Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
How does warm press conference mesh with Obama’s warnings yesterday?
President Obama has been meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today.
From the Washington Post:
Seeking to salvage an elusive Middle East peace plan, President Barack Obama pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday to make the “tough decisions” needed to move forward on talks with the Palestinians.But facing a U.S.-imposed April deadline, the Israeli leader declared pessimistically that, “Israel has been doing its part and, I regret to say, the Palestinians have not.”
Obama and Netanyahu spoke before an Oval Office meeting on a snowy Monday in Washington. The meeting marked a more direct foray by Obama into the peace negotiations, which he has so far largely ceded to Secretary of State John Kerry.
Barak Ravid, a correspondent with Haaretz Newspaper, posted tweets from the event – a handful are included below. (Video added — Transcript here)
Obama: the timeframe for talks is coming to its end and tough decision will have to be made
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 3, 2014
Netanyahu: we must prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capacity
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 3, 2014
Netanyahu: Israel can't permit Iran to get nuclear weapons. I will do whatever I must do to defend Israel
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 3, 2014
Netanyahu: 20 years of peace process were mark by many Israeli steps for peace but we got suicide bombers and rockets in return
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 3, 2014
Netanyahu: its about time the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. We have only been here for 4000 years
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 3, 2014
Netanyahu: we are grateful for US support pic.twitter.com/IuNQZyxISS
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 3, 2014
Obama: we don't have a closer friend and ally than Israel pic.twitter.com/ww3zzMxE1Y
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) March 3, 2014
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Comments
What?
Say what?
Huh?
Hoo-dat?
Hows that again?
Who’s on first?
Is Second on third?
What?
Wassup?
Wassup mofo?
You be jivin’? Huh?
How’s that again?
— convo from the White House. Productive day.
Obama is desperately seeking a foreign leader he can push around.
Unfortunately, even Denzil Douglas of Saint Kitts & Nevis in the Caribbean is tougher and more manly than Obama, and won’t be intimidated, either.
Perhaps we should have considered our standing in the world before electing a weak sister President.
“Obama is desperately seeking a foreign leader he can push around.” How right you are!
Especially now. He needs to take it out on somebody because he has egg on his face with Ukraine.
They mesh because these are not really threats to Israel.
Why does anyone persist in thinking that the Middle East is one place that Obama is competent in (although, in this view, badly intentioned) and that he knows that his talk of not being able to deal with bad consequences is nonsense, and that really means to pressure Israel.
It should be pretty clear that the excuse given by some Arab countries for not co-operating enough on Iran or Syria is the lack of a peace agreement with Israel, and that that is what is motivating all this, not animus toward Israel.
Are you naive or malicious?
The only people standing in the way of a peace agreement are the Palestinians. Every single time Israel gives up major concessions to get them to the table, and then the Palestinians come up with some minor excuse to walk away. Again and again and again.
They don’t WANT peace. They want Israel destroyed.
I’d love to know what Netanyahu said to Obama in private.
Anybody else get the feeling that Obama is just stalling until Iran gets the bomb?
I wonder sometimes.
Obama would love to do to Israel what Putin is doing to Ukraine–
Without all that cumbersome 20th century stuff. The progressive war machine consists of slogans, tweets, Jedi mind tricks, and fairy dust.
Hmm…just ran across this tweet:
Howard Fineman ✔ @howardfineman
#AcademyAwards show diversity, tolerance, cultural creativity of US in Obama Era. Hard power matters, per Putin, but Oscars r as powerful.
Fineman added another after getting roundly ridiculed over the first:
“Before I tweeted that earlier thing out, my wife said it was the most vapid observation ever. I guess she was right!”
12 days a slave is a British venture . i believe the leading stars are british including the slave & the Lupito woman is African.
that is about as diverse as Mary Poppins.
“Obama: we don’t have a closer friend and ally than Israel”
Didn’t somebody put together a video mashup a while back of him saying basically the same thing about a whole bunch of countries, depending on who he was talking to? I don’t remember where I saw it off the top of my head -maybe someone else still has a link…
Found it 🙂
http://youtu.be/erYpXzE9Pxs
Remarkable, isn’t it?
Early on Obama understood he could repeat the same inane statement over and over, and his lap-dog media would #Bowdown, and report his words like they were the most insightful, meaning words ever spoken.
Love the photo of the handshake, btw.
I’m sure Obama was trying to avoid looking BN in the eye, but the photo makes it look like his fist is in a painful vise ‘cos BN is more manly than he is 🙂
Democrats have run into the tent of Michael Cohen to cover their eyes to the failure that is the Obama foreign policy.
Cohen makes a great argument for the PM of Slovenia, but it really doesn’t cut it for the “Most Powerful Man on the Planet.”
Tossing aside international commitments because they make bad PR of the day isn’t going to make you friends and let you influence events.
Who in the Middle East are going to take Obama assurances as having any gravitas ?
Today the Chinese seized two islands under dispute with Japan for decades. The Most Powerful Man on the Planet” could do nothing … he was side-lined by the racist homophobe in Moscow..
Israel will do what it has to do. The problem is that a bunch of other former American Allies will do the same. Get their own nuclear capacity to defend themselves. From South Korea to Poland a whole bunch of people are going to Nuke up. Can we blame them?
Obama is learning two important things the hard way:
1) Once you become president, foreign policy is no longer a theoretical exercise among academics to be played at in encounter groups.
2) Affirmative action does not extend past the American shoreline. No free rides overseas.
Six or seven more terms in the White House and I believe he just might have a handle on his job.
a pox on you for even hinting at that long a term 🙂
It hurt to type it, even in jest.
100 years in office wouldn’t be enough to turn that worm into a man.
A bit out of topic but, I see you all using the word manly, and I can’t help but remember the comparison between Marlboro Guy and Pajama Boy.
It kinda scares me to think that the term manly will soon be frowned upon, then politically incorrect, and finally banned from American English.
“Manly” is a grossly patriarchal, not to mention blatantly heteronormative, adjective. I’m pretty sure you just committed a micro-aggression, if not an outright hate-crime, there.
:p
I knew it !!!
😕
Please be assured no one used the term “manly” in reference to the President.
He’s no tool of the Patriarchy. He’s in touch with his feminine side as well as his feminine side. A girl’s girl, that one.
Krauthammer used the term “flaccid”. I thought that a very apt descriptor for a “more flexible” member…
Obama’s foreign policy: Destroy Israel
Obama’s domestic policy: Destroy U.S.A.
when all roads lead to Rome, eventually you end up in Rome.
The only occasion where one can use the word ‘manly’ without being called ‘politically incorrect sexist’ is when one pairs manly with lesbian.
i think ‘manly transgender ‘ would be fine. it has just a hint of availability on offer.
When I set up my Transgener dating app i will definitely be including this . Some discrimination is good Macky. there are enough awkward silences on dinner dates as itis with folk eying the dor. be kind Macky.