What Lies Behind Obama’s Face-Off With Netanyahu in Washington?

A Round Table discussion with Jonathan Schanzer

by Jerry Gordon and Mike Bates (June 2011)

Late May witnessed a conflict between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu on the occasion of the Annual Washington Policy Conference of the pro-Israeli lobby group, AIPAC, and an invitation by the new House GOP leadership to have Netanyahu speak before a joint session of Congress.  Not to be upstaged,  Obama delivered a much heralded major policy address on the Middle East roiling from internal the so-called Arab Spring conflicts in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain on the day before Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington. The set the stage for what turned out to be a set-to in the Oval Office played out before the international media. The sparkplug was the 1200 words Obama added to his Middle East policy speech about establishing a Palestinian state based on the pre – 1967 June War borders, the 1949 Armistice lines between the embryonic Jewish state, Israel and several invading Arab states. Those remarks were delivered without prior consultation with PM Netanyahu leaving less than three hours upon his arrival to confer with aides and Obama officials. The public exchange between the two leaders in the Oval Office was decidedly arctic, with Netanyahu lecturing Obama on the precedents for negotiating ground rules for a possible peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).  A PA that had trumpeted a recent unity agreement with Hamas, a US designated foreign terrorist organization, whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state.  Obama hastily organized a speech on Sunday, May 22^nd at the AIPAC conference at the Washington Convention center  proclaiming American solidarity with its ally Israel, but, also reiterating the pre 1967 basis for borders between Israel and a yet to be established Palestinian state. The Obama Administration had this past January given special status to the PA interest section in Washington, just below that of an embassy that enabled it to fly its flag. Moreover, the PA had started an intensive lobbying campaign to garner the necessary two-thirds majority in the UN General Assembly this September sanctioning a unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence with Jerusalem its capitol thereby avoiding negotiating with Israel. The US may elect to exercise its veto power to prevent the Security Council from approving such status.

1330AMWEBY of Pensacola, Florida, Senior Editor Jerry Gordon of the New English Review and Jonathan Schanzer, Vice President of Washington, DC- based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies held a radio round table discussion.

Bates:  Good afternoon and welcome to Your Turn.  This is a special edition of Your Turn today.  It is another of our Middle East round table discussions.  I have with me in the studio here in Pensacola, Florida, Jerry Gordon.  Jerry is the Senior Editor with the New English Review and its blog, The Iconoclast.  Jerry Gordon welcome to Your Turn,

 

 

Gordon:  Glad to be back.

Jonathan:  Thank you.

article in Politico you went further in that direction. I wonder if you would give us some flavor of the arguments regarding Obama's inability to get a handle on relations not only in the Middle East but in foreign policy generally.

The Hill blog. That the Palestinians are now about to issue sovereign debt. They are going to begin issuing bonds. I have raised the question if Hamas is involved in this government, does that make those bonds subject to terrorist finance laws? So there are all of these questions that are going to emerge now that Hamas is part of the fabric of the Palestinian political spectrum.

9/11 families. It revealed the links of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah in facilitating planning, training and transportation of many of the 9/11 perpetrators. This is not something new necessarily but the details and affidavits are stunning because they are based on evidence provided by defectors from Iran's intelligence service. We know that one of the principal terrorists before 9/11 was the terrorist mastermind for Hezbollah, Imad Mughniyah who was killed in February of 2008 under mysterious circumstances in Damascus. Tell us why this has not captured the media's attention or the involvement of the White House.

9/11 Commission Report came out in 2004, it explicitly stated that a number of the highjackers had gone through Iran and received assistance from Iran. In fact the  9/11 Commission Report called upon the intelligence community to explain those ties because they weren't able to come up with a final analysis and so they asked the C.I.A. to investigate these ties and the Agency never did. The Treasury Department has designated a number of Al Qaeda financial operatives that were based in Iran. Clearly, there is a long trail of evidence of Iran’s involvement. I am glad that the 9/11 families finally did something about it. I believe that when we dig a deeper we are going to find out that Iran has much closer ties with Al Qaeda than anyone had previously imagined.

part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.

 

 

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