Klein and Time Ride to Obama’s Rescue
When Obama spoke to AIPAC on May 22, 2011, trying to control the damage done by his announcement that Israel return to the 1967 armistice lines, those who weren’t buying his “explanation” sat conspicuously in their chairs and on their hands. In contrast, most others jumped up to enthusiastically applaud and re-embrace the president. The Jewish community was visibly fracturing.
One attendee who was not accepting Obama’s explanation volunteered what many of us thought: if Obama nuked Tel Aviv, he’d lose 8% of the Jewish vote.
So it was not surprising that some “court Jew” would be found to take Benjamin Netanyahu to task for the public shellacking of the president who called upon Israel to return to the Auschwitz lines of 1967. And at what better place than Time magazine? Its anti-Semitism knows few limits. In September of 2010, its cover story was titled “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.” The answer? Because Israelis are more concerned about money. Of course!
Joe Klein, Time columnist and well-known liberal, asserts that Netanyahu purposely misrepresented Obama’s statement. The president did not say Israel’s borders needed to be renegotiated. According to Klein, what Obama said was that a two-state solution “should be based on pre-1967 borders, with mutually agreed upon land swaps that would enable Israel to incorporate the vast majority of — dare I say — its illegal settlements into its territory [...].”
Klein’s mixture of deception and disingenuousness goes on. He proclaims that the swapping of land around these borders was a fixture in past negotiations between the Arabs and Israelis.
As a seasoned journalist, Klein must know that diplomacy is about nuance. There are profound differences concerning where one begins negotiations, where one finishes, and what corollary arrangements are appended to the end products. There is a difference between outcomes that parties achieve through the process of compromise, conciliation, and hard-fought exchanges, and ones the president of the United States imposes as a starting point. In this case, that starting point is nothing less than the Palestinian position.
The president announced to the Muslim world what the Israelis must give up. He said absolutely nothing about what the Palestinians should do about the important issues of the “Palestinian demand to return millions of refugees to Israel proper and overrun it,” or the “status of Jerusalem” — which, in his 2008 AIPAC speech, then-candidate Obama called “indivisible.”
By failing to restate the “indivisibility” of Jerusalem, Obama made the omission conspicuous, underscoring the gravity of his commitment to the idea of Israel withdrawing to the 1967 armistice lines.
Klein fabricated his assertion that the president proposed that the land swaps would actually permit Israel to incorporate most of its settlements. Obama merely said that land swaps would take into consideration Israel’s settlements, a statement as vague as it is meaningless.
As for Klein’s statement that the settlements are illegal, that is mere posturing. The legality or illegality of the settlements is a complex matter of international law. Just because you write for Time and proclaim something is illegal doesn’t make it so.
It is no secret that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has long denied any relationship between the Jews and the land of Israel, repudiating both Jewish history and any foundation for a Jewish claim to the land. The Jews, according to Abbas, whose doctoral dissertation is a Holocaust-denying tome, have no history in Israel. In contrast, the Palestinians, he asserts, are the direct descendants of the Canaanites. Abbas, as Barry Rubin so carefully documents, never had any interest in land swaps.
As one who used to subscribe to Time & read Joe Klein I can only say what else would one expect of Joe Klein?
I gave up on TIME Magazine 20 years ago. I gave up on the Washington Post 8 years ago…when I could no longer stomach their lies and their support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I got sick of paying to be lied to.
Klein is so much of a whack job that words cannot describe him. Why anyone would read Time is beyod me. Boycott Time. Boycott Time’s advirtisers.
I don’t even bother to read Time when it’s lying on a table in a waiting room. The lamestream media wonders why they’re losing readership and advertising, and they blame everyone but themselves.
Always, always, remember folks, to the far-left liberals in the main stream media (and that’s almost the entire main stream media), Obama is now too big to fail. If this president is a failure, then they were all failures for carrying his water since the 2008 election. So they have to keep on carrying his water rather than admit they supported an incompetent neophyte for president. The main stream media’s attacks on whoever the Republicans pick for president are going to be incredible. Rather than admit that they made a mistake, the main stream media would rather see this country go down the toilet by trying to give Obama yet another four years in office.
But the good news is that the main stream media doesn’t make up the majority of the votes in this country. You do. And you can prove how angry you are simply by voting in the 2012 election and really sending a message, like you did in 2010. By throwing Obama out of office next year, you will also put the final nail in the coffin of the main stream media, proving once and for all that they have very little influence left and, if they want to still be relevant in the future, they had better be more honest and fair in their coverage of presidential candidates. Like that would ever happen.
very well said libertyship46 and I agree 110%. I have never cared for time period. they have allways had a tilt to the left,in as much as obama is concerned I will vote for anyone BUT,
There are reasons why liberals, such as those who make up the lamestream media, are incapable of comprehending that they are wrong.
As one listened to Netanyahu’s speech, there were qualities in it that were reminiscient of the speeches of other great men such as Presidents Reagan and Kennedy, and so obviously absent in the speeches of the current President. Those qualities are the ring of truth and the integrity of the speaker. And all the spin in the world isn’t going to change that.
Mr. Klein needs to get out more. Had dinner with two mid 20′s young adults last night. Neither one can find a job for Summer and they are staying in school to finish early. But what happens after that? Neither one is optimistic and one of them “was” in the bag the first time around. Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Ron Paul or whoever the media trashes up to November 2012 I really don’t think Time or any unknowledgeable mainstream talking heads can fix the reality. Reminded me of how I felt when Carter was president because he made us feel so inferior. I have hope for the American Spirit that want better and deserve better.
When that issue of Time magazine appeared in my mailbox and I saw it for the first time – I immediately wrote a letter to Time magazine telling them to drop my subscription. When I learned that US News and World Reports was going to kill its magazine and give me a Time magazine subscription in its place I told them to send me a check in its place.
Liberals for the most part supported Israel over it’s first 30 years of existence because it had a Labor government whose domestic social engineering policies they saw as kindred spirits to their own beliefs. It was the election of Begin and Likud in 1977 that began the fracture between Israel and the American left, to the point that nowadays, Netanyahu and his government is simply seen as Israel’s version of the Republican Party — a group to be Alinskyed, demonized and destroyed.
Plug “Republican” in for “Likud” and any high-profile conservative Republican politician’s name for Bibi when you weigh how they’re treated by Democrats and the big media, and the reaction of people like Joe Klein and others who put their political liberalism ahead of their faith becomes breathtakingly easy to understand.
There are two memorable phrases in this article: “court jew” and “Obama’s narcissism and arrogance jeopardized meaningful negotiations.”
There have always been segments of any population who desire access to power more than they care about adherence to any ethical standard–much less loyalty. These court jews are all the more reprehensible today given the stakes.
There is only one meaningful prerequisite to a negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians: each must absolutely recognize the other’s legitimacy. Until that happens, everything is posturing. End of story.
#8, you didn’t find the line about nuking Tel Aviv memorable?
Obama’s Cairo speech foreshadowed his approach. He told the Arab world they needed to accept Israel because of the suffering that Jews endured during the Holocaust. Obama played into the Arab narrative of Israel as an alien presence, forced upon an innocent Muslim population by Europeans feeling guilty over the Holocaust. Absent was any hint of Jewish connection to Israel before 1948, centuries of Jewish presence, a modern Zionist movement that predated the Shoah by nearly a century, or that a significant part of Israel’s Jews are descended from Jews who lived in the middle east and North Africa, not Europe. (And of course not a word about Arab complicity with the Nazis or about centuries of Muslim oppression of Jews.)
Libertyship,
Excellent point. Though I had stated on occasion here at PJM like you did that the MSM is so personally invested in Obama that they would rather die than admit how wrong they were in assessing Obama’s talents, I hadn’t given thought to the possibility of putting the 20 penny nail in their coffin of diminishing influence. I think you might be right.
I forget that Time Magazine is still published except for the once or twice a year I find myself in a doctor’s waiting room. On those occasions, I treat it for what it is – a propaganda piece for the DNC.
I had a Time Magazine subscription for 25 years, but gave it up years ago, and Joe Klein is one reason why. Leftism has produced a generation of bigoted hacks who are immersing themselves in the worship of the hollow idol that is Obama.
Time magazine is thinner and thinner, going the way of Newsweek.
Caroline Glick is a far more believable and intelligent read than Joe Klein.
Obama’s Undeniable Antipathy Toward Israel
I haven’t read Time for, well, a long time, which I suppose makes me a Time-ex.
As the policies they have long supported fail and collapse around them, the person they supported prove to be a lost but manipulable child, do you expect Klein and the crazed Left of this country to question themselves? The very center of their lives is at stake. For years and up to today they have told themselves that they are wiser then the rest of the slugs of America. Why? Because only they know that centralized government power is the answer to the common cold, and everything else conceivable.
They would have to deny all that is themselves, they are to ignorant to know where or to what else they could turn to. Stupidity is their last defense.
I cannot understand the Arab’s view of Israel. Think about it for a minute and consider that the Arab nations in mass have tried several times to overthrow Israel and most likely kill ALL of the survivors if they had won. They didn’t! The Jews defeated them many times and took some of the land used to set up the attacks on their nation. They gave back a huge part to Egypt for a peace accord and now the sorry Egyptians are considering breaking their part of the bargain. Why our president would stab in the back the only TRUE ally in the middle east is for Obamaphiles to explain. Time magazine is so irrelevant that it makes no sense to even discuss it.
I only see Time magazine in waiting rooms anymore. I think they choose Time because they know nobody will steal it.
Obama’s Re-Election
From a child’s perspective, seventeen months is a virtual eternity. From an American political perspective, it’s virtually around the corner. November 6th, 2012, when Americans will once again choose who will lead them for four long years, is little more than seventeen months down the road.
America’s choice of a leader has, literally, never been more momentous.
The economy wallows in the doldrums amost a year after Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed 2010′s “Summer of Recovery,” a recovery yet to be experienced by the 14 million jobless. Obama’s “stimulus” has chiefly stimulated government employment, a skyrocketing deficit and national debt, and impending stagflation. Americans have either lost their homes or trillions in home equity. Socialized medicine is now the law.
And, that’s only on the domestic front.
Internationally, we have lost even more, in respect from our allies, increased belligerence from our enemies, and more and more of our brave troops dying in war zones. Months ago, we took up arms under the guise of a NATO operation in the Libyan hellhole in a “kinetic action” which we were promised would involve weeks. The much-reviled terrorist prison at Guantanomo is still open.
Nevertheless, whether one is an avid supporter of Barack Hussein Obama’s re-election or one who regards that prospect as nothing less than the absolute worst eventuality since September 11th, 2001, seventeen months from now President Barack Hussein Obama will again visit Chicago’s Grant Park to announce to screaming worshippers that he had been re-elected.
It doesn’t make sense but no one ever alleged American politics made sense.
What does make sense is Obama’s successful brand of Chicago take-no-prisoners, brook-no-opposition, tell-’em-what-they-wanna-hear-then-do-whatever-you-damned-well-please technique. Couple that philosophy with endless campaigning which has now gone on for at least four years, with creation of an unprecedented national dependency and other policies designed to cement a plurality, with certain constituencies and demographic elements, Obama is a sure winner.
Compounding the challenge for Republicans next year is the fact that no viable candidate has yet emerged although that’s all but incidental in view of the Obama Machine already in full battle mode and dedicated to his re-election at all costs. In fact, too, regardless of all the other elements–although they are all interrelated–it’s those “certain constituencies and demographic elements” that will insure a Republican defeat. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4707)
The most interesting is the Jewish comments on any theme connected to the Jewish problems: they speak about antisemites(antisemitism) not about the Jews themselves.
when obama spoke to aipac he said something that puzzled me and i have yet to see any analysis about. he said there should be “permanent palestinian borders with israel, jordan and egypt and permanent israeli borders with palestine”. it seems to me that for palestine to have borders with both jordan and egypt that obama is saying the entire coastline needs to be palestinian. how else could palestine border those 2 countries?
and that would be bad for israel to lose the whole coast with the ports and the natural gas that is offshore.
I would be most interested to have transcripts of the meetings BHO had with the Muslim Brotherhood in June, 2009, as well as any other time? I would also like to have BHO’s itinerary of his trip to Pakistan in 1981, who he met with, etc. I think there is much more to BHO’s embracing the Brotherhood than meets the eye, as well as his numerous “outreaches” to CAIR and other Brotherhood front organizations. Again, there is more here than just “anti-colonialism” at work!
Joe Klein is an embarrassment. Thank you Abraham Miller, for pointing that out.
As for Time Magazine. Goodbye.
No one has mentioned the thunderous applause Bibi got at the US congress from Both sides of the aisle- Harry Reid(liberal) Upbraided Obama (without saying specifically how stupid even moronic obamas approach is) We need all americans
to continue to support Israel as 5 out of every six do. Lets not alienate Israel suporters by puting people in Boxes- Confront Palestinian lies and American extremist proaganda, free our campus for pro jewish speech, expose the Islamist antisemitism and religious imperialism-These are some of the important goals-There will always be another obama to put his foot in his mouth until we educate everyone out of ignorance. Of course there are those who cannot be reached but there are many left and right who do not know anything about the truths most of us (participants at Forbidden Territories) know well. As to Time magazine? who reads that? I thought they went out with LIFE.
Obama represents the majority of the intelligentsia, media, academia, nomenklatura, Democrats, and, alas, Americans and the world: all the people who count. He won. Get used to it, or vote for a Republican who isn’t a squish or a rino.
If PJMS is serious, let them call for electing a candidate who will back Israel 100%, abolish the Departments of Education and Energy, and withdraw the USA from anti-Semitic organizations, i.e., the UN and NATO. For starters.
Otherwise it’s all jabber and no action.
PJMS hasn’t and won’t because they’ll lose the respect of the people who count–see list above. Long-term trends are long-term trends for reason. Obama swims with them and wins. Everyone else, including Israel, is a loser.
I steal Time because my dog prefers it to Newsweak. There hasn’t been a reason to read it for years.
Another Rescuer: The NYT
Obama’s Post-Racial America
Only the New York Times could run a headline, “Is Anti-White Bias a Problem?”
Well, that’s not exactly true since the Washington Post, the LA Times, the Boston Globe, and countless other liberal-leftist “newspapers” could easily have posed the same inane question but “The Paper of Record,” until it goes defunct, is still the standard bearer which still sets the agenda and the tone of social and political discourse in America.
Based on that headline, and granting the query ran on its “Opinion” page, either the Times has doubts on whether bias against white people in the United States is problematic or, if it exists, does it matter? Otherwise, why even broach the topic for discussion?
Will the “Old Grey Lady’s” next subject be, ”Wife Beating, Good or Bad?” or, “Is Gay-Bashing Ever Profitable?”
The brief Times piece begins with, ”In what some have called the new post-racial era, what constitutes discrimination is shifting,” then cites one of many instances in which African-Americans have contested fair and equitable municipal qualification exams and have had the results of those tests overturned in courts. One of those decisions, in turn, was overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court which determined it discriminated against white people. (http://nyti.ms/mHRTuK)
“Is Anti-White Bias a Problem” cites a research study which “found that Americans think significant progress has been made in the fight against anti-black bias. But white Americans perceived that progress as coming at their expense and that anti-white bias has become a bigger societal problem than anti-black bias.”
Employing a 1-10 scale, the researchers discovered significant changes in what people have come to perceive about bias over the past 50 years: Black perceptions of anti-black bias declined from 9.7 in the fifties to 6.1 today while black views of bias against whites rose a minuscule 1.4 to 1.8. That latter number clearly shows the national, racial divide: White perceptions of anti-white bias soared from 1.8 to 4.7 in the same time period . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4721)
I have a terribly hard time understanding how Jews can stab Israel in the back. Ed’s explained it to me countless times but it still has a hard time penetrating my brain. The problem is that it doesn’t make sense; it just doesn’t make sense. I keep wanting to ask the Jewish community (and Klein in particular): “What part of the Palestinians’ determination to kill every single one of you do you NOT get?”