Thread: Israel approves 1,600 East Jerusalem homes as Biden visits

In a strongly worded statement, Mr Biden said: "I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in east Jerusalem.

Mr Netanyahu said Israel would continue to support the US push for stronger sanctions against Iran, and that he was pleased its efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were "beginning to bear fruit".

BBC article.
BBC News - Joe Biden attacks Israeli plan for East Jerusalem homes

Netanyahu supports the U.S. push for stronger sanctions

Secretary of state tells Netanyahu announcement of plan to build more Jewish homes in east Jerusalem 'contradicts spirit of Biden's Mideast trip, undermines confidence in peace process'

The harsh criticism of America's closest Mideast ally and questions about its commitment to the US-Israeli relationship followed equally blunt condemnation of the housing announcement from the White House and Biden himself.

Ynet article.
Clinton slams Israel on housing announcement - Israel News, Ynetnews

12. No Respect
You do understand that the bankrupt and amoral US is playing to the wealthy Arab field Israel don't you ?
The more you showed loyalty to the US and abided by their fractured peace agenda the less respect you receive from the bullies in Washington.Now they refuse to respect all of Jerusalem as the eternal Capitol of Jewish Israel.
Your allegiance to your American pimp's has paid off in ways you did not expect.
Stop playing the lap dog,vassal state and make the US respect your sovereignty NOW or NEVER.
Marcel , Florida (03.12.10)

Something about this story stinks...
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Print Story: US may be seeking Israel 'regime change' on Yahoo! Canada News

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The Obama administration's row with Israel over settlements has prompted some analysts to wonder whether it seeks "regime change," a new government that can make peace with the Palestinians.

However, the analysts doubt that President Barack Obama's administration, which has made Arab-Israeli peace a national security priority, will achieve anything if it has indeed adopted such a strategy.

In unusually harsh words, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday that his right-wing government's plans to build new settler homes in east Jerusalem sent a "deeply negative signal" about Israel's ties to its top ally.

"Is this about regime change, or is it about (Israeli) behavior modification?" asked Aaron David Miller, a Middle East peace negotiator in past Republican and Democratic administrations.

"Because either way, it's going to be a rocky ride," Miller told AFP.

"If it's the former, then I think we're naive in the extreme in thinking that we will be able to produce and somehow manage that," said Miller, now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Miller said Obama and Clinton may be trying to create the impression Netanyahu is "mismanaging the relationship" with Washington in order to shake up Israeli politics.

After all, he said, former president George H.W. Bush and his top diplomat James Baker did much the same thing with then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir and helped pave the way for Yitzhak Rabin to become prime minister.

"But there are no more Rabins," Miller said.

Rabin, who was assassinated by an Israeli right-wing extremist in 1995, sealed a short-lived peace deal with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the White House in 1993 under then president Bill Clinton.

Under another scenario, if the Obama administration defuses the row and even wins some concessions from Netanyahu, he warned, it may still be impossible to bridge the Israeli-Palestinian divide, say analysts,

Miller and others like Daniel Kurtzer, the former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel, have long wondered whether the Obama administration has a strategy to revive Arab-Israeli peace talks suspended since 2008.

Both noted that the Obama administration, in its first year, demanded a total halt to Jewish settlements, only to yield to Netanyahu's call for a 10-month moratorium on construction in the West Bank but not in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians want east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 war, to be the capital of a future state; Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital.

Kurtzer, who is now at Princeton University, could not rule out that the Obama administration might be contemplating a way to change Israel's political landscape.

"I would like to say 'no' because we don't do that with Israel and with friends and democracies," Kurtzer told AFP when asked whether "regime change" might be part of the Obama strategy.

"But I don't doubt that there are some (Obama) people who are angry enough to want to see the (Netanyahu) government fall," he said.

The previous George W. Bush administration embraced "regime change" for Iraq, Iran and North Korea, although the term referred to the violent overthrow of dictatorships.
"In people's heart of hearts, they probably want somebody other than Netanyahu but I can't imagine that anybody really believes that they have a strategy or a real chance of effecting it," the former ambassador said.
To be sure, he said, Netanyahu might be able to drop a right-wing party and bring in Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister and candidate for premier who once mulled joining his government, and her centrist Kadima.
"But to do this under siege, as he (Netanyahu) feels right now, is not going to happen," Kurtzer said.
Haim Malka, a top analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told AFP "there is no obvious or viable alternative to Netanyahu at the moment" when asked if "regime change" could work.
"And trying to trigger a reshuffling of the Israeli political landscape will more likely lead to paralysis rather than a coalition willing to make political compromises with the Palestinians," he said.
He said he would not speculate however on whether the Obama administration might be considering "regime change."

Kevin MacDonald: Pat Buchanan is Censored by Human Events Patrick J. Buchanan

by Kevin MacDonald – The Occidental Observer
Web Note: I was hoping someone would take the time to go through the Human Events version of Pat’s column, just to find out what they didn’t want the American people to read. What did PJB write that was so offensive, so verboten, that they were compelled to delete nearly 50% of his column? Kevin gives us the scoop.
Pat Buchanan is a national treasure — by far the most articulate and sensible spokesman in the mainstream media — or at least close to it — for a wide range of issues, from immigration, to economic nationalism, to foreign policy issues. Unfortunately, his exposure in the MSM seems to be on the wane. He still appears on the McLaughlin Group, but his former base at MSNBC has disappeared, and his exposure in the major newspapers seems non-existent. I can remember in the 1990’s when he was a regular on the LA Times op-ed page, which seems inconceivable now. (There was an LA Times column he did on the Frankfurt School at a time when I was starting to research Jewish intellectual movements. After reading his account of how the Frankfurt School undermined the family, I thought that there might be a Jewish story there. Not a bad guess. The Frankfurt School was labeled a “Jewish sect” by Gershon Scholem, and the Frankfurt School became the subject of Ch. 5 of The Culture of Critique and much subsequent writing. Thanks Pat.) Not surprisingly, Buchanan has a very long rap sheet at the ADL.
Buchanan’s latest article, “The Poodle Gets Kicked,” on the Biden visit to Israel will do nothing to endear him to the ADL. Buchanan makes an excellent case on the absurdity of supposing that US and Israeli interests are identical. The interesting thing is that the version that appeared on the Human Events website was about half the length of the original. (See “Human Events Censors Pat Buchanan’s Latest Column” at Buchanan.org). Linda Muller, who runs Buchanan.org, suggests that this is the result of neocon censors at Human Events, and notes that the revised version leaves out any mention of AIPAC or the USS Liberty incident.
It should surprise no one that Human Events would be involved in such a clumsy version of censorship. These are the people who fired Kevin Lamb after a phone call from the SPLC. (See Lamb’s VDARE article, “The Leftward Course Of Human Events.“)
The Human Events censor seems to have been motivated to expunge statements implying extreme groveling by Biden, as in his ridiculous statement “Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.” Of course, the opposite is the case. Israel can stall peace talks forever without having to worry that the US will do anything about it. Biden should have a special place in George Orwell’s Hall of Fame.
The censor also expunged the most egregious examples where Israel has demonstrated quite clearly that it has always pursued its own interests even when they conflict with US interests — not only in the USS Liberty case, but also stealing uranium during the JFK administration, transferring US technology to China, and spying on the US. (Buchanan was being kind by only mentioning Pollard; there are many more examples; see here and here.) The Israeli policy of ethnic cleansing on the West Bank and Jerusalem is therefore part of a long list of areas where Israel refuses to go modify its goals by listening to its poodle. Why should it? Nobody cares what poodles think.
The following is Buchanan’s entire column with the censored parts underlined.

Actually, Joe set himself up. From the moment he set foot on Israeli soil, our vice president was in full pander mode.
First, he headed to Yad Vashem memorial, where he put on a yarmulke and declared Israel “a central bolt in our existence.”
“For world Jewry,” Joe went on, presumably including 5 million Americans, “Israel is the heart. … Israel is the light. … Israel is the hope.”
Meeting Shimon Peres the next day, Joe confessed that when he first visited at age 29, “Israel captured my heart.”
In Peres’ guestbook, he wrote, “The bond between our two nations has been and remains unshakeable.”
He then told Peres and the world, “There is absolutely no space between the United States and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security.”
As Peres spoke, Biden took notes. When Peres called him “a friend,” Joe gushed, “It’s good to be home.”
Even at AIPAC, they must have been gagging.
Walking around the corner to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office, Joe called him by his nickname, “Bibi,” declared him a “real” friend and said the U.S. relationship with Israel “has been and will continue to be the centerpiece of our policy.”
Then the sandbag hit.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai announced construction of 1,600 new apartment units in Arab East Jerusalem. Stunned and humiliated, Biden issued a statement saying he “condemned” the decision.
He then retaliated by coming late to dinner at Bibi’s house.
Netanyahu has apologized for the timing, but they are going ahead with the apartments. What are the Americans going to do about it? At this point, nothing but bluster.
Indeed, a day later, at Tel Aviv University, Joe was back at it: “(T)he U.S. has no better friend … than Israel.”
On his departure for Jordan, Ha’aretz reported that Israel plans to build 50,000 new homes in East Jerusalem over the next few years.
Biden may feel he was played for a fool, and Americans may feel jilted, but we got what grovelers deserve. And if we wish to understand why the Arabs who once respected us now seem contemptuous of us, consider that battered-spouse response to a public slap across the face.
Consider also the most remarkable statement of Biden’s first 24 hours.
“Progress occurs in the Middle East when everyone knows there is simply no space between the United States and Israel.”
Biden is saying we are a more effective force for Mideast peace in a region where Arabs outnumber Israelis 50 to one if everyone knows we sing from the same song sheet as Israel and have no policy independent of Israel’s.
How can America be seen as an honest broker between Arabs and Israelis if there is “no space” between America and Israel?
Even with the closest ally in our history, Britain in World War II, there was space between Winston Churchill and FDR on where to invade — North Africa, Italy, France, the Balkans? — whether to beat Stalin to Berlin, Prague and Vienna, who should be supreme allied commander, even whether the British Empire should survive.
Israel keeps its own interests foremost in mind, and when these dictate actions inimical to U.S. interests, Israel acts unilaterally. David Ben-Gurion did not seek Dwight Eisenhower’s permission to attack Egypt in collusion with the French and British in 1956, enraging Ike.
Israel did not consult JFK on whether it could steal enriched uranium from the NUMEC plant in Pennsylvania for its atom bomb program.
Israel did not consult us on whether it could attack the USS Liberty in the Six-Day War, or suborn Jonathan Pollard to loot our security secrets, or transfer our weapons technology to China. They went ahead and did it, knowing the Americans would swallow hard and take it.
Ehud Olmert did not consult President-elect Obama on whether to launch a war on Gaza and kill 1,400 Palestinians. Nor did Netanyahu consult us before Mossad took down the Hamas minister in Dubai.
What Netanyahu and Yishai are telling Obama with their decision to keep building on occupied land is, “When it comes to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, we decide, not you.”
And if Netanyahu has jolted Joe and others out of their romantic reveries about Israel, good. At least now we no longer see as through a glass darkly.
Israeli and U.S. interests often run parallel, but they are not the same. Israel is concerned with a neighborhood. We are concerned with a world of 300 million Arabs and a billion Muslims. Our policies cannot be the same.
If they are, we will end up with all of Israel’s enemies, who are legion, and only Israel’s friends, who are few.
And if our policy and Israel’s are one and the same, the Arab perception will be what it is today — that America cannot stand up to Israel, even when her national interests command it.
Joe’s performance before he got the wet mitten across the face only underscored the point: The mighty superpower is a poodle of Israel.

U.S. Tells Israel: “You Are Undermining America, Endangering Troops”
The “special relationship” is dead, learn some of the “why” being kept from you

By Gordon Duff

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Clinton and Joint Chief’s Chairman Mike Mullen have all recently visited Israel on two issues, reliable information that Israel was planning an attack on Iran, a plan designed to push America into a war our leaders believe is both wrong and likely to risk a global nuclear confrontation with Russia and the building of a massive housing project on the Arab side of Jerusalem in violation of numerous agreements, a project that is likely to cause a spike in world terrorism and send thousands of new fighters to Afghanistan to face American forces there.

This is the worst point in the history of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel since the founding of that nation in 1948 but these are not the only reasons, not these and the arrogant and intractable attitude of Israel’s leaders nor being caught in lie after lie, lies told to their financial backer and closest ally, the United States. Here is some background on CENTOM Commander, General Petraeus’ shocking briefing:

On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region…

“Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.” But Petraeus wasn’t finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command — or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. The Mullen briefing and Petraeus’s request hit the White House like a bombshell… pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with the chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. … Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.

Israel didn’t. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister:

“This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: “The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.” The message couldn’t be plainer: Israel’s intransigence could cost American lives.

The deterioration started long before this and can be tracked by changing perceptions in the Obama administration whose leaders are heavily “pro-Israel” but lack the extremist convictions of the Zionist/extremist group that surrounded President Bush. When Obama took office, even Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, one of the most prominent Israeli proponents in the country, had become aware of the extent of Israeli involvement in areas that had taken the “special relationship” into an area of disaster for the United States. This is what was discovered:

–The military and intelligence organizations in the United States had been penetrated by Israel, not only through our normal broad partnership but the planting of “moles,” many from the Christian Zionist community who were taking direction from Israel and not the United States. The result wasn’t just limited to falsification of intelligence, both leading to endless phony terror alerts and non-existent enemies but to skewing operations in a manner to guarantee their failure with significant American cost in both lives and money.

–The massive spy network uncovered by Sibel Edmonds had been tracked, almost entirely to Israel. Edmonds had been silenced by National Security Letters issued by John Ashcroft, leading Christian Zionist in the Bush Administration and constant “private” visitor to Israel. After 6 years of spying at the highest levels of the White House, Department of State, Congress and the Pentagon, the network grew even more, accessing nearly all top US intelligence and selling it on the open market.

–Most disastrous of the stolen intelligence was the data on the new JSF, the F35 Joint Strike Fighter. All data on this new $300 billion dollar project fell into Israeli hands in 2008, information that may have turned the air superiority fighter meant to rule the skies for the next 30 years into a “target sled.” This is the biggest intelligence attack on the US since the Pollard/Israeli scandal. Pollard, an American Jew reputedly associated with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, stole America’s battle plans for the defense of NATO, our entire spy/surveillance network plans and full ultra-top secret detailed plans that could have negated America’s nuclear deterrent during the most dangerous times of the Cold War. Pollard’s information was sold to the Soviets by Israel, information that could have let Russia win World War III.
–The Israeli attack on Gaza was timed to an American change of administration and done without consultation. Broad intelligence sources indicate that the attacks were not in relatiation to any terrorist activity but are spoken of “behind closed doors” by top US officials as ethnic cleansing not unlike the issues that brought NATO into conflict with Serbia. The systematic nature of the attack, destroying water-treatment, schools, hospitals, food storage, power generation and the massive loss of life, especially among children, has soured many in the Obama camp on Israel–Israel’s use of the Jewish lobby in the US to hold up President Obama’s domestic agenda and their use of Jewish controlled media to embarrass the President has caused more bitterness. With Jewish controlled/owned Fox, CNN (Wolf Blitzer, formerly of the Jerusalem Post), ABC, CBS, NBC networks and other major news sources all working in concert against, particularly President Obama’s health care initiative, Israel is seen as “flexing its muscle” even more. The believed rationale is the removal of all non-Jews from Israel, dead or alive, with a powerless US government paying the bills and fighting the massive terrorist backlash for generations.

–The Israeli agenda of working with India to destabilize Pakistan, organize terror attacks there and, less publicly known, in Afghanistan and Iraq, some against American targets, can no longer be ignored by the current administration, Secretary Gates, General’s Mullen and Petraeus. Israeli’s “dynamic duo,” Senators McCain and Lieberman, though still holding important committee assignments on the hill, are being held increasingly in disrepute in the United States. When Israel sends these two on errands, it no longer carries the weight and power of the United States as it had during the Bush administation.
–Re-examination of a number of terrorist attacks during the Bush administation, particularly in Europe, show a clear “Mossad footprint,” something adding credence to the hypothesis that the “war on terror” and intelligence failures in Iraq had been heavily influenced by Israeli sources, many of the same individuals tied to the Edmonds spy affair, many close to, not only Israel but President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Recently a secret El Al/Israel flight from JFK in New York has been discovered, a flight authorized by top Bush officials, one previously kept secret and now being tied covering up 9/11 intelligence failures. The El Al Boeing 747 left only hours after the 9/11 attack, at a time all air traffic in the United States was grounded.

With nearly all Arab/Muslim governments aligned behind the US, including a softening of tensions with Iran, Israel feels it must act quickly. However, the US no longer has any strategic requirement for a relationship with Israel. What had been seen as a potential ally, perhaps now wrongly so, in the region is now generally perceived as a “runaway train” that the United States can no longer go to the United Nations time after time to protect from sanctions, 32 times thus far. Israel clearly feels it has the United States “over a barrel” with control of media, a massive AIPAC lobby working against American policy and huge new financial influence over the upcoming Congressional elections handed over to them by the highly controversial 5/4 Supreme Court “free speech” election funding decision clearly meant to aid Israel further in her ability to intimidate Congress.

Unofficially, Israel has moved to the top of America’s “terrorist watch list” and is now drifting toward “evildoer” status, not only by the White House but, more broadly, through top defense officials who now perceive Israel as a threat to the United States.

GORDON DUFF: U.S. TELLS ISRAEL: “YOU ARE UNDERMINING AMERICA, ENDANGERING TROOPS” : Veterans Today



YouTube- US General Petraeus: Israeli Policy Endangers the Lives of American Soldiers

This is a big question:

Why is CNN airing any Truth about Israel?

This will probably blow over. Always does. But now is a good time to spread the message to non-awakened folks. Right now they're disproportionately open to hearing the truth.