Israel Update | Pundits & Bibi's Brother-in-Law Weigh In

Love | Peace Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has distanced himself from his brother=in=law Hagai Ben-Artzi’s accusations that US President Obama is an antisemite who hates Israel.

Hagai Ben-Artzi, the brother of the Israeli premier’s wife, said on Israeli Army Radio that the US president dislikes Netanyahu and the Israeli people because he had spent years in the church of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who he said is “antisemitic, anti-Israeli, and anti-Jewish.” Obama once declared the fiery liberal Chicago preacher was his spiritual mentor but disavowed him during the campaign. via Guardian UK

Ben-Artzi reiterated that “Jerusalem is the Israeli people’s capital and the capital of the state of Israel, and it is whole and united.”

Clearly, I’m not a member of the global diplomatic core, but for Netanyahu comments like his brother-in-law’s fall into the ‘with friends like this, who needs enemies’ column. Yet, it’s good to hear this point of view, which almost underscores how irrational the entire Middle East situation has become — on all sides.

Jordanian King Abdullah II said in a statement on Wednesday:

“Jerusalem is a red line and the world should not be silent about Israel’s attempts to get rid of Jerusalem’s Arabs residents, Muslims or Christians,” the Dubai daily Khaleej Times quoted the king as saying to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Amman.via Haaretz

Haaretz also writes that Israel has been delaying the demolitions of homes in East Jerusalem for months, in an effort to extend a good will gesture to the Obama Administration.

As for the pundits weighing in, I’m totally confused about the key point of Ruth R. Wise’s How About an Arab “Settlement” Freeze? but want to include her point of view. She seems to be comparing building going on in the rest of the Middle East, saying if Israel stops building in all of Jerusalem, all building should stop in the Middle East.

Wise also makes the point that Jews abandoned land all throughout the Middle East to move to Israel, therefore let them build in Jerusalem. I’m an outsider to this topic — which may be good — but I don’t see the logic of her argument.

From Maureen Dowd we have Bibi’s Tense Time-Out and Tom Friedman’s Let’s Fight Over a Big Plan.

Update on Thu, March 18, 2010 by Anne

Writing yesterday for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg asked Israel’s Foreign Relations: Incompetence, Stupidity, or Chaos? My real focus now is the Pope, who has his own religion-related problems. Reading serious reports, including from the BBC, that this pope is heading the worst Catholic Church legitimacy crisis in four decades, I think again of Netanyahu who can’t even control his own brother-in-law.

If his office and the prime minister personally doesn’t have the respect of his own brother-in-law, how does he have any legitimacy in his country? Worse yet, if he permitted or encouraged his brother-in-law to attack President Obama (wink, wink) they he’s an untrustworthy scoundrel and can’t be taken seriously. Even in Israel, people agree that the prime minister speaks two languages and says very different words, depending on whether he’s speaking Hebrew or English.

I’m wondering if it’s totally sacriligious to write ‘Puppet Pope’ about His Eminence, or whatever the title in Rome. Reading Bib’s brother-in-laws comments again — and understanding the full weight of his Fundamentalist words — it seems like we should also consider ‘Puppet Prime Minister’ for Benjamin Netanyahu.

One statement I’m confident of making where fundamentalists are involved, whether they’re Christians, Jews or Muslims: chaos will reign, along with insults based on events that are thousands of years old. For this reason, I wish to put generally more level-headed women in charge of the world, before it’s too late. Anne