'6% see US administration as pro-Israel'

[busyLivin]

Only 6 percent of Jewish Israelis consider the views of American President Barack Obama's administration pro-Israel, according to a new Jerusalem Post-sponsored Smith Research poll.

The poll, which has a margin of error of 4.5%, was conducted among a representative sample of 500 Israeli Jewish adults this week, following Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech in which he expressed his support for a demilitarized Palestinian state.

Another 50% of those sampled consider the policies of Obama's administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, and 36% said the policies were neutral. The remaining 8% did not express an opinion.

The numbers were a stark contrast to the last poll published May 17, on the eve of the meeting between Netanyahu and Obama at the White House. In that poll, 31% labeled the Obama administration pro-Israel, 14% considered it pro-Palestinian and 40% said it was neutral. The other 15% declined to give an opinion.

Israelis' views of Obama's predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush, are nearly the opposite. According to last month's poll, 88% of Israelis considered his administration pro-Israel, 7%said Bush was neutral and just 2% labeled him pro-Palestinian.

One possible explanation for the Obama administration's plummeting approval rating among Israelis is its opposition to building for natural growth in settlement blocs and its refusal to differentiate its policies regarding construction in unauthorized outposts, settlement blocs close to the Green Line and suburbs of Jerusalem.
The poll found that Israelis, by contrast, emphatically distinguish between outposts, isolated settlements and settlement blocs in the West Bank. Regarding outposts, 57% favor removing them, 38% are against, and 5% did not express an opinion.

When asked about freezing construction in "far-flung, isolated settlements," 52% were in favor, 42% were against and 6% would not say. But when it comes to "large settlement blocs like Gush Etzion, Ma'ale Adumim and Ariel," just 27% said they were in favor of stopping building, 69% were against and 4% did not express an opinion.

Netanyahu's advisers and aides offered different explanations for Israelis' negative opinion on Obama. One said the media had exaggerated its portrayal of a strained relationship between the administrations in Jerusalem and Washington, and that Israelis overwhelmingly sided with Netanyahu.

Another adviser said polls have consistently shown that Israelis believed the Arabs were at fault for the lack of Middle East peace and they reject perceived attempts by Obama to blame Israel or take an even-handed approach.

The advisers suggested that the positive atmosphere regarding Netanyahu after his speech also had an impact. They said polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of Israelis agreed with Netanyahu's vision and believed he was speaking for a consensus of Israelis in his response to Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo.

Netanyahu's external adviser Zalman Shoval, who was speaking for himself, questioned whether the Obama administration could mediate the Middle East conflict due to the numbers and its recent statements and actions.

"Some of the indications we have seen in the last few weeks make it more difficult for Israelis to see the US in its traditional role as an honest broker," said Shoval, a former ambassador to the US, who will head a committee on Israel-American relations that national security adviser Uzi Arad will form soon. "The vast majority of Israelis don't blame the prime minister for a confrontation with the US. They are putting the onus on the Obama administration."

Shoval is in Washington as a guest of local think tanks. He will meet with top American officials in the National Security Council and the State Department - not as an emissary of Netanyahu, though he will report back to the prime minister.

6% of Jewish Israelis: Obama dministration is pro-Israel | Israel | Jerusalem Post

 

[busyLivin]

Maybe he should butter them up with a nice set of Region-1 DVDs.

 

[bandaidwoman]

Probaby due to his west bank settlement policy. Obama is essentially putting forth the face of radical policy changes without really changing past policies ( look at his war strategy)

By George Friedman
Amid the rhetoric of U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech June 4 in Cairo, there was one substantial indication of change, not in the U.S. relationship to the Islamic world but in the U.S. relationship to Israel. This shift actually emerged prior to the speech, and the speech merely touched on it. But it is not a minor change and it must not be underestimated. It has every opportunity of growing into a major breach between Israel and the United States.
The immediate issue concerns Israeli settlements on the West Bank. The United States has long expressed opposition to increasing settlements but has not moved much beyond rhetoric. Certainly the continued expansion and development of new settlements on the West Bank did not cause prior administrations to shift their policies toward Israel. And while the Israelis have occasionally modified their policies, they have continued to build settlements. The basic understanding between the two sides has been that the United States would oppose settlements formally but that this would not evolve into a fundamental disagreement.
The United States has clearly decided to change the game. Obama has said that, “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to stop building new settlements, but not to halt what he called the “natural growth” of existing settlements.
Obama has positioned the settlement issue in such a way that it would be difficult for him to back down. He has repeated it several times, including in his speech to the Islamic world. It is an issue on which he is simply following the formal positions of prior administrations. It is an issue on which prior Israeli governments made commitments. What Obama has done is restated formal U.S. policy, on which there are prior Israeli agreements, and demanded Israeli compliance. Given his initiative in the Islamic world, Obama, having elevated the issue to this level, is going to have problems backing off.
Obama is also aware that Netanyahu is not in a political position to comply with the demand, even if he were inclined to. Netanyahu is leading a patchwork coalition in which support from the right is critical. For the Israeli right, settling in what it calls Samaria and Judea is a fundamental principle on which it cannot bend. Unlike Ariel Sharon, a man of the right who was politically powerful, Netanyahu is a man of the right who is politically weak. Netanyahu gave all he could give on this issue when he said there would be no new settlements created. Netanyahu doesn’t have the political ability to give Obama what he is demanding. Netanyahu is locked into place, unless he wants to try to restructure his Cabinet or persuade people like Avigdor Lieberman, his right-wing foreign minister, to change their fundamental view of the world.
Therefore, Obama has decided to create a crisis with Israel. He has chosen a subject on which Republican and Democratic administrations have had the same formal position. He has also picked a subject that does not affect Israeli national security in any immediate sense (he has not made demands for changes of policy toward Gaza, for example). Obama struck at an issue where he had precedent on his side, and where Israel’s immediate safety is not at stake. He also picked an issue on which he would have substantial support in the United States, and he has done this to have a symbolic showdown with Israel. The more Netanyahu resists, the more Obama gets what he wants.
Obama’s read of the Arab-Israeli situation is that it is not insoluble. He believes in the two-state solution, for better or worse. In order to institute the two-state solution, Obama must establish the principle that the West Bank is Palestinian territory by right and not Israeli territory on which the Israelis might make concessions. The settlements issue is fundamental to establishing this principle. Israel has previously agreed both to the two-state solution and to not expanding settlements. If Obama can force Netanyahu to concede on the settlements issue, then he will break the back of the Israeli right and open the door to a rightist-negotiated settlement of the two-state solution.
In the course of all of this, Obama is opening doors in the Islamic world a little wider by demonstrating that the United States is prepared to force Israel to make concessions. By subtext, he wants to drive home the idea that Israel does not control U.S. policy but that, in fact, Israel and the United States are two separate countries with different and sometimes conflicting views. Obama wouldn’t mind an open battle on the settlements one bit.
For Netanyahu, this is the worst terrain on which to fight. If he could have gotten Obama to attack by demanding that Israel not respond to missiles launched from Gaza or Lebanon, Netanyahu would have had the upper hand in the United States. Israel has support in the United States and in Congress, and any action that would appear to leave Israel’s security at risk would trigger an instant strengthening of that support.
But there is not much support in the United States for settlements on the West Bank. This is not a subject around which Israel’s supporters are going to rally very intensely, in large part because there is substantial support for a two-state solution and very little understanding or sympathy for the historic claim of Jews to Judea and Samaria. Obama has picked a topic on which he has political room for maneuver and on which Netanyahu is politically locked in.
Given that, the question is where Obama is going with this. From Obama’s point of view, he wins no matter what Netanyahu decides to do. If Netanyahu gives in, then he has established the principle that the United States can demand concessions from a Likud-controlled government in Israel and get them. There will be more demands. If Netanyahu doesn’t give in, Obama can create a split with Israel over the one issue he can get public support for in the United States (a halt to settlement expansion in the West Bank), and use that split as a lever with Islamic states.
Thus, the question is what Netanyahu is going to do. His best move is to say that this is just a disagreement between friends and assume that the rest of the U.S.-Israeli relationship is intact, from aid to technology transfer to intelligence sharing. That’s where Obama is going to have to make his decision. He has elevated the issue to the forefront of U.S.-Israeli relations. The Israelis have refused to comply. If Obama proceeds with the relationship as if nothing has happened, then he is back where he began.
Obama did not start this confrontation to wind up there. He calculated carefully when he raised this issue and knew perfectly well that Netanyahu couldn’t make concessions on it, so he had to have known that he was going to come to this point. Obviously, he could have made this confrontation as a part of his initiative to the Islamic world. But it is unlikely that he saw that initiative as ending with the speech, and he understands that, for the Islamic world, his relation to Israel is important. Even Islamic countries not warmly inclined toward Palestinians, like Jordan or Egypt, don’t want the United States to back off on this issue.
Netanyahu has argued in the past that Israel’s relationship to the United States was not as important to Israel as it once was. U.S. aid as a percentage of Israel’s gross domestic product has plunged. Israel is not facing powerful states, and it is not facing a situation like 1973, when Israeli survival depended on aid being rushed in from the United States. The technology transfer now runs both ways, and the United States relies on Israeli intelligence quite a bit. In other words, over the past generation, Israel has moved from a dependent relationship with the United States to one of mutual dependence.
This is very much Netanyahu’s point of view, and from this point of view follows the idea that he might simply say no to the United States on the settlements issue and live easily with the consequences. The weakness in this argument is that, while Israel does not now face strategic issues it can’t handle, it could in the future. Indeed, while Netanyahu is urging action on Iran, he knows that action is impossible without U.S. involvement.
This leads to a political problem. As much as the right would like to blow off the United States, the center and the left would be appalled. For Israel, the United States has been the centerpiece of the national psyche since 1967. A breach with the United States would create a massive crisis on the left and could well bring the government down if Ehud Barak and his Labor Party, for example, bolted from the ruling coalition. Netanyahu’s problem is the problem Israel has continually had. It is a politically fragmented country, and there is never an Israeli government that does not consist of fragments. A government that contains Lieberman and Barak is not one likely to be able to make bold moves.
It is therefore difficult to see how Netanyahu can both deal with Obama and hold his government together. It is even harder to see how Obama can reduce the pressure. Indeed, we would expect to see him increase the pressure by suspending minor exchanges and programs. Obama is playing to the Israeli center and left, who would oppose any breach with the United States.
Obama has the strong hand and the options. Netanyahu has the weak hand and fewer options. It is hard to see how he will solve the problem. And that’s what Obama wants. He wants Netanyahu struggling with the problem. In the end, he wants Netanyahu to fold on the settlements issue and keep on folding until he presides over a political settlement with the Palestinians. Obama wants Netanyahu and the right to be responsible for the agreement, as Menachem Begin was responsible for the treaty with Egypt and withdrawal from the Sinai.
We find it difficult to imagine how a two-state solution would work, but that concept is at the heart of U.S. policy and Obama wants the victory. He has put into motion processes to create that solution, first of all, by backing Netanyahu into a corner. Left out of Obama’s equation is the Palestinian interest, willingness and ability to reach a treaty with Israel, but from Obama’s point of view, if the Palestinians reject or undermine an agreement, he will still have leverage in the Islamic world. Right now, given Iraq and Afghanistan, that is where he wants leverage, and backing Netanyahu into a corner is more important than where it all leads in the end.

this is from stratfor, the news agency for intelligence.

 

[quadluver]

Rush Limbaugh sucks.

 

[busyLivin]

Rush Limbaugh sucks.

You've probably never even listened to him, other than the misleading sound bites the media likes to use.... but thanks for your valuable input into the discussion.

 

[bandaidwoman]

Rush Limbaugh sucks.

you'd like this, top ten dumb remarks by limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh's 10 Dumbest Remarks: Christopher Bateman | Vanity Fair

1. “There is no conclusive proof that nicotine’s addictive... And the same thing with cigarettes causing emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease.”

2. “Columbus saved the Indians from themselves.”

3. "He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act... This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting."

4. “[African Americans] are twelve percent of the population. Who the hell cares?”

5. “Kurt Cobain was, ladies and gentlemen, a worthless shred of human debris.”

6. “Feminism was established to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream.”

7. “We are a growing country and everybody needs energy! We're not going to stay the United States if we start reducing energy usage. Conservation is not the answer.”

8. To a black caller: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”

9. On torture at Abu Ghraib: “This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation. And we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people—you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of need to blow some team off?”

10. “Screw the world. Do you really think we ought to govern ourselves based on what the world thinks of us?”

 

[busyLivin]

you'd like this, top ten dumb remarks by limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh's 10 Dumbest Remarks: Christopher Bateman | Vanity Fair

lol.. i actually agree with a few of those. some are dumb, but some are just what i was saying.. misleading soundbites.

 

[Dale Mabry]

You've probably never even listened to him, other than the misleading sound bites the media likes to use.... but thanks for your valuable input into the discussion.

Hey, did you used to have him as your avi before? I like it, if you were to look up shit-eating grin in the dictionary you would see that pic.

 

[busyLivin]

Hey, did you used to have him as your avi before? I like it, if you were to look up shit-eating grin in the dictionary you would see that pic.

i don't think I did, but I agree... i think it's a great pic

 

[bio-chem]

Maybe he should butter them up with a nice set of Region-1 DVDs.

you mean they aren't already part of the stimulus package? I thought obama decided to just buy everyones affections? even those who don't vote in US elections.

 

[Big Smoothy]

Bottom line:

Obama is not kissing AIPAC's feet like every former President has done. He's definitly soft with Israel, but he's not kow-towing to AIPAC. The US gov is still giving $2 billion per year in aid for arms and weapons buying from US manufactureres and an extra $1 billion for whatever they want to spend it on.

AIPAC and Israel are not getting an American free pass, 100% anymore when it comes to the media and public opinion.

Here is a recent article from the Jersualem Post. The statement on Carter in incorrect.

Xtian support is even slipping a little. It's about time:

EVEN EVANGELICAL SUPPORT is eroding. A vocal minority remain effusive on Israel's behalf. But the broader community is not monolithic. Many of its members are hungry for change, not unlike the political appetite that won Barack Hussein Obama the presidency.

Among evangelicals the religious equivalent is a movement led by people like Brian McLaren, author of A New Kind of Christian; Stephen Sizer, a pastor who has gained popularity by condemning "Christian Zionism"; and, of course, Jimmy Carter, who accuses Israel of committing a "holocaust." How widespread is the erosion of evangelical support for Israel? Google this: "Letter to President Bush from Evangelical Leaders." Look at those who signed it - and the organizations they represent. Their claim to "represent large numbers of evangelicals" is true.

Link & Entire: The writer is director of radio broadcasting for Israel World TV.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...icle/Printer

 

[bio-chem]

Bottom line:

Obama is not kissing AIPAC's feet like every former President has done. He's definitly soft with Israel, but he's not kow-towing to AIPAC. The US gov is still giving $2 billion per year in aid for arms and weapons buying from US manufactureres and an extra $1 billion for whatever they want to spend it on.

AIPAC and Israel are not getting an American free pass, 100% anymore when it comes to the media and public opinion.

Here is a recent article from the Jersualem Post. The statement on Carter in incorrect.

Xtian support is even slipping a little. It's about time:



Link & Entire: The writer is director of radio broadcasting for Israel World TV.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...icle/Printer

I like how you post something in support of your argument and then bash it as incorrect in the same post. I don't think i've ever seen that done before.

 

[Dale Mabry]

I like how you post something in support of your argument and then bash it as incorrect in the same post. I don't think i've ever seen that done before.

I liked that too. Read this, one part is completely false, but the rest is 100% accurate.

 

[Big Smoothy]

^ and ^^

Are you referring to the comment on Carter? Yes, IMO, it's incorrect.

I then note the Evanglical slip in support.

What's wrong if disagreeing with ONE sentence that is off-topic anyway, and then noting Evangelical slips in support.

There is polling data that is recent noting the change among Evangelicals.

Both of you didn't even address the point.

 

[Dale Mabry]

^ and ^^

Are you referring to the comment on Carter? Yes, IMO, it's incorrect.

I then note the Evanglical slip in support.

What's wrong if disagreeing with ONE sentence that is off-topic anyway, and then noting Evangelical slips in support.

Because you are calling the accuracy of the authors work in to question and then using him as a primary source.

As for the other things, I am in agreement with you, I prefer the way Obama is handling foreign affairs, and I don't give a shit about Israel. Do I want Palestinians blowing them up? No, but we have been getting involved in stuff that has nothing to do with us for too long. I know we are allies with Israel, and we need someone in oil country, but both sides are guilty of something. If Israel were in Africa we wouldn't give them the time of day.

 

[min0 lee]

Same here, why is this a big deal anyway.....he didn't declare war on Israel, all he is doing is kissing less ass.

We give them enough money and arms, grow up and fight your own battle people.

I hate when people have a favorite.

 

[bio-chem]

Because you are calling the accuracy of the authors work in to question and then using him as a primary source.

EXACTLY! i didn't think that was that difficult to understand. It completely nullifies the entire post to attack your own source.

 

[danzik17]

Who really cares.

How about we just referee the inevitable fight in the ME. No nukes, chemical, or bio weapons, the rest is fair game. GO!

 

[Big Smoothy]

In response to the off-topic comment on my post with the article,

It's an Op-Ed piece with polling data, and also an opinion that not related to the polling data (the reference to Carter).

Both of you could have focused on the topic, but instead focused on me.

Anyway, back USrael.

 

[bio-chem]

In response to the off-topic comment on my post with the article,

It's an Op-Ed piece with polling data, and also an opinion that not related to the polling data (the reference to Carter).

Both of you could have focused on the topic, but instead focused on me.

Anyway, back USrael.

this is why no one takes you seriously

 

[min0 lee]

I do, I don't agree with everything and sometimes he comes off harsh but who doesn't here.

 

[bio-chem]

I do, I don't agree with everything and sometimes he comes off harsh but who doesn't here.

i don't have to agree with people to like their posts. you, kelju, LW and plenty of others i feel like i get something out of.

 

[Big Smoothy]

this is why no one takes you seriously

Who is taking Open Chat at IM seriously? It's a ghost town in here. Although this is a body building forum, and I understand that.

No you and Albob don't take me seriously because you're not good and informative posters who like to have a discussion - that's why you did focus on the topic, but instead focused on me.

There are a lot of forums out there - and I spend my time on other forums.

But I do drop by IM because of some of the good advice from some of the peole here about BBing, and nutrition.