Olmert ordered US Abstention

OldPics313-large ""They got him off the podium, brought him to another room and I spoke to him. I told him, 'You can't vote in favour of this resolution.' He said, 'Listen, I don't know about it, I didn't see it, I'm not familiar with the phrasing.'"

Olmert said he then told Bush: "'I'm familiar with it. You can't vote in favour.'

"He gave an order to the secretary of state and she did not vote in favour of it — a resolution she cooked up, phrased, organised and manoeuvred for. She was left pretty shamed and abstained on a resolution she arranged," Olmert said.

Fourteen of the Security Council's 15 members supported the resolution, which has failed to halt Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip and Hamas's cross-border rocket fire."  Reuters

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Olmert is fighting for his life and trying to look like a tough guy, but the sheer arrogance and "wag the dog" quality of this is noteworthy.

Is Olmert's successor going to call Obama and "order" him to order Hillary to shut up if Israel does not like what she is saying or doing.

One of Israel's greatest weakness is thos notion that they have that they are more clever, more capable and generally superior to most people.

Too clever by half as the Brits might say.  Too clever by half…  pl

 

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50 Responses to Olmert ordered US Abstention

  1. batondor says:

    Pat, I heard about this from my wife an hour ago and found it hard to believe… but now that you’ve fleshed it out, I must agree that I’m shocked…
    … by the fact that Mr. Bush would allow himself to be manipulated to directly.
    … by the fact that Olmert would even attempt it and then that he would celebrate it publicly.
    Too bad this did not come out before Bush’s Last Stand before the assembled press yesterday, though I presume that he and the other parties to it would deny it completely.
    Finally, I do not think – or at least I have great hopes – that an Obama’s foreign policy team will not be so weak…

  2. Lysander says:

    “Too clever by half as the Brits might say. Too clever by half… pl”
    Or perhaps more clever than wise. And I’m sure many in Israel are thinking Olmert should just shut up. Influence is greatest when it can’t be seen and Olmert just gave a hint at what power Israel has over the U.S. government.
    Of course he is trying to sound like an influential tough guy because that’s all he has left politically. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen more or less as he said it.
    I’ve often wondered; do all American politicians love Israel to death? Do all of them love to go out and issue statements about how they are fighting terror and defending themselves? Is there any nagging doubts amongst any of them? Do any of them resent having to jump at AIPAC’s call? Is it Just fear that keeps them in line?
    Then again, if it’s just fear, then how come a Ron Paul can stand up and tell it like it is and still get reelected?

  3. LeaNder says:

    Hmmm, the dialog gets more and more elaborated. The story just got my head spinning, which in turn resulted in my spamming the whole comment section on Mondoweiss.
    Good you control us nitwits. 😉
    But from my limited perspective it feels a bit the news inspired the dramatic talents of: Jeffrey Heller, Editing by Alistair Lyon here. It seems to be an elaborated version. No official text to rely on. Were these guys really present in Ashkelon?
    Where is Hillary on cease-fire?
    U.S. says remarks on Olmert-Bush call inaccurate
    State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, who was with Rice at the United Nations last week during debate on the U.N. resolution, said the remarks were “just 100 percent, totally, completely untrue.”
    This is of course a recurring story. Origins/original articles/journalists? What exactly happened?

  4. Steve says:

    “…a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils.” President George Washington, Farewell Adress 1796.
    President Washington gave the nation some good advice that is no longer followed. I wish the politicos would pay more attention to Washington, rather than the criminal mass murderer Lincoln, which seems so popular lately.

  5. Cato says:

    Could someone please explain to me why this story seems to be pretty much ignored by everyone except bloggers? If what Olmert says is true, the head of a foreign government is dictating US policy to the head of our government (Bush, for now). Isn’t this an infringement on the US “sovereignity” that the right in this country is so often up in arms about? Or is it cool as long as Israel does it?

  6. lina says:

    It’s hard to imagine anyone, anywhere, pushing around the Obama-Hillary duet. Hillary no longer has to answer to her New York constituency, and Obama is beholden to no one. Israel will have to think twice about biting the hand that feeds it. (reference: your photo)

  7. jonst says:

    Can a nation, collectively, lose its mind? What is the point of this braggadocio? ‘they got him off the podium’? Why embarrass one of the last bastions (DC Establishment)of support the Israel has?
    Nuts. Self destructive!

  8. Medicine Man says:

    Yet the topic of what extent US national interest and Israeli national interest intersects is never allowed to enter public discourse at a national level. In fact, the entire subject appears to be a forbidden topic to the powers that be. I often wonder why Americans put up with this nonsense.

  9. b says:

    “One of Israel’s greatest weakness is thos notion that they have that they are more clever, more capable and generally superior to most people.”
    Supremacists with a supremacist ideology, i.e. Zionism.
    Hopefully it ends like in South Africa.

  10. Matthew says:

    The fact that Bush complied says alot about the guts of “The Decider.”

  11. curious says:

    Hey. 14-0 with one abstention. It’s friggin embarrassing. There can be no doubt who run US foreign policy when it comes to middle east policy. Bush has put US global standing in absolute ditch. The same level as Israel as a world outcast.
    From Tel Aviv with Love should be the title of next Bond movie.

  12. Jose says:

    In this forum, we have been speculating about this subject for while.
    Glad our cogitations have been confirm in public.

  13. Muzaffar says:

    I would add the word “arrogant” too arrogant for their own good.

  14. Ben says:

    These are gods chosen people we are dealing with. The rest of us are expendable philistines. Zionism makes obligatory the notion that if you are not a Jew you cannot be close to god as Jew’s “are” and therefore do not matter. Period. Non-Zionist Jews do not run Israel.

  15. euclidcreek says:

    I sometimes wonder if Zionism is a mental illness or a criminal gang.

  16. Bill W, NH, USA says:

    Juan Cole on his web site slices and dices this controversial pronouncement of Olmert’s:
    http://www.juancole.com/2009/01/israeli-pm-ehud-olmert-claims-to-be.html
    “A senior U.S. official disputed the account.
    “The government of Israel does not make policy for the United States,” the official said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the diplomacy.”
    http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090112/world/israel_us_rice_1
    Apparently, according to Cole, the time line is off but Olmert may have been confused.
    “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do
    this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear,
    don’t worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish
    people control America, and the Americans know it.” — Aerial Sharon, to Shimon Peres, 3 October, 2001 as reported by Kol Yisrael radio”

  17. Bill Mahre kept on saying the Decider had one giant screw up left in him, before he left.
    MCC

  18. Dan M says:

    This does seem idiotic — just days before the new president takes office, he publically announces himself as the top dog in the bush administration’s relationship with Israel and makes out the us secretary of state to be some lacky who needed “shaming.” Obamanistas/Clintonistas will surely take note.

  19. Each day in GAZA that goes by further ensures no peaceful outcome nor long-term increased liklihood of peace. That should be the test for all nations including the participants of the disaster in GAZA at this point. For the very first time, the US is going to face the occurrence of the potential of genocide being conducted by a nation-state that would not exist without the help of the US. They (the Israelies and Palestinians) have tried to box in the US and they may both learn that was not a great choice of strategy or tactics given the uncertainty of the US leadership in the past or even now. It does look like the early foreign policy test will now deluge the OBAMA adminsitration and divert it from other important issues. Bad timing by the warring parties.

  20. Mad Dogs says:

    I apologize in advance for the somewhat OT comment here Pat, but per Tom Ricks via Laura Rozen, Gen. H.R. McMaster has a piece in the latest online issue of World Affairs entitled “The Human Element: When Gadgetry Becomes Strategy” that is a worthwhile read for all who visit SST.
    While General McMaster writes about the United State’s involvement in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, one could, and perhaps should, also read it with respect to the ongoing Israeli war with the Gaza Palestinians.
    Food for thought!

  21. Todd says:

    This story has been circulating on a couple of blogs for the last few days.
    One aspect that bothers me is the lack of Philadelphia witnesses. “…I looked for President Bush and they told me he was in Philadelphia making a speech,” Olmert said…”They got him off the podium…”
    Did his handlers interrupt the speech? Were the after comments or Q&A shortened? Or did they hand the cellphone to him as soon as he arrived backstage? I’ve yet to see corroboration from anyone in the audience or who was close to the POTUS entourage. Although Bush’s initial confusion sounds just about right.
    Your point is well taken and my question is minor, since the point is Bush’s decision and order to Sec. Rice. I don’t think it odd that a President would hasten to take an urgent call from the PM of Israel while efforts to address a hot conflict are ongoing. I think Olmert is bragging and embellishing, but in light of the recent House vote on support of Israel in this attack, we really do need to start asking some hard questions about Israeli influence on policy…or at least ask them again, and louder.

  22. lalla says:

    It’s worse than Olmert’s display of arrogance; this idiocy is a result of political wrangling over who can take credit for wagging the dog:
    “Anger at Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for taking credit for forcing Rice to change her intention to back the resolution was behind the Prime Minister’s boast, according to Channel 1 television newswoman Ayala Hasson.
    …..
    However, she cancelled a press conference before the vote and hurriedly spoke with President Bush, delaying the vote until she returned and abstained.
    All media reports agree that Bush trumped Rice’s intentions, but Livni and Olmert, who never have been the closest of friends, each tried to take the credit.
    At this week’s Cabinet meeting, she complained to Prime Minister Olmert after Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor) criticized her for failing to convince the U.S. to veto the U.N. motion. Hasson reported that Prime Minister Olmert ordered the minister not to deal with politics while a war is going on.
    The following morning, Livni told Voice of Israel government radio that she spoke with Rice last Friday night and secured a promise that she would abstain in the vote.
    Hasson said that when Prime Minister Olmert heard of her comments, he took the opportunity in a speech in Ashkelon to brag about how he personally interrupted President Bush with a phone call.
    “I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,'” he explained. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I did not care: ‘I need to talk to him now.’ He got off the podium and spoke to me.”
    He later told the Associated Press, “She was left pretty embarrassed.”
    McCormack’s comments were challenged by Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad Malki, who said that he was told that the U.S. would back the resolution.”
    http://www.israelnationalne
    ws.com/News/News.aspx/129412
    In other news, warblogger The Muqata reports that Israeli commanders are furious at their political “leadership”:
    6:01 PM Walla news reports: Senior IDF Officer: “Because of Israel’s politicians, we may lose another war.” Harsh criticism against Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak for taking too much time in deciing further moves for IDF.
    According to Walla, IDF generals are furious with Israel’s politicians and say that without a clear cut victory over Hamas by allowing the IDF to continue with the 3rd phase of the war, “we end up on the losing side of the war”.
    http://muqata.blogspot.com/

  23. pbrownlee says:

    Even wimps trying to act like tough guys (or their clicheed fantasies thereof) get a break from time to time when they encounter total invertebrates.
    What “interest” of the United States (or anyone else, including Israel and the Ziocons) is served by this?

  24. Charles I says:

    So, every American here needs to write HARD COPY MAIL, NO EMAIL, to each and every one of your local, state and federal representatives and tell them you will not vote for or donate to any one who does not loudly publicly call for disengagement from and sanction of Israel.
    You are preaching to the converted here.
    You need to carry this discussion to your friends, family and colleagues, and urge – no, hound – those who agree with you or just don’t give a damn, to weigh in IN WRITING against Israel.
    Let us indeed -IN DEED- hope and help Israel find trhe right course, which requires the right course from YOUR ELECTED GOVERNMENT.
    I attended several demonstrations here in Toronto and was heartened to see the numbers for once firmly on the Palestinians’ side. Change will not happen by itself.

  25. arbogast says:

    Where is Egypt? I give a lot of credit to the Egyptian police state that Mubarak is still in power.
    Obama? Don’t hold your breath. He is a politician, and the American public is more concerned whether Donovan McNabb is going to stay with the Eagles than it is with genocide in Gaza.

  26. I was just telling my seven-year-old son that the 10 y.o. bully who has been tormenting him after school feels weak inside. My son thinks he’s very strong. I said maybe he is bigger and stronger than you right now, but if he’s pushing little girls into puddles, and knocking over kids half his size, he feels very weak.
    As a good parent I will be speaking to the adults in charge to make sure they rein in the diminutive bully.
    Problem in the Middle East is that there are no adults willing to rein in the insecure, over-armed, uninhibitedly violent bully of the neighborhood.
    This one is not going to end well for Israel.
    And by the way, I have a theory that if you want to know what’s really going on in Israel, just reverse everything their spokesmen say. Try it and see if my hypothesis fits.

  27. mo says:

    I notice that it seems that the important thing is whether it is true or not.
    Surely the important thing is not whether Olmert told Bush to abstain or not.
    The important thing is is it verified that Olmert made the boast?
    Because if he did and its true well, thats one issue.
    But surely, if he boasted about it and its not true, that is sort of a slap in the face for the US aswell

  28. ads says:

    Did Olmert have to whack Bush with a rolled-up copy of Haaretz, or was just the threat enough?

  29. FB Ali says:

    To people outside the US this will come as no surprise. It is often said that the US earns much anger and dislike on the Arab and Muslim ‘street’ because of its habit of carrying out Israel’s bidding. Perhaps more detrimental to the US is the effect of this on the elites and intelligentsia of these countries (the people who run them – the politicians, civil servants, military officers, businessmen, professionals, journalists, the educated, etc). What this generates in them is contempt.
    They see this small Middle Eastern country, with a ruling class as corrupt (not just financially) as any in that region or beyond, a government perpetually in crisis, displaying the morality of a street thug, riddled with religious fundamentalism, getting unlimited financial, military and diplomatic support from this superpower, without giving anything in return. They see how sometimes the US sacrifices its own interests to bolster Israel’s. The relationship is one between master and client, except that the roles are reversed. They are aware of the means by which this domination is acquired and exercised. It doesn’t make a pretty picture, and after the puzzlement wears off, what is left is contempt.
    The US still bestrides the world. But, as some ancient must have said some time or other : it is far better to lead through respect than rule by fear.

  30. Bobo says:

    Whether Olmert’s statement is true or not he believes it is, thus it has some truth.
    Grandiose statements such as this continues to confirm that the US needs to lower its support for Israel and find a better solution for its long term existance.

  31. JohnH says:

    The whole Olmert-Bush fiasco is old news. Bush outsourced America’s Israeli/Palestinian policy to Israel 8 years ago. The only thing that’s newsworthy is that Olmert chose to publicly told the truth about it. Telling the truth will always get you in trouble.

  32. J says:

    “Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will
    do that… I want to tell you something very clear: Don’t worry
    about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control
    America, and the Americans know it.”
    Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol
    Yisrael radio.

  33. Fred says:

    Both Olmert and Bush insult Condi’s intelligence and integrity and she doesn’t have enough self-respect to resign? I hope she does fulfill her dream of becoming NFL commissioner. Then perhaps she can spread the victorious strategy of the Detroit Lions around the league – after a few years of that Americans might just put down the beer, get off their asses and start seeing what a mess has been made of this country.

  34. Nancy K says:

    Olmert is either arrogant or stupid or maybe both.
    I just hope that when Obama gets a phone call during a speech he can say take a message.

  35. curious says:

    Both Olmert and Bush insult Condi’s intelligence and integrity and she doesn’t have enough self-respect to resign?
    Posted by: Fred | 13 January 2009 at 10:25 PM
    please. Condi has no integrity and self respect. She is beyond clueless, too wrapped up in her own spin.
    Anyway. By the end of next week we pretty much know how the middle east show going to run for next few months. This ought to be interesting. I for one expect “more of the same”.

  36. adam says:

    To be fair to Olmert the quote was aimed at persuading Israeli voters that he and his party are in command of the US relationship and that other Israeli political parties would do worse at running the US.
    Still, its clear that the Israelis know the order of priority for dealing with the US Government… They are the Top, the US is the Bottom, and the UK apparently is the gimp in the corner, mouth firmly zipped up.

  37. Balint Somkuti says:

    As the saying goes “if only the half of these is true” it is still more than headline.

  38. johnf says:

    Two points.
    For anyone who wants an insight into the extraordinary mixture of arrogance and ineptness which is Israeli foreign policy I’d recommend Gregory Levey’s extraordinary recent book “Shut Up, I’m Talking: And other diplomacy lessons I learned in the Israeli Government.”
    Levey chronicles as a US citizen and a complete ignoramus his casual adoption into the Israeli UN team, where the offices are filled with lunatics, people playing endless play station, or are simply never there. Then he is co-opted into Sharon’s government in Israel as a foreign policy speech writer – even though he knows nothing about it. The dysfunctionality is even worse there, where the incompetence is only exceeded by the rudeness.
    The second anecdote is personnal. My son’s partner was employed by a newly-formed company to make top of the range products. It was the personnal project of an Israeli multi-billionaire electronics wunderkid. $40 million was put into the project.
    She said no one at the top knew anything about this new industry which the company was formed to enter. Everyone in top management was there because they told the entrepreneur what he wanted to hear. The design and production processes were shambolic.
    In the first 18 months to company lost $26 million dollars.
    The boss eventually sacked the management and injected a further $10 million, but then, oblivious to the pleas of a knowledgeable workforce, imposed a new management equally incompetent. It finally went bust at the end of last year.
    She ascribed its crash to a mixture of extreme arrogance and extreme incompetence.
    Israel writ large?

  39. David Habakkuk says:

    Lysander,
    ‘Do any of them resent having to jump at AIPAC’s call? Is it just fear that keeps them in line?’
    George Tenet was more than a little resentful about the neoconservatives when the blame game about the intelligence failures over Iraq began, if Patrick Tyler’s new book is to be believed.
    According to Tyler, Tenet gave vent to his feelings beside Prince Bandar’s pool in Riyadh:
    ‘A servant appeared with a bottle. Tenet knocked back some of the scotch. Then some more. They watched with concern. He drained half the bottle in a few minutes.
    ‘”They’re setting me up. The bastards are setting me up,” Tenet said, but “I am not going to take the hit.”
    ‘”According to one witness, he mocked the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and their alignment with the right wing of Israel’s political establishment, referring to them with exasperation as, “the Jews.”‘
    (See http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/12/george_tenet_drunk_in_bandars.php.)
    This kind of thing is the predictable result of the Israel lobby’s attempts to stifle discussion. Silenced resentment will fester invisibly, becoming all the more poisonous because it cannot be expressed. Those who do the silencing will go blithely on, blind to the realisation that the conformity they enforce is becoming increasingly hollow.

  40. roGER says:

    What a shame that with nothing to lose, Bush didn’t simply say “I make policy, Mr. Prime Minister, I make policy,” and hang up.

  41. Halfnhalf says:

    re: Arbogast’s comment on the American public being more concerned with Donovan McNabb staying with the Eagles…as a Philadelphian, I can assure you that we don’t give a plugged nickel about McNabb or Andy Reid either. Gaza, now, is a different story.

  42. charlottemom says:

    The only surprise about this latest capitulation by Bush re Israel is its utter arrogant transparency in who’s calling the shots. The US policy on ME and Israel is/has been rotten from the top down. Bush has surrounded himself with neocons, falls asleep reading Sharansky’s books, etc. And now has chosen Olmert’s counsel over Rice’s. Which leads me to this question. Why so completely beholden to Israel? Because he feels his legacy=Israel’s fate (i.e. neoconservatism and Zionism) or is there something else. What does Bush know that Rice doesn’t, or is it what do Olmert and Bush know that Rice doesn’t? There is some very powerful, and now obvious Israeli leverage.
    I’d also be interested in learning how in-the-loop Bush had been kept on the UN negotiations. Had Rice not kept Bush appraised of her actions/overstepped authority, this Bush veto action may have been used to “teach her a lesson.” A case of egotistical and juvenile petulance? I wouldn’t put it past this guy. Who knows….meanwhile the suffering continues.

  43. Marcello says:

    “Obama? Don’t hold your breath. He is a politician, and the American public is more concerned whether Donovan McNabb is going to stay with the Eagles than it is with genocide in Gaza.”
    I don’t think it is just a matter of corrupt èlites and an indifferent population.
    I see quite a bit of enthusiasm and support for what Israel is doing in Gaza in many political corners.

  44. With apologies for anyone’s sensibilities who are offended: how much of this event is based on the Deciders’ own religious inclination? I’ve always felt a faint nausea thinking that our last 8 years of treatment of the Palestinians has been, in large part, influenced by the apocalyptic streak the GOP/Karl Rove so gladly embraced in order to ‘excite the base’. If you are pro-Zionist, how much political muscle do you need when your president is on a religious mission to protect this area for ‘the end times?
    MCC

  45. awr2 says:

    Why was this approved
    “criminal mass murderer Lincoln”
    This is a bit ridiculous
    I hope it isn’t repeated.
    “…a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils.” President George Washington, Farewell Adress 1796.
    President Washington gave the nation some good advice that is no longer followed. I wish the politicos would pay more attention to Washington, rather than the criminal mass murderer Lincoln, which seems so popular lately.
    Posted by: Steve | 13 January 2009 at 01:14 PM

  46. awr2
    I would not have chosen to use those particular words in regard to A. Lincoln. I have treated him rather well in my scribblings. This, in spite of the fact that, I too, do not think that he was in infancy placed in a manger for the reverence of shepherds and Magi.
    In fact, I think that Shelby Foote described him well as a “very skilled nationalist politician,” pl

  47. roGER says:

    Bush didn’t just anger and humilate Condi, this is from today’s Guardian newspaper:
    “UK-US relations have been particular sour in recent days after Washington reneged on a pledge to back a largely British-drafted UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The White House over-ruled US diplomats after a demand from the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.”

  48. DE Teodoru says:

    Pat Lang sure had it right. As I read it, bullies who attack because they are afraid that they might not be feared enough to deter will never feel secure. But there’s more to the current “shooting fish [Palestinians] in a barrel [Gaza]” than that. Barak has a reputation as a bungler who plays long shots blindly; he hoped to, just for once, prove himself a magician. Livni was nixed for the premeirship by the rabbis soly because she’s a girl; she hopes to prove herself as able to massacre without flinching as the best of them. Olmert’s career is deeply stained by corruption; he hopes to drown the stain in Palestinan blood. Trying to re-establish Israel’s fearsome reputation after Lebanon 2006 and opportunistically to used the Gaza massacre politically, these three have repeated in Gaza the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto– in both cases a polpulation was strangled and starved and, when a few resisted and fired back, that served as an excuse to massacre as “collective punishment” in order to clear Gaza of Palestinians. But though Israeli leaders since 1947 sought to crush Arabs with what they called an “iron wall,” thus bringing about their vison of “Greater Israel,” the Israeli public has always been very sensitive to casualties–both Arab as Israeli– on moral grounds. So every “Zionazi” era of ethnic cleansing based on a leibensraum thesis was followed by a “post-Zionist” era of land for peace and mutual support. The time is most propitious now, for Israel can serve as nuclear umbrella to all the Arabs against Iran’s puny potential atomic bomb in exchange for full integration. The current Arab one crop (oil) banana republic governments are no longer tentable. Here, I know from many Arabs, Israel can be a “light onto the [Arab} nations,” as many of Zionism’s Founding Fathers hoped, leading them into modernity with its high-sci/tech teaching and industries. America is broke and can no longer engorge the $$ placenta from which as a 60 years old fetus Israel subsisted. It must be born as a self-sufficient real nation by integrating itself with its Arab kith-and-kin on a joint road to popular prosperity. Towards that end, it cannot continue to kill Arabs in order to expand Greater Israel for there is no Daispora Jewish Great Alyiah coming to populate it. It must develop a two-sates-one-economy solution with the Palestinians fast so they can become the brokers of the great Israeli-Arab modernization enterprise that the US so botched up in Iraq. There is still time, for the Palestinians have often before seen the light that follows the dark in their relation with Israel. An aggressive economic unity now can safely predict a regional unity within a decade as the West becomes independent of fossil fuel. The Diaspora Jews like their own countries just fine. That’s why, per the US State Dept, 78% of the homes built at US tyaxpayers’ expense for olims (settlers) that never came are empty. There is no need for MORE land, only for MORE peace in which to build a new Mideast. It is doable only if Israel quickly ends its murderous “iron wall” of expansion to supposedly create leibensraum for the “olim” that will never come. So Zionists must follow the moral precepts of their common culture with the Arabs, as dreamed by their Founding Fathers.

  49. Steve says:

    awr2,
    You seem upset becuase the official myth you believe in was challenged. Why run to the Colonel pleading for censorship? Also, what is so “ridiculous” about what I wrote? Good luck!

  50. fahrrad says:

    Dies ist ein großer Ort. Ich möchte hier noch einmal.

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