I previously posted about the latest rash of scandalous photos coming out of Afghanistan showing U.S. military atrocities under Obama’s command, and wondering if the media would pick up on it the way they did when it was Bush’s army… Well, here’s a twist I wasn’t expecting: yes, one of the U.S. media, Rolling Stone, [...]
Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic, cast a spotlight on yet another disgustingly overt example of pure bias in the mainstream media, particularly at the anti-Semitic Reuters newswire. He points to a Reuters news item which contains the following despicable sentences: Police said it was a “terrorist attack” — Israel’s term for a Palestinian [...]
In the [sparse] reporting of the Palestinians’ massacre of the Fogel family, several newspapers stand out with their distorted sense of “balance”, i.e., where they feel overwhelmingly uncomfortable describing the barbarity of the Palestinians without at least taking a swipe or two at the Israelis, no matter how patently irrelevant or disgustingly disrespectful it comes [...]
Netanyahu 1, Obama 0
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Score one for Netanyahu.
Haaretz is reporting that the United States has dropped demands for freezing any construction in Jerusalem, indicating that Netanyahu’s firm stance and consistent message of Jerusalem being off the table is paying off.
Just as laudable, though, were the other stipulations that Netanyahu insisted be part of this new “gesture” toward the Palestinians of a nine-month temporary settlement freeze:
- This freeze will exclude some 2,500 housing units on which construction has already started.
- Some natural growth will be exempt, e.g., kindergartens and schools and other special cases where construction is necessary to maintain a “normal life”.
- This freeze must have a clear “exit plan”, i.e., it is a confidence-building measure that must be matched by reciprocal steps from the PA and Arab states. If these fail to materialize, Israel wants an American guarantee that it will not oppose renewed building.
So, although there is some sort of settlement freeze in the works now, it is not at all what Obama had been pushing and its details seem to be almost entirely controlled by Netanyahu.