel so that he can “revive” his “ill-fated effort to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.” I don’t doubt that President Obama would like to revive that effort. And it’s reasonable for Obama to conclude, albeit belatedly,
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March 18, 2013 — Scott Johnson
We have covered the death of the son of BBC Gaza picture editor Jihad Masharawi at the outset of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in some detail. Jihad Masharawi eloquently condemned Israel for the death and the BBC, the Washington Post and other organs of the mainstream media turned it into an international sensation. They turned it into a sensation so long as they could attribute responsibility (wrongly, regardless of
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March 16, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The extent to which Americans sympathize more with Israelis than with Palestinians has reached its all-time high, according to a new Gallup poll. The survey found that the sympathies of 64 percent of Americans reside with Israelis, compared to only 12 percent for the Palestinians. The 64 percent figure matched the previous record high from 1991, during the first Gulf War. At that time, though, only 7 percent of Americans
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March 16, 2013 — Scott Johnson
BBC Middle East editor Paul Danahar happened to be on hand in Gaza for the opening of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense. When the son of Danahar’s BBC Gaza colleague Jihad Masharawi was killed at the outset of the operation this past November, Danahar all but accused Israel of murder. Via his Twitter account @pdanahar, Danahar tweeted his reaction to young Masharawi’s death: “Questioned [sic] asked here is: if Israel
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March 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I try to discount reports of future White House doings, but veteran reporter Neil Munro’s Daily Caller article — Obama will press Israel to mollify furious Arabs” – is sourced to Ben Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. Rhodes contributes another chapter in the praise of folly that Obama has brought us over the past four-plus years: “It is obviously a good thing that the people
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March 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Paul Danahar is the BBC Middle East editor and the subject of part 3 of this series, which I will wind up tomorrow. When the son of Danahar’s BBC Gaza colleague Jihad Masharawi was killed at the outset of Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense this past November, Danahar all but accused Israel of murder. Via his Twitter account @pdanahar, Danahar tweeted his reaction to young Masharawi’s death: “Questioned [sic] asked
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March 14, 2013 — Scott Johnson
BBC Middle East editor Paul Danahar was on hand in Gaza at the outset of Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s attempt to suppress the firing of rockets by Hamas on Israeli civilians. Danahar was therefore close to hand around the time that the son of BBC Arabic picture editor Jihad Masharawi’s son was killed by a munition that Danahar described as a shell landed in Masharawi’s home, which Danahar visited
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March 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson
A few years back the Daily Mail reported on the BBC’s “impartiality summit.” The story discussed the political correctness that suffocates the BBC. Only a few years earlier, the BBC was publicly disgraced in the Hutton Inquiry. The Hutton Inquiry failed to prompt the kind of historical examination of the BBC that it richly deserves. The institutional rot at the BBC is generations old. Biographies of Winston Churchill note mostly
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March 12, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The photograph of BBC Arabic editor Jihad Masharawi holding the shrouded body of his 11-month-old son, Omar, went viral within hours of the commencement of Israel’s Operation pillar of Defense in November 2012. The photograph depicted Masharawi outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. The young Masharawi’s death was attributed to an Israeli airstrike. The photograph was featured on the Web and in newspapers around the world. The Daily Mail published
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March 11, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I wrote about the photograph of BBC Arabic editor Jihad Masharawi holding the shrouded body of his 11-month-old son, Omar, in posts here, here, here and here. The photograph depicted Masharawi outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City early in Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense. The young Masharawi’s death was attributed to an Israeli airstrike. The photograph went viral on the second day of the conflict between Hamas and Israel, being
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March 8, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The White House insists that President Obama will go ahead and visit Israel later this month even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not put together a governing coalition before the president arrives. Obama is scheduled to arrive March 20. Netanyahu’s deadline for forming a governing coalition is March 16. However, it’s not clear that Netanyahu will meet that deadline. And even if he does, the views of the new
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March 6, 2013 — Scott Johnson
At Defining Ideas, Kori Schake has an excellent summary of “The view from Tehran.” Schake makes the case that the mullahs believe they are achieving their aims in their long confrontation with the United States. One of the data points in Schake’s assessment is the retirement of General Mattis ahead of schedule. From Obama’s perspective, Mattis was an inconvenient fellow “because he irritatingly kept insisting that political guidance from the
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March 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Vice President Biden gave a long speech at the annual AIPAC Policy conference yesterday (complete text here). The speech is worth reading in its entirety. Drawing on his long public career, Biden shows a natural ability to connect with his audience despite the complications of the past four years. Much of the speech is difficult to square with the tenor of the Obama administration’s approach to Israel and the Middle
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March 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In his Impromptus column yesterday, Jay Nordlinger wrote: Something that happened last week caused a flashback in me. Let me explain: Speaking at a U.N. event in Vienna, the Turkish leader Erdogan blasted Zionism as “a crime against humanity.” Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, sat on the stage with him, silent. Erdogan and Ban Ki-moon shared a stage in Davos, in 2009. Ban blasted Israel, though in indirect terms. Erdogan
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March 4, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Reading accounts (such as this one) of John Kerry’s whirlwind trip to the Middle East has got me thinking about the Obama administration’s top foreign policy/national security team of Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and, if confirmed as DCIA (which I hope he isn’t), John Brennan. Don’t they deserve some kind of a nickname? I’m thinking of something along the lines of Axis of Stupid. It probably doesn’t work, because the obtuseness
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