Netanyahu's White House Visit Called A "Hazing"

Photograph of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama taken last year by Pete Souza/White House

With U.S.-Israel relations very frayed, Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington D.C. this week, delivering a speech at the AIPAC conference (where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also spoke) and meeting with President Obama. However, the White House meeting didn't go very well, if you believe the press from Israel, which has been likening it to a "hazing" and an "ambush." According to the Telegraph, Israel's Maariv newspaper wrote, "There is no humiliation exercise that the Americans did not try on the prime minister and his entourage. Bibi received in the White House the treatment reserved for the president of Equatorial Guinea."

Supposedly, behind closed doors, Obama gave Netanyahu a list of 13 demands, including not building settlements in East Jerusalem, the event that sparked the White House's distrust. The Telegraph reports, "When the Israeli prime minister stalled, Mr Obama rose from his seat declaring: 'I'm going to the residential wing to have dinner with Michelle and the girls,'" though Politico says, "Israeli officials let it be known that the talks had broken for Obama to put his daughters to bed, then resumed."

Then, the pair had another meeting; a BBC reporter traveling with Netanyahu wrote, "The following morning, all media engagements for Netanyahu were cancelled. His staff wouldn't say a word, but it was written all over their faces that things were not good for the prime minister." Also there were no photo ops or press releases from the White House: Per NPR, "One [Israeli] commentator described the Obama administration as treating the Israeli leader with 'swinish contempt'."

Veteran U.S. peace negotiator Aaron David Miller told Politico, “What you’re witnessing in the U.S.-Israeli relationship is what happens when neither side has an effective strategy to manage the issues that divide them. If they don’t find one, this is going to look more like a soap opera than serious policy in the next six to eight months.” The Washington Post, which has a story on Netanyahu's bind, spoke to an Israeli peace negotiator who said, Netanyahu "pushed the envelope with Obama" and now that Obama has pushed back, Netanyahu is worried and afraid."

Today, Netanyahu's spokesman said that a "list of understandings" had been reached with Obama, adding "The construction policy will not change, but Israel is prepared to make additional steps in order to advance peace talks." Netanyahu is scheduled to return to the U.S. next month.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on March 26, 2010 2:43 PM

Comments [rss]

4Peace

NINCONPOOP ides_of_march. This policy preceded Obama. It's the State Department, you steaming pile of smelly drivel! And it's the way most of the entire civilized world sees it. Sentiment against settlement-building did not start with Obama. The only way I would get onboard with building just one more settlement would be if YOU were deported there.

4Peace

With Netanyahu and the likes of him in power, there will never be peace. The man is a singlehanded force against peace. It's about time we're acting as we should to bring a true, long-lasting peace to the Middle East. No more settlements. No more kowtowing to AIPAC. Peace and civility for all!

snickerdoodle

Just a little payback for the insult they threw at Biden a few weeks ago. Tit for tat.

It's about time the US stopped letting Israel walk all over them.

Now if we would only stop sending $3 billion in aid (courtesy of US taxpayer's money) to that terrorist state every year we'd have some real progress in the Middle East.

ribaldry

POLITICIANS ARE ALL COCKS

Manitoba

The only thing I can conclude from browsing these comments is that 90% of all of the commenters here are either conservative or liberal d-bags, who all think a link to Wikipedia is a valid argument.

Elm Street

and what do you have to bring to the table?

LB

So Obama gave Bibi alist of demands behind closed doors ? Sounds more like he bitch-slapped him around a bit !

Mookie Wilson

The Holy Koran tells us: "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God's vision. Now that must be our work here on Earth.

Barack Obama, Address to Cairo University 6/4/09

JackoPaidOffVictims

The Koran doesn't mention Jerusalem a single time, so what is Islam's connection to the holiest Jewish city?

Arabs never tried to make J'lem a capitol between 1948-1967 when they were denying Jews access to their holy sites, destroying Jewish homes & synagogues, and desecrating an ancient Jewish cemetary.

Why does the media not know the difference between North & East Jerusalem? Ramat Shlomo is in North Jerusalem, not East.

Why doesn't Gothamist want people to know the truth about Jerusalem's Jewish history and the fact that Arab squatters who invaded the city in 1948, are now living on stolen Jewish property all over Jerusalem, courtesy of the Jordanians illegal 19 year occupation?

Why is the world silent on the issue that many Arab Jerusalem residents never lived there before 1948? And many live on Jewish owned property today!

dadoc

Because like we said, we really don't care about some little New Jersey in the sand thousands of miles away. We care about our jobs, our health, our economic stability here in the US. We've got enough to worry about here. But feel free to screw us and take our billions.

dadoc

Um, lets see. I don't care about Israel, Tibet, Quebec, Luxemborg, or many other places. I don't see why a little New Jersey in the sand commands such money and protection from any critique. And who also commands such untouchable blind allegiance despite ignoring the UN and the world. But gee, I guess on April 15th we'll all sign those checks over to the US Treasury, and send a few more billion dollars east. I do, however, think it's unfair that Vanuatu goes underwater. And that the Tahitian chain should be given back to its people by France. It's really pretty there, the people are very nice, their culture goes way back, and the people don't try to screw us at every turn, kill people and steal our money. Does that make me anti-French?

WesleySnipesAlot

Oh man so many trolls trolling trolls... I don't have time to read all this.

Amanda Harletsch

POLL

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-6116297-503544.html

NannyState

Let's see: you forge documents from ordinary British and Israeli citizens so your intelligence service can kill a guy in Dubai, you diss the US Vice president on a visit to your country and announce new settlements during a hopeful phase in a longstanding peace settlement negotiation, and you make further claims on a 'shared city' with enormous religious and cultural significance. What part of that gets you a State Dinner?

Fadlo K. Shell

What naked hypocrisy on the part of Israel. It complains about a perceived slight, when it just did the same?

Netanyahu "pushed the envelope with Obama" and now that Obama has pushed back, Netanyahu is worried and afraid."

Good. Obama is starting to exhibit some spine--and what a wonderful time for it.

Amanda Harletsch

Just sit and watch these GOP zombies go on a retaliatory rampage of GLOBAL proportions!

How noble of them! FKN UP NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION!

"It’s one thing for Republicans to try to wreck the domestic centerpiece of American health-care reform, but what about the once-sacrosanct tradition of bipartisan foreign policy? President Obama and Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev are putting the final touches on the U.S.-Russia arms-control treaty that will be signed in Prague early next month. This agreed resumption of the reduction of nuclear arms, which stalled badly more than a decade ago, may be the most urgent item on the world’s agenda. It’s the precondition for halting an explosion of nuclear proliferation and heading off a new arms race—one that includes China in the competition."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-26/the-next-gop-screw-up/?cid=hp:mainpromo7

Bike Rider

Obama is a tool of Israel.

no one can stop the Israel Lobby

BDS=(Boycott.Divest.Sanction)

there isn't even two sides to this issue.

international law (and common sense)says you cant build outside of your own border.

East Jerusalem is NOT reconized by ANY country in the world as being part of Israel.

How can anyone say anything bad about Obama in this case? What don't I understand?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IsraeliSettlementGrowthLineGraph.png

http://maxblumenthal.com/feeling-the-hate-in-jerusalem/

JackoPaidOffVictims

East Jerusalem is a concoction of the media. Prior to the violent arab invasion of Jerusalem the day after November 29, 1947, there was no such place as 'East Jerusalem'. The idea of "East" came into being when Jordanian Arabs destroyed 50+ synagogues & expelled Jews from their rightful homes and illegally occupied them afterwards.

Jerusalem is Israel. It was the capitol of Israel thousands of years before Islam was even a thought. It's mentioned over 700 times in the old testament. yet Jerusalem isn't mentioned a single time in the Koran, neither is Palestine, despite the fact that Romans renamed it that in 70 a.d., many centuries before the Koran was written.

The ironic thing is that Israel IS mentioned in the Koran, dozens of times! So much for Muslims wishing it didn't exist, huh?

Amanda Harletsch

Remember, the right here and everywhere has master the art of denying reality and building agendas on lie upon lie and some real incidents with the glue of fear.

But because the right is composed by a few extremist with knowledge (the party elite) and thousands of totally ignorant paranoid zombies you get such interpretations on these basic facts: empiricism and logic are totally irrelevant.