They’re not even pretending anymore:
Boehner invited Netanyahu without consulting the White House, leading numerous congressional Democrats to boycott the speech.
“Haven’t you taken one of the few bipartisan issues in this country — support for Israel — and turned it into a political football?” Wallace asked.
“I have not. The fact is that we had every right to do what we did,” Boehner responded. “I wanted the prime minister to come here. There’s a serious threat facing the world. And radical Islamic terrorists are not going to go away.”
“And then when it comes to the threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon, these are important messages that the Congress needs to here and the American people need to hear,” the speaker continued. “And I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu is the perfect person to deliver the message of how serious this threat is.”
Wallace then pointed out that Boehner asked Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., not to tell the White House about the joint meeting with Netanyahu.
“Why would you do that?” Wallace asked.
“Because I wanted to make sure that there was no interference. There’s no secret here in Washington about the animosity that this White House has for Prime Minister Netanyahu. I frankly didn’t want that getting in the way, quashing what I thought was a real opportunity,” Boehner responded.
This is nothing more than partisan politics, and if Netanyahu wasn’t a self-serving hack, he would take this admission by Boehner as an excuse not to attend.
Splitting Image
Yeah, and if my aunt had a dick, etc.
Netanyahu is the worst leader Israel has ever had, and the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. is a bigger danger to both Israel and the world’s Jews than Iran will ever be.
SiubhanDuinne
BooMan had a nice righteous rant about this earlier today, and one of his commenters said (paraphrasing) that Boehner almost always folds, and folds early, but this time he isn’t despite Dem and even a fair amount of media pushback. The commenter wondered who, exactly, has Boehner’s back on this. I agree. There are promises here that go well beyond a Congressional speaking gig.
debbie
Isn’t that beyond his Constitutional authority?
Corner Stone
He gets to decide what state to state political etiquette is, now?
catclub
@SiubhanDuinne:
Sheldon Adelson?
As to attacking Iran, the favorite Hymn of both Israel and the Saudis is “Onward Christian Soldiers”.
debbie
@Corner Stone:
It seems to me the animosity is all Netanyahu’s.
Frankensteinbeck
Not psychic, but I’m pretty sure insulting Obama by going around him was Bibi’s idea. He’s an ultra-right wing Israeli, which means that he thinks the middle name Hussein and Obama occasionally saying Arabs deserve to be treated with dignity are proof that Obama is a Muslim plotting the destruction of Israel.
Big ole hound
FOLLOW THE MONEY. Any Congressman accepting money from a foreign government can be found guilty of treason. I hope they hang the GOP bastards and throw the Israeli embassy out of the country and stop all so called “aid”. Arrogant prick.
Hildebrand
Really makes me wonder just exactly what Netanyahu plans on saying – it can’t be just standard boiler-plate after this kind of build-up.
mtiffany
I’m sorry, but did Speaker Boehner just accuse President Obama of putting petty personal animosity for the leader of a country ahead of the interests of that country? Projection, thy name is Congressional Republicans.
Mustang Bobby
“Interference” is the new “uppity.”
Boehner is such a prick.
JPL
We have bombs and Boehner wants to use them. It doesn’t matter how many countries we leave prime for extremist takeovers. It’s all about the bombs.
Luthe
Further proof Bibi is a douchenozzle: he’s got campaign ads out in Israel depicting “ISIS” terrorists in a Jeep. They ask someone for directions to Jerusalem. The answer? “To the left.” Because not voting for right-wing crazies is just like letting ISIS win.
Mike J
@Hildebrand: It’s a campaign speech since his election is in a month. P5+1 bad, killing arabs good.
Corner Stone
Speaking of boycotting. Man I hate these damn Buick commercials. “Thass what I tooold him!”
Corner Stone
Anybody who physically reprimands another person’s child? Lucky if they get to be charged by the police and not toe tagged.
F you NBC for promoting this stupid show.
mtiffany
@Corner Stone: At least those are trying to be humorous — better than the faux gravitas of the McConaughey caddy commericals…
Baud
@mtiffany:
This. MM really undermined his film and TV work with those ads. I hope they paid him well.
Hildebrand
@Mike J: Seems like a heck of a lot of stupid just to let Bibi mouth off for the home crowd. Not that the MSM will suddenly grow an actual conscience, but it would seem even they would have to realize that isn’t cricket and question the wisdom of the Republicans shilling for a foreign politician.
Corner Stone
@mtiffany:
We’re going to have to agree to disagree here because those Lincoln commercials are the absolute fucking height of self-parody. They are a kind of art all by themselves.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Get back to me about a boycott when DWS is a) on board and b) apologizes for eqivocating in the first place.
OzarkHillbilly
We all need to write Boehner’s minions a short little note saying something along the lines of:
“I have never said this to a sitting member of Congress before: Fwck Israel.”***
Be sure to copy in the Israeli ambassador, and all the heads of the left leaning Israeli parties.
***please rephrase
SiubhanDuinne
@catclub:
Yes, Sheldon Adelson was the first name that came to my mind. I didn’t mention it because it seemed almost too obvious, but … yeah.
jl
An effective way to deal with dangers and crises is to run around like a chicken with your head cut off, pee your pants at every unexpected adverse event, play whack-a-mole constantly without figuring out who who is who, what they might do, and what priorities should be. Grown-up serious GOIP daddies like McCain and Graham know this.
Hezbollah!! Assad!! ISIS/ISIL/IS!! Iran!! Houthis!! OMG we’re gonna die! OMGOMG OMGOMGOMG!! We’re gonna die die die die. Do something! Boots, bombs, bullets, and boots boots boots right now!
Edit: I learned to calmly think through national security issues like that from reading Scalia’s opinions on national security/civil liberties cases.
SiubhanDuinne
@Hildebrand:
That’s why it’s significant that the media person giving Boner a bit of pushback is Chris Wallace of Fox News “News” Channel,
Wag
If I were in congress I would attend. I would turn my chair around and keep my back turned on Nyetunyahoo, and would stand and leave without looking at the podium at the end of the speech.
Baud
@Wag:
They could sit there with Obama pins on.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Yes. I’m afraid DWS, Chuck Schumer, and maybe a few other members are going to neutralize the message by attending. Didn’t they put out a press release a few days ago saying they didn’t like having to “choose” between Israel and the United States? Excuse me, “CHOOSE”??? We need to remind them that they are members of the Congress of the United States of America, knot the Knesset. What’s to choose?
Corner Stone
@Wag:
You can do that if you’re elected from CA or a mountain west state.
JMG
Obama should recall the Ambassador to Israel “for consultations” the morning of the speech. It’s a perfectly legit move. Countries do it all the time when they’re pissed at some other country.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Wag: The House doesn’t have chairs, so it might present a problem.
SiubhanDuinne
@Wag:
Ah, the NYPD tactic.
SiubhanDuinne
@JMG:
Oh, absolutely he should do that. Really hope he does.
Baud
The Dems could also all show up without any pants on.
Corner Stone
@JMG: Recalling an ambassador (absent a death) is a sign of being highest peeved.
Obama will not do that.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SiubhanDuinne: Adelson visited lots of Republicans in DC in mid-January. Boehner’s invitation went out by January 21. Coinkydink? Dunno…
Cheers,
Scott.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Good grief. Is slang for “coincidence” a FYWP word now??
[edit] Oh, the URL had a bad word in it. :-/
A little help from the moderators, please? Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Hildebrand
President Obama should invite Khamenei for tea the day of the speech.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
So I thought I would create some additional propaganda for the most extreme elements in Middle East politics from Algeria to Pakistan.
I’m sure there have been dumber Speakers in our history, but none in my lifetime. Not even Delay’s Meatpuppet.
Patrick
@SiubhanDuinne:
They are members of the U.S. Congress. They took a fricking oath to support and defend our constitution. If they have forgotten this, they should resign immediately.
MikeBoyScout
One could jump up & down and label the Speaker of the House’s “no interference” motivation in defiance of the Constitution and in defiance of his own his oath of office, but that would be attributing a level of thinking beyond Boehner’s capabilities.
SiubhanDuinne
@Corner Stone:
He may not formally recall the Ambassador, but he will do something public and diplomatic to register his extreme piss-offedness.
SiubhanDuinne
@Patrick:
Well, exactly. I can’t imagine why any of them would hesitate for a split-second about where their loyalties lie.
If they cave and attend the speech and smoochie up to Bibi, they are no better than Boner.
ETA: In which case, fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all with a rusty Phillips-head screwdriver drenched in badger musk.
JMG
Oh, let’s face it. If Israel bombed Denver the Congress would pass a resolution in support by an overwhelming margin.Republicans out of crazy, Democrats out of what seems to be incurable cowardice.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was surprised and disappointed to see Barbara Boxer say she’s going to attend in spite of her objections, and even more surprised to see that Feinstein had (as of last week) not yet announced. If she actually boycotts, I’ll have to find an edible hat.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SiubhanDuinne: In my FYWP-eated comment, I said:
Adelson visited lots of Republicans in DC in mid-January. Boehner’s invitation went out by January 21. Coinkydink? Dunno…
Cheers,
Scott.
JPL
The new love about the Jews is about their land, not them. If they are not born again, they will burn in hell. David, be damn. Most Jewish people understand this.
Baud
Sarah Palin was an announced guest on SNL 40.
Suzanne
UGH. I can’t believe Boehner. Dude, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO GET THE JEWISH VOTE ANYWAY.
Mike in NC
@SiubhanDuinne: Still, what are the odds that FOX will run a live feed of Bibi’s speech? Or CNN?
MomSense
@Baud:
I would like you to run for Congress!
Mandalay
@Hildebrand:
It’s less to do with that, and much more to do with their desire to split Democrats, and make them look wishy washy on national security.
I begrudgingly acknowledge that it has been a highly effective tactic (so far at least). It has provoked the chair of the DNC (Debbie Wasserman Schultz) to side with Republicans rather than Obama. But loathsome as DWS may be, the Democrats who “still haven’t decided” whether to attend are the absolute lowest of the low. Pick a position and defend it rather than waiting to see which way the wind is blowing in a few days.
If every Democrat had simply refused to attend (“We stand with President Obama, not Netanyahu!”) then this would have blown up in Boehner’s face. But with DWS, Schumer, Reid, Pelosi et al attending, Democrats are sending out a mixed and muddied message.
Baud
@MomSense:
I could really use the immunity from arrest that Congresscritters enjoy.
raven
Sir Paul and Paul Simon up.
Roger Moore
@SiubhanDuinne:
Their loyalties are to reelection. They just don’t want to put it so baldly.
jl
Another thing is that I do not know how Boehner’s comment squares with the notion that Obama is merely the seventh king, rather than the AntiChrist himself.
JPL
@Mike in NC: All of them , Charlie.
Baud
Steve Martin looks good for his age.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike in NC:
Oh, hell, I expect MSNBC and NPR will carry it too. I think the point is, if there are a lot of empty chairs — an absence of bums in seats — the visuals (excuse me, the “optics”) might not be all the GOP wish for. Actually, come to think of it, I wish all the Democrats would confirm that they ARE attending, and then — as a body — not show up.
LosGatosCA
Lucky for us America first, true patriots, it’s getting easier and easier to make the case that nations don’t have allies, they have interests. Israelis can make their own decisions and live with the consequences, just like us. As long as those decisions align with US interests, they’re allies.
When they mistakenly decided to redefine the superpower-client state relationship they set themselves up for the consequences. They may recover from this mistake, but if it’s part of an emerging pattern, they may actually be setting themselves up for a future that’s much different then they are assuming they are entitled to.
Mandalay
@Suzanne:
Maybe, maybe not, but it will certainly help them a lot with Jewish political donations.
jl
@Roger Moore: I agree. They GOPer pols have no particular loyalty to Israel or the welfare of Israel or its people. It is a prop for two big constituencies: rabid Zionist neocons, and nutty Endtimes Xtianists (who have a rather peculiar loyalty to Israel, in wanting the place to explode into smoking ruins, start the end of the world, and then they can watch the Jews get one more chance to convert to Christianity or burn in Hell forever. But whoever disagrees with that notion of ‘Israel’s welfare’ is going to Hell anyway, and their opinions don’t count).
Whatever gets them through to next election is where their loyalties lie. ‘Cynical as we have to be, to hang on to power!’ would be a good motto.
Roger Moore
@jl:
I think “Party First!” is closer to correct.
Tree With Water
I’ve always disliked the question, “can you imagine how republicans would react if the democratic party pulled this stunt” But in this case, can you? Those people impeached over a blow job.
The democrats, meanwhile, are simply clucking like a barnyard full of chickens, and about what? Whether or not to attend a War Lover’s speech. That’s it, that’s their best shot. Chickenshit congressional democrats should have been pounding on the doors of the networks screaming bloody murder about the invitation since the day it was made public. Screw them, and screw the people of Israel for not putting a leash on their bum.
MomSense
@Baud:
Health care and pensions are pretty nice, too.
Redshift
My translation of Boehner: “No, honey, I had to arrange that date behind your back because I know you don’t get along with her!”
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes. I read the Politiho article. Absolutely disgusting.
pluege
both netanyahu and boehner are self-serving crap pols that have no interest in serving their countries’ interests. Both only serve their own personal interests.
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
If support for Israel becomes a partisan issue, and synonymous with the GOP, this will end very badly for Israel.
pseudonymous in nc
And a little freelance foreign policy is what exactly, you fucker?
FFS, is it really so fucking hard to grasp the notion that relationships between the US and other countries might be the primary domain of the executive branch. The Logan Act is still on the statue books.
MikeBoyScout
I’m old enough to remember when a US president and Israel got along well enough to arm Iran. What happened?
pseudonymous in nc
@JMG:
Just summon him to State an hour before the speech is due and leave him sitting in reception.
MikeBoyScout
Crazy thought.
Maybe Netanyahu is going to tell Congress that Israel is waiting for Obama haters with open arms. No?
Mike J
@pseudonymous in nc: No, that’s what he would do to the ambassador FROM Israel.
Corner Stone
Who the fuck was that ghoulish spectre?
And why does Sir Paul continue to think he can sing? He can not.
jl
@LWA (Liberal With Attitude):
” this will end very badly for Israel. ”
It will end badly for general support for Israel in US, if GOP official position is that they make their own foreign policy regardless of whether in WH, and anyone who disagrees with Likud (or is it just Netanyahu personally now?) is anti-Israel.
Seems like it might end badly for Netanyahu in the upcoming elections (this was supposed to be a clever stunt to win it). But looks like Netanyaho is all-in, and he will give it even if obvious mess. More high risk/ high reward deal that he cannot back out of, the crazier and riskier he will play it, no matter what the consequences for his country or US diplomacy in the region.
Boehner out of his league, looks like. But what is new about that? The stakes are higher this time though.
Edit: May turn out very badly for GOP too, if more of this nonsense before 2016 election, and the serious daddy grown-up foreign policy hard-balled GOPers are shown to be the incompetent clowns and chumps and marks that they are, whenever they are forced to deal with serious real reality.
glory b
@SiubhanDuinne:Ii read somewhere (can’t remember right now where) that republicans have lined up aides and office staffers to sit in any empty seats so it will look like everyone decided to come.
Fred Dickinson
So long as USA tax dollars are going to find the illegal Zionist colonial occupier, I could give two flying fucks whether or not Democrats attend the speech.
Israel is an occupying, Jewish supremacist colonial ethnostate and so long as the USA supports it the USA funds genocide.
SiubhanDuinne
@MikeBoyScout:
“Let’s Make Aliyah with the Tea Party!”
jl
@glory b: GOP braintrust is trying to play out of its league. If incompetence like we see here does not have any direct bad consequences, I hope it keeps up until election day.
jl
@Fred Dickinson: I think Netanuahu is tried to make that so, for his own selfish political ends. As I said, will be a mess for all around if GOP tries to make its own foreign policy dictates, especially if it looks like more tied up with an individual, and an unsavory one like Netanyahu and focused too much on his, and their own electioneering. And I think it is getting to that point.
It will be hard to hide brute facts like that to voters, no matter how the corporate media and GOP media spin and BS artists try to obfuscate and posture.
MikeBoyScout
@SiubhanDuinne: Win-Win-Win, no? Though I suspect our freedom loving Obama haters would have a tough time with all that “organic law” around commerce on the Sabbath.
SiubhanDuinne
Completely O/T, but Louis Jourdan has died, age 93. Most people remember him (with some justification) for his role opposite Leslie Caron in Gigi, but I first fell madly in love with him in The Swan, with Grace Kelly in her last film.
RIP, Mr. Jourdan, you gorgeous man. The night they invented champagne, it’s plain as it can be, they thought of you and me.
Fred Dickinson
@efgoldman:
Racist settler ethnostate demands massive immigration for the dominant group. Well, knock me over with a feather!
AliceBlue
@SiubhanDuinne:
Louis Jourdan? Mais oui!
Chris
@SiubhanDuinne:
Boehner isn’t folding because as mentioned in the original post, Israel is America’s single most bipartisan issue, which is another way of saying that it’s the one issue on which the right controls the debate even more thoroughly than it does on gun control. Boehner’s betting that if there’s one issue on which he can take a big dump on the White House front lawn and not pay a price, it’s Israel, because there’s nothing Obama can do that won’t end up with him labeled an antisemite or soft on terrorism or abandoning an ally.
I’m not saying Boehner is necessarily right on this – I don’t know. But he’s certainly got lots of grounds to think that.
Zinsky
A recently declassified report details how the U.S. learned that Israel was building nuclear weapons in the 1980s and helped, or at best, kept it a secret for 25 years. There are some who assert that Israel stole the nuclear technology from the U.S. (see Mordechai Vanunu). The real nuclear threat in the Middle East is Israel, not Iran. The irony and hypocrisy of the U.S. permitting Israel to have 200 or more nuclear weapons, while denying Iran even one, is not lost on any of the Arabic countries of the Middle East and North Africa.
Chris
@Suzanne:
He doesn’t need the Jewish vote. It would certainly be a nice feather in his cap, but really, all he needs to do is shore up his vote among neocons, fundiegelicals, and your more garden variety nationalist assholes who like to watch hajjis get blown up.
Mandalay
@efgoldman:
Anti-Semitism in much of Europe is on the rise, including in national politics, and I also suspect that saying “Israel is your home” to European Jews does not carry the same stigma that it would here for historical reasons.
And I’m sure Bibi is well aware of what Jim Morrison pointed out nearly 50 years ago: “They got the guns, but we got the numbers”. He needs all the Jews he can get.
Chris
@efgoldman:
Glad the rabbi said what he said. The popular assumption that all Jews everywhere in the world are racially bound to Israel is one of the many things that pisses me off when this issue comes up – whether the people making that assumption are antisemites accusing all Jews of being agents of the Israeli government, or Jewish chauvinists demanding that they should be.
My wingnut, Christozionist uncle posts some pretty fucked up shit on the Internets now and again, but I’ve never actually wanted to break his fucking nose before, until his reaction to the Charlie Hebdo attacks was to proclaim his solidarity by turning his Facebook avatar into… an Israeli flag. Instead of a French one.
MikeBoyScout
@efgoldman: I’m not Jewish, but the idea of jumping into a lifeboat captained by a man openly intent upon spitting in the eye of the leader of the only country to routinely bail it out seems like a bad idea.
Mandalay
@efgoldman:
Your claim seemed so outrageous that I had to check it, and apparently you are absolutely correct. I just learned something – thanks for that.
Cain
@Wag:
I might also let a little flatulence escape as well.
Cain
@Hildebrand:
Just invite him to talk to the Congress afterwards. Maybe invite him to photobomb some of the photos with Netanyahoo.
debbie
@efgoldman:
Right. We saw how French Jews went running to Israel, didn’t we? That man is single-handedly turning Israel into a pariah.
SiubhanDuinne
@glory b:
They really are bastards, aren’t they?
Chris
@LWA (Liberal With Attitude):
I’ve been saying that since this whole mess started – not that I really expect much of a reaction this time, but it’s stupid to alienate people deliberately when you have so few friends to begin with.
But, really, the Israeli government’s idiocy was relying on a foreign policy of “it doesn’t matter how many people are mad at us, because America has our back!” in the first place. American hegemony won’t last forever. It may not end for several more centuries for all I know, but eventually it will, and when it does, if Israel still hasn’t changed, it’s going to suddenly find itself in the same position as those white African enclaves did after the fall of colonialism – the people they have to live with won’t like them, and the people who do like them won’t have the resources to help anymore even if they wanted to.
Restricting your international support base from “just America” to “just right wing America” merely compounds an already suicidal foreign policy.
SiubhanDuinne
@AliceBlue:
Sacre bleu! et aussi Zut alors!, malheureusement, c’est vrai.
MikeBoyScout
@Chris:
This -> Restricting your international support base from “just America” to “just right wing America” merely compounds an already suicidal foreign policy.
LWA (Liberal With Attitude)
I can’t help but wonder how many Americans base their support for Israel, like I do, on a vague sense of moral obligation partly stemming from the Holocaust to domestic Anti-Semitism, to the notion of a people longing for an ancestral homeland.
Which is to say, a very soft and weak support, which would not work out well if it were put to the acid test of -“would I send my son to die for it?”
For instance, if Israel were credibly threatened with Holocaust level extermination? Probably.
If they were being forced to retreat to the 1967 borders? Not a chance.
And I can’t be the only American who rolls his eyes in horror at the bizarre End Times murder-suicide pact freakshow that is the Evangelical support for Israel.
jonas
American evangelical support for Israel and its political ramifications has always bemused me. It’s as if there were some group in China or Russia or Brazil that was rabidly pro-American — supported the US no matter what we did, even if it was nuking wales or using infants to boost the protein content of exercise shakes or whatever. But it was only because they belonged to a cult that fervently believed that America had to exist in order to draw to earth a certain race of space alien whose ships would vaporize Washington, D.C. and all other American cities, feast on the flesh of the survivors, and then make our country available for colonization by this particular bunch of Russian space believers who would build a new utopia on our bones.
Why the bloody hell would our president want to go and give a big formal speech to these loonbats?
pseudonymous in nc
FTFY, Bibi.
Chris
@LWA (Liberal With Attitude):
I think it’s at least a contributing factor, yes. Particularly in explaining liberal squeamishness in speaking out too loudly. The popular American view of Israel still seems to treat it as a nation of huddled refugees fleeing from the Nazi death camps.
It’s a perfect storm of a ton of things. Holocaust guilt plays a role. Christian fundamentalism plays a role. The fact that Jews in America, like the Irish and Italians, “became white” while Arabs, like blacks and Latinos, didn’t, plays a role – watching Israel bomb Gaza is sort of the international version of watching an Irish cop beat the shit out of a black guy.
And geopolitics plays a role, in the sense that Israel and its forerunners have been on the “right” side of the last three major international conflicts, and its Arab enemies on the “wrong” one. Arab nationalists sided with the Axis in World War Two and with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War, and islamists are now the main enemy of both Israel and America. Some of that is justifiable (easy to see why people oppressed by the French and British empires and targeted by Zionist bomb throwers would support anyone who was their enemy) and some of it isn’t (not exactly hard, already then, to find stuff on the Arab side that goes well over the line into Nazi-style antisemitism), but the bottom line is that we in the West have had plenty of time to get used to the idea of Israel as the good guys and the Arabs as the bad guys.
There’s probably even more stuff that I’m not thinking of right now. Our Israel/Palestine derangement syndrome definitely has more than one cause.
Mandalay
It’s not just the Obama Administration that gets treated like a doormat by the Israeli government….
If Israel wants to foment anti-Semitism in Europe, and accelerate the formal recognition of Palestine, then it should just maintain its current attitude towards the rest of the world.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Just off hand, why should Israeli behavior foment anti-Semitism?
Gravenstone
@efgoldman: As you should know, the species Troglodytarum castitatae* only has one setting, Maximum Outrage!!1!!
* blame Google if the translation of purity troll is wonky
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: @Mandalay: I do wonder about your reasoning. Dreyfus wonders as well.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: Just as I expected.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: Like it or not, Israel is short hand for all Jewish action in the world. Add in a long European history of anti-Semitism and the end result leads to Israel = all Jews. It’s unfair, but that’s how things tend to get viewed on the old continent.
DTOzone
@Suzanne:
Bob Turner disagrees.
DTOzone
@LWA (Liberal With Attitude): I grew up in a working class white area where everyone votes on sticking it to “them.” My neighborhood was right out of Archie Bunker’s mind.
The “Jews are shysters” comments were everywhere. I think if we hadn’t been convinced the Muslims are worse, antisemitism would be rampant here.
At least the Europeans are honest about it.
glocksman
There is an account (probably not true) of a meeting involving Truman and the Saudi King that said ‘give them Bavaria’, when asked about the question of a Jewish homeland while discussing the Holocaust.
I don’t have a problem with that reasoning.
Yatsuno
@glocksman: There was discussion at one point at putting what is now Israel in what is now Uganda. The history of the Zionist movement is a very interesting one with a lot of mistakes made by many parties along the way.
sm*t cl*de
The city of Copenhagen was collectively recognised as Righteous among Nations on account of that. The proclamation to that effect used to be on show in the Resistance Museum (I couldn’t find it last time I visited, perhaps it is on loan somewhere else).
So Netanyahu is telling Danish Jews that No, they’re not really Danish, their true loyalties lie somewhere else. I do not see this going down well. Why would they want to move from Denmark to a theocracy?
Nope, didn’t happen. That part was dreamed up by Leon Uris.
JGabriel
John Boehner:
Boehner wanted to make sure there was no interference in foreign relations from the President of the United States?
That cowardly little orange fucker ought to be impeached.
NorthLeft12
@efgoldman: Interesting that Bibi can claim that they will be safer in Israel than in the other countries [he may have a point about the Ukraine], yet he can turn around and claim that Hamas, Iran, and Palestinians inside Israel are an ongoing and credible existential threat to the entire Jewish population of Israel.
Okay……whatever.
boatboy_srq
@Suzanne: @Mandalay: It isn’t the Jewish Vote Boehner is after. It’s the FundiEvangelist Xtian vote: the Fundies are all for a reconstituted, repopulated (with Jews) Israel as prerequisite for the End Times. Anything that impedes that impedes the Second Coming, which they expect
in 1939in 1941in 1949in 1960in 1973in 1999in 2001in 2003in 2009next weekany time now.@Corner Stone: @debbie: Uppity pResident isn’t doing what His Betters want, so Betters throw a tantrum. Boehner doesn’t need to be recalled (though that would be nice): he needs the sound spanking he obviously didn’t get when he was five.
catclub
@Baud: Chevy Chase looks a lot like Dick Cheney.
jamie
What actually happened was the Nazis told the Danish government they would start distributing yellow stars, and the Nazis were told in no uncertain terms that the King would be the first person to wear one. Result: Nazis never distributed yellow stars.
Arendt goes over many of the historical details of the Danish resistance, in Eichmann in Jerusalem. The depressing fact of the matter is that the Nazis never did anything in occupied countries without local support, and when they met unified opposition to their demands, the Nazis would fold like blankets.