Barack Obama s Mideast policy speech and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu s address to Congress inspired Lawrence O Donnell to make his Rewrite tonight a crash course on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, playing select clips of both addresses and concluding both leaders are saying the same thing: the 1967 border are not tenable. But you wouldn t know that, O Donnell complained, By listening to hysterics who wrongly believe they are rising in Israel s defense.
O Donnell was clearly not happy with the outrage surrounding President Obama s initial comments , as he found it based on half a sentence. Playing the clip, he dramatically revealed that the words after 1967 were with mutually agreed swaps. This, he found, seemed completely congruent with the words in Netanyahu s speech , where the Prime Minister noted he would agree to negotiated borders. These borders, O Donnell argued, were the very same in President Obama s speech, simply not named by year, but you would never know that by listening to hte hysterics who wrongly believe they are rising in Israel s defense.
Given this, he accused Netanyahu of pretending to be enraged and accused the American press of letting him get away with it in a way his own people don t even allow. Israelis are much more critical of their own government than any American dare be, he noted, highlighting Netanyahu s 27-member minority in the Knesset as one sign that Israelis weren t as enthralled with him as the American right is not to mention a poll showing 57% of Israelis expressing a preference for Netanyahu to have agreed with President Obama outright.
Before specifically analyzing these two speeches and Netanyahu proper, however, O Donnell gave some background on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, noting the immense criticism President Bill Clinton received for using the phrase Palestinian state in the 1990s and visiting Gaza City to give a speech before the Palestinian government. Imagine what the Obama haters would do if President Obama delivered a speech in Gaza, in that same place. As for the phrase Palestinian state , those who police thought about Israel in this country didn t mind it when President George W. Bush used it, because, in the words of Colin Powell, the phrase was nothing new. In a series of winks and nods, Lawrence noted, the unthinkable, the unsayable becomes nothing new.
The segment via MSNBC below:
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38 commentssaid: Senate Democrats are expected to support a resolution intended as a rebuff to President Obama s call for basing Middle East peace talks on the 1967 Israeli-Palestinian borders.
It would be a rare rebuke of the president by the upper chamber and a sign that Democrats are worried about the impact of last week s speech on the U.S.-Israel relationship and pro-Israel constituents.
Hey dumbass, the Israelis AGREE with Obama. Maybe you should actually read some Israeli papers like the Haaretz (especially their main editorial) and the Jerusalem Post. Sigh.
darladoon said: o donnell could even go a step further (he s a bold guy), and just say it loud and clear:
israel was taken from the palestinians in 1948 (via an agreement with the uk and the usa)
am i wrong?
how could that land *not* have been taken from the arabs?
they were there!
the jews hadn t really had any stake in that area in, what, 1000 years?
am i incorrect?
frankly, palestine deserves the 1947 borders. and it should be up to them to decide what to cede to israel.
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