The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both - Vaclav Havel
Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries over the weekend to curb their criticism of President Hosni Mubarak to preserve stability in the region.
Jerusalem seeks to convince its allies that it is in the West's interest to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. The diplomatic measures came after statements in Western capitals implying that the United States and European Union supported Mubarak's ouster.
Israeli officials are keeping a low profile on the events in Egypt, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even ordering cabinet members to avoid commenting publicly on the issue.
Senior Israeli officials, however, said that on Saturday night the Foreign Ministry issued a directive to around a dozen key embassies in the United States, Canada, China, Russia and several European countries. The ambassadors were told to stress to their host countries the importance of Egypt's stability. In a special cable, they were told to get this word out as soon as possible.
EU foreign ministers are to discuss the situation in Egypt at a special session today in Brussels, after which they are expected to issue a statement echoing those issued in recent days by U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
And in the spirit of Keith Olbermann’s ‘Worst Person in the World’, the most lunatic comment on the whole affair must come from The Pagan Temple, comment made over at Renegade Eye’s blog. After initial talk of:
* a nuclear pit where Damascus used to be. * […] hapless Bedouin traipsing through the Sinai with a watermelon on my [sic] head when the Jews decide they want the Sinai back.
… he managed to come up with this gem:
The Egyptians have a sufficient and presumably efficient force for defensive purposes, but they do not have the capabilities of carrying out a full scale frontal assault with any reasonable expectation of success against any well trained and equipped military entity. The Israelis would clean their clocks AND eat their lunch. One wrong move out of Egypt and the Sinai will be in Israeli hands within the week, I promise you that. I don't care how many billions of dollars worth of American hardware the Egyptians have, that in itself is far from an assurance of victory, or for that matter of putting up a decent fight.
In addition to the Sinai, its high time the Israelis gave serious consideration to clearing out Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan, southern Lebanon, and they can take a good chunk of Jordan while they're at it as far as I'm concerned. Let the Arab world, the UN, and the EU stew. The only thing that's restrained them thus far is the strings we've attached to our aid.
If I was President, those string would be quickly untied. After more than six decades of this bullshit, I think its pretty obvious to anybody with a brain that its not working.
Cry Havoc! and let loose the dogs of war. How long could it last? As for the Chinese, I think I might see a Stuxnet in their future, so I think they might want to think about shutting the fuck up about it too.
Apparently there's a real person tapping away at that keyboard. Let it be said that some of Israel's true supporters can be creative when they want to be!
Today he’s in denial, tomorrow he’ll be in the Nile?
Fingers crossed…
Of course he could seek sanctuary in Tel Awashington… oh no, major problem: he may be the greatest Arab arse licker to the Zionist Cause ever but he’s still an Arab!
A few worthwhile reactions from around the blogoglobe:
Very succinct: Joe Biden is an idiot. Slightly belated observation perhaps but better late than never…
Most risible, but far from surprising, from ‘Joseph W’ at the Brown Sauce in a post that’s not entirely Egypt related but close enough, wait for it because it’s a real corker: ”It is true, of course, that the USA assists democratic opponents of authoritarian rule across the world.” Two words: Latin America. But Joseph W, BTW, is a Zionist and they don't care about Latin America, so now you know…
Having said that, the Lord of Darkness himself, Bibi Netanyahoo, takes the cake with "Having said that, I'm not sure the time is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process", he revealed in Time. Stoooopid Arabs.
Strange days, I’d never thought I’d find myself temporarily more in some reluctant agreement with Pamela Geller than with Bibi…
Meanwhile in Ha’aretz Aluf Benn frets that “without Mubarak, Israel is left with almost no friends in the Middle East”. Perhaps Israel should look further a field for buddies? I hear Mugabwe is still free and possible looking for alliances? But alternatively it could just ‘do the right thing’…
The only way to continue supporting Israeli policies these days is to enter a state of denial regarding the occupation and its consequences. This is exactly what leaders of the Jewish community in the UK decided to do.
The Jewish Leadership Council has postponed a trip to meet Palestinian leaders in the West Bank following an angry reaction from community representatives.
Chairman Vivian Wineman had been due to travel to Ramallah next month with other council members including Sir Trevor Chinn and Rosalind Preston. They would have met Palestinian Authority officials and members of non-governmental organisations such as Oxfam and War on Want.
[…]
News of the trip was revealed at Sunday’s Board of Deputies meeting, drawing an overwhelmingly negative reaction from deputies.
The following day the JLC took the decision not to travel to Ramallah, saying it wanted to “take soundings from the community on the nature of the trip”.
Finding the fingerprints of the Israeli embassy all over this shouldn’t come as a surprise:
Another factor in the postponement was the breakdown of talks between the PA and the Israeli government. It is understood the Israel Embassy was also opposed to the trip, but a spokesman for the ambassador declined to comment.
Mr Wineman, who also serves as Board president, said he was taken aback by the reaction from the embassy and the deputies.
He said: “I spoke to my colleagues on the JLC but then I did take opinion from the embassy, and with other people knowledgeable on these issues, and I was surprised they had a very much more critical take on it. We are not going to do anything that would be seen as damaging the interests of the state of Israel. It is the last thing we would do.”
It seems that the people at JLC see themselves as nothing more than a propaganda office for the Israeli government. With the way things are going on in Israel recently, I believe this attitude deserves a second thought.
The undervalued and highly interesting Coteret blog has an interesting little aside which I was originally going to paraphrase as ‘Bibi’s Fury…’
Cos’ furious he is. One of the excuses Netanyahu uses to call for strikes (by Israel, the US or both in tandem) on Iran has just been removed. And by one of Zionism’s most loyal servants too:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is furious with outgoing Mossad Director Meir Dagan because of the briefing Dagan gave journalists last Thursday. In the course of that briefing, Dagan shared with the reporters the Mossad’s assessment that the Iranians would be unable to develop a nuclear bomb before 2015.
Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that Dagan’s statements infuriated Netanyahu, who advocates taking an aggressive approach vis-à-vis Iran. According to a high-ranking political official, Netanyahu reprimanded Dagan and said that his statements had undermined Israel’s efforts to fight against the Iranian nuclear program by means of the international community.
While all the saber rattling on Iran and its nuclear program has everything to do with (preventing) Iran’s ascent to power in the region and the Likudniks’ desire for linkage of the Iranian and Palestinian questions and nothing with Iran’s actual or not building of nuclear weapons and the alleged ‘existential threat’ those would pose to the Zionist Entity, statements like Dagan’s must indeed strike paranoid schemers like Benjamin Netanyahu as, erm… ‘unhelpful’…
To all American news outlet editors: can you please take the sassy moron and “republican in London” Charlie Wolf off our hands? We have no need for him here, struggling as we are with the Condems.
It seems to go a bit like this. We try and offload one of our most conservative citizens to across the pond and not to be outdone, you send us TWO of yours in return, as always more conservative than our gift to you (your centre not coinciding with ours). That’s not fair. This way we ended up with the likes of Janet Daley and annoying twit Charlie Wolf.
Here he was at it again, on last night’s Agenda (Press TV), discussing the merits of control orders with a British buffoon (whose name I forgot quickly), a gentleman from Cage Prisoners and Yvonne Ridley as host. Not to be outdone by our Brit (when a person who was street interviewed claimed he was ashamed of his country on account of control orders, said contributor exclaimed without shame that the interviewee ‘should go and live in another country!’), Wolf managed to suggest taking even more far reaching ‘counter terrorist’ measures. All this on the stated but fake grounds that '[Islamic] terrorism is completely unlike any other form of terrorism or crime', thereby justifying the sort of hocus pocus ‘justice’ that constitute Guantanamo Bay, water boarding and control orders. Wolf went on to denounce the terrorists as ‘beyond humanity’, ‘outside of morality’ (blahdiblah) and further normative nonsense, all of which is rather rich coming from a banal flag waver and Zionist media whore who undoubtedly supported two illegal wars and the illegal and immoral occupation and colonisation of Palestine. Not to mention this douche bag’s temerity to publicly call Rachel Corrie “scum”.
I know, I know, dear editors, I’ve alas not been able to convince you. But I’ve a killer argument to deploy yet. You see, poor Charlie, he’s contracted kidney cancer recently (2007). Surely you don’t want him to die of poor care at the hands of British NHS Socialist bush doctors, do you? Surely only the best and most expensive US health care for one of your own will do, won’t it? You could even employ him to comment on John Boehner’s futile and expensive efforts over the next two years to attempt to repeal ‘Obamacare’! That would be poetic justice and quite a coup for you, would it not? But he might not come cheap: he's entirely free-market driven...
Oh, one last thing: remind him not to forget to take his lapel badge with him: we’ve no need for it either…
