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Paul Merrell

Poll: Zionist Union leads Likud by 3 seats - Israel News, Ynetnews - 0 views

www.ynetnews.com/...0,7340,L-4635574,00.html

Israel election-2015 polls

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • A new poll commissioned by the Knesset television channel has found Zionist Union leading over Netanyahu's Likud by three seats.
  • Tuesday's Panel Politics poll, conducted a week ahead of the March 17 election, showed the center-left camp led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni earning 24 out of parliament's 120 seats. Likud trailed slightly with 21 projected seats.
  • The poll also had Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid as the third-largest party with 13 seats. The united Arab list would receive 13 seats, according to the poll.   Meanwhile, as in previous surveys, Naftali Bennett's Bayit Yehudi party polled at 12 seats. The poll also found a rise in support for the non-aligned centrist Kulanu party, polling at 9 seats. The party, headed by former Likud minister Moshe Kahlon, is running on a socio-economic platform, and is considered a swing vote in the election, as Kahlon could throw his support behind either the Likud or the Zionist Union.
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  • The ultra-Orthodox Sephardic party Shas polled at 6. Both the left-wing Meretz party and Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beytenu party stood at 5, followed by the Yahad (Together) party – a Shas offshoot led by former Shas leader Eli Yishai – which polled at 4, similar to previous polls.   Without a clear winner, Israel's largely ceremonial president may ask the two biggest parties to join forces after the vote.
  • The poll also found that 79 percent of Yesh Atid voters want their party to recommend Isaac Herzog for prime minister, while only 14 percent supported Netanyahu for the role. Forty seven percent of Kulanu voters also want their party to recommend Isaac Herzog for prime minister, while 33 percent preferred Netanyahu.   The poll surveyed more than 1,000 Israelis and had a margin of error of three percentage points. 
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Mar 15
     
    The end of Netanyahu's political career?
Paul Merrell

Former Israeli Opposition Leader Puts Bibi-Boehner Ploy Bluntly « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/puts-bibi-boehner-ploy-bluntly

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Israel-lobby Netanyahu-speech

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Yossi Sarid, the former head of Israel’s Meretz Party and leader of the opposition in the Knesset from 2001 to 2003, has just written a very blunt—far too blunt for “acceptable” political discourse in Washington, DC—op-ed published Sunday by Haaretz. Unfortunately, it’s behind a pay wall, so the most I can do is extract a few excerpts. The title is straightforward: “Beware: Republican Jews on the Warpath,” and Sarid, who also served as minister of education under Ehud Barak, doesn’t pull any punches about what Boehner’s fraudulent invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is really all about. Now it’s no longer a “crisis in the relationship” that they try to paper over; now it’s no longer just “tensions with the White House” that they’re making every effort to reduce in between meetings; now, it’s an open war with the United States. It’s Sheldon Adelson versus Barack Obama, and Israel is caught in the cross-fire. After Vice President Joe Biden, our greatest friend over there, announced an unspecified trip abroad that will prevent him from being in Congress at the fateful hour, Republican Jewish organizations launched a campaign of intimidation against those lawmakers who had already announced their intent to skip the joint session: Their political fate will be bitter.
  • …Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer, in the service of his master, is rallying his troops and launching a combined assault on Capitol Hill. Benjamin Netanyahu is determined to show the president once and for all who really rules in Washington, who is the landlord both here and there. … One Matthew Brooks – the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, who does the will of its financial backers – explained over the weekend, “We will commit whatever resources we need to make sure that people are aware of the facts, that given the choice to stand with Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu in opposition to a nuclear Iran, they chose partisan interests and to stand with President Obama.” Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, added unambiguously, “We will, of course, be publicly condemning any Democrats who don’t show up for the speech — unless they have a doctor’s note.” Doctor, this man is sick and urgently needs tranquilizers.
  • … Israel, which until now was a cornerstone of bipartisanship, has become loathsome to its traditional supporters. Benjamin Nitay Netanyahu, the Israeli-American, has made it into something that reeks, even among its longtime supporters. In these very moments, the protocols are being rewritten. Rich Jews are writing them in their own handwriting. They, in their wealth, are confirming with their own signatures what anti-Semites used to slander them with in days gone by: We, the elders of Zion, pull the strings of Congress, and the congressmen are nothing but marionettes who do our will. If they don’t understand our words, they’ll understand our threats. And if in the past, we ran the show from behind the scenes, now we’re doing it openly, from center stage. And if you forget our donations, the wellspring will run dry.
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  • You’ll remember that Obama, during an off-the-record meeting with Democratic senators three weeks ago, reportedly appealed to them to resist “donors and others” who opposed a deal with Iran and were pushing for new sanctions legislation that risked sabotaging the nuclear-focused talks with Iran and an eventual deal. Sen. Robert Menendez, who has been pushing for such legislation for more than a year, reportedly replied that he took “personal offense” at Obama’s remarks about donors, apparently interpreting Obama’s comments as suggesting that Menendez’s position was motivated by his desire and need for campaign cash. The New York Times helpfully noted in a profile of Menendez that the New Jersey senator had received $341,170 from hard-line pro-Israel groups over the past seven years, “more than any other Democrat in the Senate.” (In fact, he received more money than any other Senate candidate—Democratic or Republican—in the 2012 elections, while his Republican comrade-in-arms and co-sponsor for sanctions legislation, Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, has received more campaign cash from pro-Israel political actions committees (PACs) associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) than any other member of Congress over the past decade. And that doesn’t necessarily include all the much-harder-to-track money provided by donors like Adelson, who chairs Brooks’s RJC, through super PACS and other vehicles.)  Indeed, there’s no doubt that Obama’s reference to “donors” touched a very sensitive nerve with Menendez. Sarid, whose op-ed is most unlikely to appear in any mainstream U.S. publication, has now pounded it with a sledgehammer.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Feb 15
     
    There it is, finally out in the open. 
Paul Merrell

Netanyahu Has Never Actually Supported a Palestinian State, Despite What He Told Obama - 0 views

theintercept.com/...ate-despite-what-he-told-obama

war & peace Israel Palestine 2-state-solution Netanyahu

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • IN A MEETING with President Obama today, Benjamin Netanyahu went through the familiar motions of expressing rhetorical support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Stating, “I remain committed to a vision of peace of two states for two peoples,” Netanyahu said that he wanted “make it clear that we have not given up our hope,” for achieving a two-state solution to the conflict. Just a day before this statement, however, the Israeli government took steps to ensure such a vision could never become reality, moving to authorize the construction of an additional 2,200 housing units in the occupied territories in the face of Palestinian opposition. The reason behind this apparent discrepancy between word and deed is that Netanyahu does not, and has essentially never, supported the creation of an actual Palestinian state. Last year, during the Israeli election, Netanyahu briefly acknowledged this fact himself, explicitly stating to voters that there would not be a Palestinian state during his tenure as prime minister if he was reelected. Despite this, the convenient fiction that the Israeli prime minister supports a “two-state solution” continues to linger in the United States. Why?
  • In 2009, however, that began to change. In June of that year, newly elected President Barack Obama, who had made rebuilding ties with the Muslim world a part of his foreign policy platform, gave a landmark speech in Cairo in which he said the United States “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” going on to describe them as contrary to previous agreements and an impediment to peace in the region. Israeli media would report at the time that Obama’s words “resonated through Jerusalem’s corridors.” In seeming recognition of shifting American sentiments on this issue, 10 days later Netanyahu gave what was billed as a landmark speech at Bar-Ilan University near Tel-Aviv, dealing in part with the subject of Palestinian statehood. In his address, hailed by the White House as an “important step forward,” Netanyahu endorsed for the first time the creation of what he called “a demilitarized Palestinian state” in the occupied territories. But the same speech added stipulations that, in sum, turned this so-called state into a rebranded version of Netanyahu’s 2000 “Palestinian entity,” with only limited autonomy. In private, just three months before the speech, Netanyahu was even more blunt about the limits he required for a more independent Palestinian territory, stipulating he could only support one “without an army or control over air space and borders,” according to diplomatic cables later released by WikiLeaks.
  • In a speech two years later to Congress, Netanyahu would go into more detail about the ridiculous conception of Palestinian “statehood” he was imagining, one in which the West Bank would be essentially bifurcated by massive Israeli settlement blocs, the prospective Palestinian capital of East Jerusalem would be surrounded by settlements, and the Israeli Defense Forces would continue to have “a long-term military presence” inside the newly independent “state.” Needless to say, such a proposal was unlikely ever to be accepted by the Palestinians, nor did it bear much resemblance to the independent statehood they had actually been seeking. Netanyahu let the mask drop even further in July 2014, when he stated in a press conference that “there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan,” essentially outlining a position of permanent military occupation of Palestinian territories. In the run-up to the 2015 election, when he publicly disowned the idea of Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu would specifically repudiate his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech, stating that “there will be no withdrawals and no concessions,” and that the speech was “not relevant.” As recently as last week, Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “we need to control all of the territory for the foreseeable future,” before adding darkly that Israel “will forever live by the sword.”
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  • In light of all this, it’s difficult to take seriously Netanyahu’s most recent claim that he supports the creation of a Palestinian state. At best, he has in the past expressed support for a Palestinian “entity” with some features of self-governance (an idea that has well-known historical precedents), but certainly not one that affords genuine independence, freedom or statehood to its inhabitants. At his most brazen, he has denied the possibility of even that limited form of self-determination, stating bluntly that Israel will control the entire West Bank and keep its inhabitants under indefinite military subjugation. Netanyahu has nonetheless been allowed to maintain a convenient fiction that he supports the negotiated goal of Palestinian self-determination. In reality, he has never really supported it. Thanks in large part to Netanyahu’s leadership, a Palestinian state will likely never emerge. Due to his own obstinance, as well as American indulgence, a binational state or a formalized Apartheid regime have now become the most probable remaining outcomes to this disastrous, decades-long conflict.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Nov 15
     
    Negotiation of a "2-state solution" for Israel and Palestine has never been anything more than an excuse for continuing the status quo, with Israel dominating both territories in an apartheid state. The 2-state solution, moreover, denies all residents of the former British Mandate Territory of Palestine (including present day Israel) of their fundamental right to self-determination of their form of government established by the U.N. Charter. And the notion of a 2-state solution with territorial swaps ignores the right of Arab residents of the Mandate Territory to return to their homes at the close of hostilities, a right specifically forbidden from being negotiable by Israel and the Palestinian authority; it is an individual right that governments cannot lawfully barter away.   I'm glad to see The Intercept taking a no holds barred, speak-truth-to-power  approach to the Israel-Palestine question. 
Paul Merrell

Repeating 'neutrality' vow on Israel, Trump surely senses shift in US mood - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...surely-senses-shift-in-us-mood

war & peace Auction 2016 Trump Israel public-opinion polls

shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Donald Trump has doubled down on his statement at a town hall last week that he aims to be neutral in his comments on the Israel/Palestine conflict so as not to injure his ability as president to negotiate a deal between the parties. On Meet the Press yesterday he pointedly did not buy into the Republican “orthodoxy” on Israel, saying he’s very pro-Israel but peace there is the “ultimate deal” and he wasn’t going to prejudice matters.
  • Trump surely senses that he can gain by exhibiting independence of the Israel lobby. Here are some other straws in the wind: –A new poll shows that the number of Americans holding a favorable view of Israel has declined 16 percent in the last year, to 59 percent. And in the same interval those holding a favorable view of the Palestinians has surged 42 percent, to 25 percent, and even Iran has had an image-makeover, with 16 percent of Americans regarding the country favorably, up considerably. Grant Smith of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy says the data reveal “a stunning turn in U.S. public opinion.” –The MSM are reflecting the thaw. Last week Newsweek ran a defiant piece by Hanin Zoabi, the Palestinian Israeli legislator who has been suspended from the Knesset as a troublemaker, explaining Palestinian violence as a response to occupation and discrimination. Boldly titled, “Why Israel Is Fighting the Indigenous Palestinians,” it included these lines: “The occupier does not have the right to self-defense. We, the occupied, have the full and only right to fight it, by all means recognized within the framework of international law.”
  • I throw in these stray facts to say that American public opinion is changing (as is Jewish opinion) and there is political hay to be made of the changes. Donald Trump surely senses this, in his populist campaign. And so he is preparing to run against Marco Rubio by saying that Rubio is Sheldon Adelson’s “perfect little puppet”, and preparing to set up a general election campaign against Hillary Clinton in which he can call out her beholdenness to the billionaire Haim Saban. In his reissued autobiography of last fall, Bernie Sanders refers with disdain to Sheldon Adelson and the “Adelson primary” on the very first page. But that’s the last we hear of it: Adelson, who is in bed with Hillary Clinton’s good friend Haim Saban. Sanders is ignoring a populist political opportunity that Donald Trump has seized upon. Go figure
Paul Merrell

Israel Retaliates over EU's Directive on Labeling Goods from Occupied Arab Territories - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...from-occupied-arab-territories

war & peace Israel colonies EU labeling

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the recently adopted EU directive on labeling goods from occupied Arab territories by suspending the Israeli – European Union dialog over the Israeli – Palestinian peace process. 
  • In November the EU adopted a directive that prescribes the labeling of Israeli products and goods from Israeli occupied Arab territories, which are, occupied territories in the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan Heights, and the Israeli occupied Lebanese Sheba Farm area. The EU stressed that the adoption of the directive was not a hostile act against Israel. Instead, noted the EU, the directive aimed at providing consumers correct information about the origin of goods.
  • Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Cabinet plans reportedly to implement additional measures against six specific countries, which are Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta and Sweden. The measures are likely to include the suspension of cooperation with regard to rehabilitation projects in the Palestinian Gaza Strip and projects aimed at strengthening the Palestinian Authority (PA).
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  • On Wednesday, December 2, the Speaker of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), Yuli Edelstein commented on the EU directive during a special session of the German Bundestags (Parliamentary) Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Defense Committee. Edelstein denounced the EU directive as “unfortunate” and complained that the EU provides fertile ground for the international Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Edelstein especially denounced measures such as economic and academic boycotts as “improper”. Israel has occupied large swaps of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Lebanese Sheba Farm Area since the 1967 “six days war”. Israel continues the occupation in defiance of multiple UN resolutions as well as international and humanitarian law. Israel has officially stated that it plans to permanently annex the Syrian Golan Heights. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, for example, stated that Israel and the Golan are part and parcel, and that the international community should accept the annexation as a fact. It is noteworthy that there has been a discovery of major Syrian oil resources in the Golan Heights. Entrepreneurs with vested interests include the US-based Genie Energy. Members of the “think tank” are, among others, Dick Cheney, James Woolsey, Bill Richardson, Jacob Lord Rothschild, Rupert Murdoch, Larry Summers and Michael Steinhardt who all are members of the Strategic Advisory Board of a Newark, New Jersey-based oil and gas group with the name, Genie Energy.
  • Late November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel would not concede one meter of the occupied Palestinian West Bank’s Area C. Israel is providing support for the Syrian Al-Qaeda franchise Jabhat al-Nusrah and other jihadist mercenary forces via the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. Al-Nusrah insurgents are also known for using the Israeli occupied Lebanese Sheba Farms area to infiltrate into Lebanon, and especially Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Paul Merrell

Israel Assassinates Senior Hezbollah Leader In Syria - nsnbc international | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...nior-hezbollah-leader-in-syria

war & peace Israel Syria Hezbollah invasion

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • The Israeli Air Force assassinated, on Saturday at night, the former political prisoner and senior Hezbollah leader, Samir al-Kuntar, in an air strike in the Jermana area of the Syrian capital Damascus.
  • The Hezbollah party in Lebanon said the Israeli Air Force violated Syrian air space at around 10:30 at night, and fired five missiles into a residential building, killing six people, including al-Kuntar, and wounding at least twelve others. The Civil Defense Forces in Jermana said two Israeli war jets violated Syrian airspace and struck the building with four missiles. Initial reports were first unconfirmed, but his brother later announced on his Twitter account the confirmed dead of al-Kuntar. Samir al-Kuntar spent 29 years in Israeli prisons, and was released on July 16 2008, under a prisoner-swap agreement reached through negotiation between Hezbollah and the Israeli government through a third party. As part of the agreement, Israel released al-Kuntar and four other Hezbollah members, who were taken prisoner during the July 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, in which Israeli troops invaded and bombed Southern Lebanon, and Hezbollah fired rockets across the border into Israel. Hezbollah is the leading party in southern Lebanon, and has a fighting force that works to deflect further Israeli invasions into Lebanon.
  • The 2008 agreement also included the transfer of the remains of 199 fighters, including Palestinian and Lebanese fighters, in exchange for Hezbollah releasing the remains of Israeli soldiers killed during the war. Retired Israeli major general and current Member of Knesset (Parliament) with the Zionist Union party, Major. Gen. Eyal Ben-Reuven, hailed the reports of the assassination, and said that the Air Force and all others involved in the incident “should be commended for the successful operation.” Ben-Reuven, the former head of the Northern Command on the Israeli army, said the Israeli government is preparing for retaliatory attacks by Hezbollah. Israel held al-Kuntar responsible for the April 22nd 1979 attack that led to the death of four Israelis: a police officer, an Israeli civilian and his 4-year-old daughter, while the man’s other daughter, 2, was accidentally suffocated by her mother, while trying to keep her quiet. The attackers allegedly kidnapped the family in Nahariya and took them to a beach, then tried to load their hostages on a rubber boat.
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  • Israeli police decided to attack with full force instead of attempting to negotiate, and the father of the family and a police officer were killed. The 4-year old was killed when her head hit a rock during the scuffle. Two fighters, identified as Abdul-Majid Aslan and Moayyad Mhanna, were killed, while al-Kuntar and Ahmad al-Abrass were captured. Al-Abrass was later released, along with 1150 detainees, in a prisoner swap agreement, led by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC). After capturing al-Kuntar, an Israeli court sentenced him to five life-terms, Upon his release in the prisoner swap deal, he returned to Lebanon and joined Hezbollah, then went on to live in Syria.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Dec 15
     
    More Israeli impunity to international law.
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