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Tricky Bibi?

FireGarden

Philosopher
FireGarden
Joined
Aug 13, 2002
Messages
5,047
Gideon Levy,
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/tricky-bibi-1.302053
regarding a video shown on Israel's channel 10. It was recorded in 2001, without Netanyahu knowing and, in it, he claims credit for destroying Oslo. Levy is quite dramatic, as is his style.

Richard Silverstein includes a translation. I'm sure the Hebrew speakers here will post any corrections that are needed.

Bibi the Bamboozler,
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/t...america-wont-get-in-our-way-its-easily-moved/


The Oslo Accords, which the Knesset signed, I was asked, before the elections: “Will you act according to them?” and I answered: “yes,

[...]Narrator: The Oslo Accords stated at the time that Israel would gradually hand over territories to the Palestinians in three different pulses, unless the territories in question had settlements or military sites. This is where Netanyahu found a loophole.

Netanyahu: No one said what defined military sites. Defined military sites, I said, were security zones. As far as I’m concerned, the Jordan Valley is a defined military site.
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And America gave him the right to define military sites as he pleased.
 
Israel has been obstructionist for decades now, they play the victim but it's usually their actions that keeps any peace process from advancing.
 
One should expect Bibi to show that his intentions are for peace. The same holds for Abu Mazzen, or any other leaders.

As for the video, it does raise suspicion, but it is also old enough so that a lot have changed since then. For instance, both Sharon and Olmert would have objected the Oslo accords at the time. Since then, as prime ministers, Sharon had removed Israeli settlements from Gaza, while Olmert has offered Abu Mazzen a far reaching peace deal. So opinions do change.
 
bit_pattern said:
Israel has been obstructionist for decades now, they play the victim but it's usually their actions that keeps any peace process from advancing.
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Everyone else in that region has been murderous and threatening and attacking for decades now; they play the victim but it's usually their actions that keep any peace process from advancing.






You guys and your bias make it way too easy sometimes.
 
Lamafarmer said:
Yeah, right, because it's so damn hard to make out a camera that isn't hidden and being held in the air in front of you. You gobble up that one, go ahead, LoL.
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That's got to be the least important part of the story.

But....
There is a part of the video where Netanyahu points at the camera (about 2:50) and the screen goes dark a moment after. Maybe that's just editing by channel 10. Again, i don't speak Hebrew, so I'll go by this source which people here can correct:

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/07/the-world-wont-say-a-thing-netanyahu-on-ongoing-israeli-expansion.html

"Background: Netanyahu is visiting the home of a woman who just lost her husband, and she is being cheered by five other widows. There's a young boy present, and Netanyahu asks (at about 3:00) that they turn off the camera so he can speak to them 'freely'. The camera gets turned on again in mid-conversation."
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How close the camera was after that is hard to tell.
Some of the footage was taken from outside the circle of people (you can see one of the women get up and walk in front of the camera at about 7:00). Maybe the close-ups of Bibi are done with a zoom. Maybe the camera was right in front of him. I don't really care, because it is the least important part of the story.



ETA: some of the comments on the mondoweiss link are weird, to say the least.
 
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Doctor Evil said:
One should expect Bibi to show that his intentions are for peace. The same holds for Abu Mazzen, or any other leaders.

As for the video, it does raise suspicion, but it is also old enough so that a lot have changed since then. For instance, both Sharon and Olmert would have objected the Oslo accords at the time. Since then, as prime ministers, Sharon had removed Israeli settlements from Gaza, while Olmert has offered Abu Mazzen a far reaching peace deal. So opinions do change.
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In some ways, Sharon and Olmert's actions indicate that Netanyahu failed -- at least in part.

Olmert, I think, was genuinely concerned that failure to bring about a Palestinian state would hurt Israel. He made that warning of the struggle following the pattern of South Africa. Ehud Barak later said something similar.

Netanyahu doesn't seem bothered in the slightest. As far as I can tell, he expects the current situation to be acceptable for the long term.


I know you've seen these before:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/olmert-to-haaretz-two-state-solution-or-israel-is-done-for-1.234201

Haaretz said:
"If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished," Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz Wednesday, the day the Annapolis conference ended in an agreement to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008.

"The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us," Olmert said, "because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents."
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http://www.haaretz.com/print-editio...-government-will-surprise-people-yet-1.277644

Barak spoke of the need for a real solution. If we do not accept the two-state solution, he said, we will find ourselves with an apartheid policy or a state in which we are the minority. But he immediately added that for years, we have tried to reach just such an agreement, but always failed because of the other side.
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Maybe by "other side" he meant Netanyahu... ;)
 
bit_pattern said:
Israel has been obstructionist for decades now, they play the victim but it's usually their actions that keeps any peace process from advancing.
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Everything could have been settled in Camp David in 2000, it wasn't Israel who made it fail.
 
Pardalis said:
Everything could have been settled in Camp David in 2000, it wasn't Israel who made it fail.
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yeah, Camp David...
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/14/fmr_israeli_foreign_minister_if_i

Both sides of the Israel-Palestinian conflict say the other rejected peace, leading to the violence that has marked the conflict since. Ben Ami -- who was a leading member of the Israeli negotiation team -- says he would have rejected Camp David if he were a Palestinian, and discusses the ensuing peace talks in Taba in January 2001.
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I think Finklestein makes a good point:

Now, it is correct to say that if you frame everything in terms of what Israel wanted, it made huge concessions. However, if you frame things in terms of what Israel was legally entitled to under international law, then Israel made precisely and exactly zero concessions. All the concessions were made by the Palestinians.

[...] Let’s start with settlements. Under international law, there is no dispute, no controversy. Under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, it’s illegal for any occupying country to transfer its population to Occupied Territories. All of the settlements, all of the settlements are illegal under international law. No dispute. The World Court in July 2004 ruled that all the settlements are illegal. The Palestinians were willing to concede 50%—50% of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That was a monumental concession, going well beyond anything that was demanded of them under international law.


[...] SHLOMO BEN-AMI: What Dr. Finkelstein said here about international law, I want to make it clear, it is important, it is vital for a civilized community of nations to have an axis of principles based on international law, around which to run the affairs of our chaotic world. It is very important. It is vital, etc. But at the same time, when you go into political issues, and you need to settle differences, historical differences, differences that have to do with political rights, security concerns, historical memories, etc., it is almost impossible to do things on the basis of international law, but rather, on something that is as close as possible to the requirements of international law. The very fact that, as Dr. Finkelstein rightly says, the Palestinians were ready to make this or that concession is the reflection of them understanding that there is no viability, there is no possibility really to reach an agreement that says let us apply automatically and rigidly the requirements of international law.
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I think the intifada is proof enough that the Pals were there ones who rejected it. But go ahead, tell yourself that they "both rejected it" if that makes you feel better.
 
Pardalis said:
I think the intifada is proof enough that the Pals were there ones who rejected it. But go ahead, tell yourself that they "both rejected it" if that makes you feel better.
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You either didn't read the quote or decided to put words in my mouth. Here it is again: "Ben Ami -- who was a leading member of the Israeli negotiation team -- says he would have rejected Camp David if he were a Palestinian."

That quote doesn't deny rejection, it justifies rejection.
 
Finkelstein is not god, his word is only his opinion. The events speak for themselves (and the deaths too).
 
Pardalis said:
Finkelstein is not god, his word is only his opinion. The events speak for themselves (and the deaths too).
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FireGarden quoted Ben Ami, the Israeli negotiator, not Finkelstein. And Ben Ami said:
if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well.
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ETA: apropos deaths, you mean these statistics?

Thanks for linking to the interview, FireGarden!
 
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Actually, I quoted Democracy Now's summary from the beginning of the article. Here's the actual quote:

SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Yes, yes. Okay, the last third part of the book, as Dr. Finkelstein says, there is the diplomat, and this same diplomat still behaves in a way as a historian when he says in this book that Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well. This is something I put in the book. But Taba is the problem. The Clinton parameters are the problem, .....
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ETA:
ddt said:
Thanks for linking to the interview, FireGarden!
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You're welcome,
I'm surprised you've not seen it before.
 
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ddt said:
FireGarden quoted Ben Ami, the Israeli negotiator, not Finkelstein. And Ben Ami said:


ETA: apropos deaths, you mean these statistics?

Thanks for linking to the interview, FireGarden!
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Ben Ami:

But when all is said and done, Camp David failed because Arafat refused to put forward proposals of his own and didn't succeed in conveying to us the feeling that at some point his demands would have an end. One of the important things we did at Camp David was to define our vital interests in the most concise way. We didn't expect to meet the Palestinians halfway, and not even two-thirds of the way. But we did expect to meet them at some point. The whole time we waited to see them make some sort of movement in the face of our far-reaching movement. But they didn't. The feeling was that they were constantly trying to drag us into some sort of black hole of more and more concessions without it being at all clear where all the concessions were leading, what the finish line was.
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http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/benami2.html

Maybe he has a double personality disorder?
 
The chain of events remain the same, Arafat is the one who walked out, and it's the Pals who launched attacks against Israel a little over a month later.

Usually when negotiations fail, you reconvene for another at a future date, you retry, not launch attacks against civilians, at least that's how it's supposed to work in the civilized world.
 
And in the interview, he is pretty clear as to what failed.

You can always re-use that "if I were a Palestinian I would have rejected Camp David, as well" quote as many times as you want, like truthers and their "pull it" quote, or like creationists who love to use Stephen Jay Gould quotes, but reality will remain the same.
 
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Pardalis said:
The chain of events remain the same, Arafat is the one who walked out, and it's the Pals who launched attacks against Israel a little over a month later.

Usually when negotiations fail, you reconvene for another at a future date, you retry, not launch attacks against civilians, at least that's how it's supposed to work in the civilized world.
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You mean like in Taba, January 2001? Where the Israelis walked out? :rolleyes:
 
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