Friday, September 30, 2016

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's key Wing Men one and all prefer Hillary Clinton for the 45th President of the USA ..... now even more than in June 2016

The Prime Minister knows Israel needs a US president who is measured, consistent and credible, all qualities Trump lacks.

Trump Netanyahu and Clinton. (photo credit:REUTERS)

This article is based on one and one conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu's key wing men DoreGold ( Director General f the Foreign Ministry) , Danny Danon ( UN Ambassador) Ron Dermer ( USA Ambassador ) , Michael Oren ( Previously Ambassador to the US) Tzipi Hotelevy ( Deputy Foreign Minister) and the Cabinet Ministers Tzachi Hanegbi , Avi Dichter,Yuli-Yoel Edelstein,Zeev Elkin,Gilad Erdan.and Yuval Steinitz and just in the interest of complete disclosure , I have been a member of the Likud Central Committee since 1988.

In his heart of hearts, and certainly not to be discussed with his political sugar daddy Sheldon Adelson, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is probably hoping for a Hillary Clinton victory in November’s US presidential election. And despite what former New York City mayor Rudi Giuliani believes, Israel’s right-wing leader will prefer dealing with the first woman president in America’s history than the flamboyant, uncontrollable and unpredictable Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Netanyahu hates surprises, and Trump’s whole candidacy has been one huge surprise, from his decision to run, his winning the Republican nomination and his sudden surge in the head-to-head polls against Clinton. More pertinently for Netanyahu, no one has a real clue as to where Trump stands on issues of vital importance to Israel.

Trump’s flirtation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, unlike our own Avigdor Liberman’s embarrassing endorsement of Putin’s democratic credentials when Liberman was foreign minister, would seriously endanger the West, and by extension Israel, were Trump ever get to sit in the Oval Office. A strengthening of Russia’s standing at the expense of the US would have serious knock-on effects in the Middle East, in particular boosting Russia’s de facto allies Iran and Hezbollah.

More widely, Trump’s willingness to discuss recognizing Russia’s land grab in the Crimean and his threats to weaken NATO would be a disastrous reshuffling of the post-Cold War order. Trump’s strident isolationism will certainly be setting off alarm bells in the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem. Take a look at Trump’s remarks regarding his commitment to the NATO alliance: “I want to keep NATO , but I want them to pay,” Trump told a rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, last week.

“I don’t want to be taken advantage of... We’re protecting countries that most of the people in this room have never even heard of and we end up in World War Three? ...Give me a break.”

In the past, Trump has also talked of his willingness to “walk” if countries like Japan, Germany or Saudi Arabia do not pay the full cost for American troops stationed in their countries.

Given Israel’s reliance on American military aid, this is certainly not music to Netanyahu’s ears. It’s surely no coincidence that after dragging his heels for over year, convinced he could get a better deal from the next US administration, Netanyahu has suddenly switched gears and begun to move decisively to reach an agreement with President Barack Obama over the next 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on US military aid to Israel.

With a reported $40 billion at stake, Netanyahu has belatedly realized it is not in Israel’s interest for this huge package to become a political football in what promises to be an exceptionally divisive American election campaign. For all Netanyahu and his supporters’ attempts to falsify history and portray Obama as the most anti-Israel US president in recent history, this MoU, once signed, will set the seal on Obama’s pro-Israel legacy and his commitment to Israel’s security.

Israel needs a US president who is measured, consistent and credible, all qualities Trump has already shown he lacks. Shooting from the hip on Twitter is amusing, from the Oval Office it would be a nightmare.

One day Trump says he is “neutral” on Israel and Palestine, and suggests that Israeli obstinacy is behind the difficulty of securing peace: “A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal – whether or not Israel’s willing to sacrifice certain things.”

The next day (when he happens to be addressing the AIPAC convention) he insists he “will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem,” if elected president, a promise regularly made but never kept by would-be American presidents. The Trump-inspired removal of support for the two-state solution from the Republican platform then places the party to the Right of Netanyahu, and offers no insight into resolving the Israel- Palestine conflict.

With Clinton, on the other hand, Netanyahu knows exactly what’s in store – more of the same, and from the prime minister’s perspective, what’s not to like? Despite the clear ideological differences between Netanyahu and Obama, and the clash over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the latter’s administration has never wavered in its support for Israel when it really mattered for Jerusalem.

And neither will Clinton. Her record as a senator and secretary of state is one of a clear supporter of Israel. Under her stewardship, the State Department increased military assistance for Israel every year, from $2.55b. when she took office to $3.1b. in FY2013, a nearly 20 percent increase, while diplomatically she ensured the United States blocked UN Security Council resolutions for Palestinian statehood.

Clinton and Netanyahu might not be friends, but Israel doesn’t need friends, it needs strong allies. A Trump presidency will see a weakening of US alliances across the world as America turns inwards, which is precisely the opposite of what Israel needs.

Benjamen Netanyahu's key Wing Men one and all prefer Hillary Clinton for the 45th President of the USA ..... now even more than in June 2016

The prime minister knows Israel needs a US president who is measured, consistent and credible, all qualities Trump lacks.

Trump Netanyahu and Clinton. (photo credit:REUTERS)

This article is based on one and one conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu's key wing men DoreGold ( Director General f the Foreign Ministry) , Danny Danon ( UN Embassador) Ron Dermer ( USA Ambassador ) , Michael Oren ( Previously Ambassador to the US) Tzipi Hotelevy ( Depurty Foreign Minister) and the Cabinet Ministers Tzachi Hanegbi , Avi Dichter,Yuli-Yoel Edelstein,Zeev Elkin,Gilad Erdan.and Yuval Steinitz and just in the interest of complete disclosure , I have been a member of the Likud Central Committee since 1988.

Benjamen Netanyahu's key Wing Men one and all prefer Hillary Clinton for the 45th President of the USA ..... now even more than in June 2016

Emigmatic Shimon Peres

Shimon Peres. Photo: Mark Neiman / GPO.

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue. — Gaius Sallustius Crispus,Roman historian and politician, (86 BCE – c. 35 BCE)

It is our experience that political leaders do not always mean the opposite of what they say. — Abba Eban, Israeli diplomat and politician (1919-2002)

On Wednesday, September 28, Shimon Peres, the 9th and arguably the most high-profile president of Israel, passed away. For all the glare of the public spotlight and scrutiny to which he has been exposed, he remains in many ways, an enigmatic figure, comprised of seemingly impossible contradictions for historians to attempt to decipher.

SEPTEMBER 30, 2016 10:49 AM

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Sweeping international acclaim: Well-merited or unwarranted?

Peres will be laid to rest on Friday with all the pomp and ceremony that befits the funeral of a former head of state and public figure of international stature.

The expected attendees include world leaders and renowned celebrities from dozens of countries around the globe. US President Barack Obama, and former President Bill Clinton, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, former British PM Tony Blair, and Prince Charles are but a few names in the star-studded list of reported dignitaries, who plan to attend the ceremony. Tributes flowed in from far and wide, from Hollywood stars to the British royal family, mourning the passing of the man seen as Israel’s elder statesman.

Of course, all this international attention was not unexpected. After all, during his lifetime, Peres had virtually every major international honor bestowed on him – from the Légion d’Honneur through the Congressional Gold Medal and Presidential Medal of Freedom, to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet, to some, all this acclaim and acknowledgment may seem somewhat incongruous in light of the almost unbroken succession of failures and fiascoes that have dogged much of his career since the late 1970s — both in terms of his personal electoral defeats and of his policy debacles — particularly the disastrous implosion of his flagship endeavor to resolve the conflict with the Palestinian-Arabs, and the evaporation of his vision of a peaceful and prosperous “New Middle East.”

The enigmatic conundrum

As mentioned earlier, despite the fact that Peres was exposed to public scrutiny for almost seven decades, there in still much about him that remains a puzzling conundrum, comprising a tangled web of seemingly irreconcilable paradoxes. For many, his passing may well appear to be an appropriate juncture to begin addressing the intriguing challenge of unraveling the enigmatic kaleidoscope of events he traversed on his route to the pinnacle of international esteem.

To be sure, Peres’s extraordinary ability, passion and energy are beyond dispute. But so, it would seem, was his unbridled ambition, making the caveats in the introductory excerpts highly relevant in evaluating the breathtaking volte face in his professed political credo.

There can also be little dispute that, as president, he managed to restore an aura of dignity to the office, so severely tarnished by the unfortunate scandals that plagued the incumbency of his predecessor.

Even his fiercest critics cannot deny Peres’s huge contribution to the nation’s security, particularly in the first decade-and-a-half after independence.

As a young protégé of David Ben-Gurion’s, Peres is credited with playing a leading role in setting up much of the foundations for the nascent nation’s military infrastructure that has been so crucial in ensuring its survival and its technological edge – including Israel Aircraft Industries (today Israel Aerospace Industries), acquisition of advanced combat aircraft from France and the establishment of the nuclear facility in Dimona.

As defense minister at the time of the Entebbe raid in 1976, he is identified by many as providing the political will to push through the decision to carry out the now legendary operation.

The fruits of failure?

However, perversely, it has not been Peres’s successes – but his failures – that have catapulted him to international stardom. It was not his impressive accomplishments in the service of his nation that brought him global celebrity status, but the disastrous fiascoes in the pursuit of his wildly unrealistic illusions.

Thus, it was the disastrous Oslo Accords — which have long since imploded into bloody ruin — that brought him the 1994 Nobel Peace prize.

Likewise, it was his lofty vision of a “New Middle East” – with peace and prosperity stretching from the Maghreb to the Persian Gulf – that caught the imagination of so many, but now, with the descent of today’s Middle East into carnage and chaos, appears nothing but a ludicrous delusion.

Accordingly, it was not his considerable contributions to Israeli security that made him such a sought-after figure on the global stage, but rather his adoption of the role of supranational statesman on a noble quest for regional peace, a quest that precipitated nothing but death and devastation.

Moreover, since the late 1970s, by most accepted standards, Peres would have been considered a failed politician. Yet repeated electoral defeats, even at times when victory seemed almost certain, appear to have left his stature undiminished.

Snatching defeat from jaws of almost certain victory

Indeed, Peres never won a national election and lost numerous internal elections for party leadership.

Between 1977-96, he led the Labor party unsuccessfully in five general elections, losing four of them and tying in one of them (1984)’ resulting in a 2 year rotation arrangement, with Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir.

The razor-edge loss of the 1996 election to Benjamin Netanyahu, which he was widely expected to win, was particularly humiliating, given the waves of public sympathy his party enjoyed following the assassination of his predecessor, Yitzhak Rabin.

No less humiliating was the failure of his first bid to win the presidency in 2000, in which he was surprisingly defeated by the unimpressive and un-presidential Moshe Katsav.

Peres was also regularly defeated in elections for the leadership of the Labor party, by Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, and even lack-luster Amir Peretz. It was shortly after his defeat by Peretz, that Peres abandoned the Labor party and joined Ariel Sharon’s newly formed Kadima faction. In 2007, Kadima, which today no longer exists, appointed Peres as its candidate for president — after considerable hesitation due to doubts as to whether he could win. This time, however, Peres won the vote, thus becoming president…on behalf of a party soon to disappear.

It was from this inauspicious start the Peres managed to choreograph his presidency into an international “hit” on a global scale.

Metamorphosis from hawk to dove

Peres was always obsessed with “tomorrow.” In many ways he appropriated it as his professional trademark, in an endeavor to brand himself as a future-oriented statesman. And while there was much to substantiate that image in his earlier hawkish era, his predictive acumen seems to have deserted him in his later dovish years.

Peres’s transformation from hawk to dove seems to have taken place around the mid-80s, when one Peres morphed into an almost diametric opposite Peres (hence the dichotomy in the title). Indeed, as Anshel Pfeffer wrote this week (Guardian, September 28): “If Peres had resigned from frontline politics at the age of 54, as many of his colleagues were demanding, after having lost the 1977 general election…he would be remembered as one of Israel’s most legendary security ‘hawks.’”

It was around then that Peres, as foreign minister, began to embrace the land-for-peace doctrine and, largely behind Prime Minister Shamir’s back, attempted to secure a deal with Jordan’s King Hussein over the fate of Judea-Samaria. Given the precarious plight of the Hashemite regime today, and the growing ascendancy of radical Islamist elements in the monarchy, it is difficult to be charitable as to the foresight such a proposal entailed.

Calculated cynicism or well-informed confidence

Referring to this puzzling transformation, Pfeffer observes: “Peres never explained the transformation he underwent in the wilderness of opposition.”

He offers two possible explanations, one of calculated cynicism, the other of well-informed confidence:

His many detractors said that Peres simply had no choice. With Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat … signing the Camp David peace agreement, he had no choice but to move leftwards and try to present himself as a better peacemaker than his Likud rivals [while] [h]is supporters explained [referring to Israel’s alleged nuclear capabilities] that Peres knew more than anyone else just how strong and secure Israel had become, and could therefore make concessions and take risks for peace in its dangerous neighbourhood.

While some may balk at the former, the latter is entirely unpersuasive.

For as we shall see, and as hawkish Peres himself warned, the most immediate threats to Israel’s security today are those of enhanced and ongoing attrition rather than cataclysmic invasion by Arab armies. Accordingly, because of the diffuse nature and close proximity of the sources of these threats to Israeli population centers, the country’s alleged nuclear capabilities are largely irrelevant in dealing with them.

Yesterday’s view of ‘tomorrow’

As mentioned previously, Peres was always enamored with the “tomorrow” theme. One of his first forays in to “tomorrow-territory” was a programmatic book entitled Tomorrow is Now, which he authored as chairman of the Labor Party, just after it had lost power to Menachem Begin’s Likud. Published in 1978, it laid out Peres’s prescriptive vision for the future conduct of the affairs of the nation.

In many ways, the book – available only in Hebrew – is an astonishing document.

For those who are only familiar with the post-Oslowian dovish version of Peres, it offers some staggering surprises.

For the citizens of Israel – indeed, for anyone concerned with the fate of the Jewish state – it raises deeply disturbing questions regarding the judgment, credibility and integrity of those who have served in positions of senior leadership, and serious doubts as to the credence that can be placed in their pronouncements to the nation.

For, in virtually every aspect, the book negates precepts underlying the rationale of the Oslo Accords — including the validity of the land-for-peace doctrine, the desirability of a Palestinian state and the value of any agreements with the Arab world – particularly concerning demilitarization. Likewise, it strongly endorses Jewish settlements across the pre-1967 Green Line,including Judea-Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Golan. Indeed, it would not be far from the truth to say that Peres was in fact the founding father (or at least, godfather) of today’s much maligned settlement project.

Peres’s past prescriptions; precise predictions

I have written extensively elsewhere of the incisive insights of Peres’s past prescriptions and the precision of his past predictions of the perils that would befall Israel were it to adopt the kind of policies that he later advocated. (see here and here). I pointed out how hawkish Peres forewarned of the very realities the dovish Peres endorsed, and how these were precisely the realities that precipitated the IDF’s Operation Defensive Shield in Judea-Samaria (2002) – and later operations in Gaza: Cast Lead (2008/9); Pillar of Defense (2012); Protective Edge (2014).

He warned of the dangers of relinquishing the highlands of Judea-Samaria to Arab control and how that would allow “the most extreme terrorist forces…equipped with anti-tank and anti-aircraft shoulder-launched rockets, [to] endanger not only random passers-by, but also every airplane and helicopter taking off in the skies of Israel and every vehicle traveling along the major traffic routes in the coastal plain.”

He argued that the greater range, mobility and firepower of modern weaponry only enhance the strategic importance of territorial depth and that relinquishing Judea-Samaria would “create compulsive temptation to attack Israel…” (p.255).

He cautioned against placing trust in agreements with the Arabs, since: “The number of agreements which the Arabs have violated is no less than the number which they have kept” (p.255).

Which Peres do we mourn?

But perhaps most significant was his endorsement of the settlement project and his call

to create a continuous stretch of new settlements; to bolster Jerusalem and the surrounding hills…by the establishment of townships, suburbs and villages – Ma’ale Edumin, Ofra, Gilo, Bet-El, Givon…to ensure that the capital and its flanks are secured…the settlements along the Jordan River are intended to establish the Jordan River as [Israel’s] de facto security border; however, it is the settlements on the western slopes of the hills of Samaria and Judea which will deliver us from the curse of Israel’s “narrow waist”; the purpose of the settlements in the Golan is to ensure that this territorial platform will no longer constitute a danger, but a barrier against a surprise attack… (p.48)

So which Peres do we mourn? The dour hawkish Peres, who got it right? Or the internationally-acclaimed dovish Peres, who got it disastrously wrong?

Hell Nos No Mercy for a Sexist, Mysogynist and Racist Schoolyard Bully Like Donny T :Donald Trump Slut-Shames Alicia Machado in early-morning Twitter tirade

Donald Trump slut-shames Alicia Machado in early-morning Twitter tirade

America's Next... is Mic's home for coverage of the issues, people and moments that matter most in the 2016 presidential election.

Donald Trump on Friday embarked on an early-morning Twitter rant against former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, calling her "disgusting" and encouraging Americans to "check out" a sex tape Machado allegedly appeared in.

"Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?" Trump tweeted at 5:30 a.m. Friday morning, after two other tweets targeting Machado.

Trump's Twitter tirade comes four days after Hillary Clinton pointed to Machado as evidence of Trump's misogyny during the first general election debate, reminding voters of how Trump fat-shamed Machado by calling her "Miss Piggy" after she gained weight following her Miss Universe win in 1996.

Since then, Trump has kept the story going by defending his behavior toward Machado in the 1990s by saying Machado was the "worst" because she had "gained a massive amount of weight."

Trump's treatment of Machado threatens to further hurt his standing among women voters, who back Clinton by a wide margin, according to public polling.

Even worse, Trump's tweetstorm against Machado could also further cement voters' view that Trump does not have the temperament to serve as president.

During Monday's debate, the audience — which was instructed to stay silent — burst out in laughter when Trump claimed to have a better temperament than Clinton.

And in an NBC News/Surveymonkey poll taken after the debate, 63% of voters said Trump does not have the temperament to serve as president.

Cable news hosts were shocked at Trump's Twitter rant.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe, the panel read Trump's tweets verbatim and were dumbfounded.

Later on in the show, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd could not believe what he was seeing.

"Why is he encouraging people to watch pornography?" he said incredulously.