The Lessons of Netanyahu's Triumph

From Caroline Glick, at Jerusalem Post:

In the coming weeks and months, the threats to Israel will surely only increase. And with these escalating threats will come also the escalating need for strong and certain leadership.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was hoping to avoid his clash with US President Barack Obama this week in Washington.

Four days before his showdown at the White House with the American leader, Netanyahu addressed the Knesset. His speech was the most dovish he had ever given. In it, he set out the parameters of the land concessions he is willing to make to the Palestinians, in the event they ever decide that they are interested in negotiating a final peace.

Among other things, Netanyahu spoke for the first time about “settlement blocs,” and so signaled that he would be willing to evacuate the more isolated Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. He also spoke of a longterm military presence in the Jordan Valley rather than Israeli sovereignty along the militarily vital plain.

Both strategically and ideologically, Netanyahu’s speech constituted a massive concession to Obama. The premier had good reason to believe that his speech would preempt any US demand for further Israeli concessions during his visit to Washington.

Alas, it was not to be. Instead of welcoming Netanyahu’s unprecedented concessions, Obama dismissed them as insufficient as he blindsided Netanyahu last Thursday with his speech at the State Department. There, just hours before Netanyahu was scheduled to fly off to meet him in the Oval Office, Obama adopted the Palestinian negotiating position by calling for Israel to accept that future negotiations will be based on the indefensible – indeed suicidal – 1949 armistice lines.

So, just as he was about to board his plane, Netanyahu realized that his mission in the US capital had changed ...

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The Aim of Blood Libels

From Caroline Glick (via Glenn Reynolds):

For Israelis, the American Left's assault on Sarah Palin and the conservative movement in the wake of Jared Loughner's murderous attack in Tucson was disturbingly familiar.

Just as the American leftist media and political leadership immediately sought to blame Palin, the Tea Party and conservative media personalities for Loughner's actions, so in 1995 their Israeli counterparts accused the Right - from then-opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu to various rabbis to the two million Israelis who protested against the so-called peace process with the PLO - of being responsible for Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.

Just as Palin and her fellow conservatives are accused of inciting the schizophrenic shooter to pull the trigger, so Netanyahu and his fellow rightists were accused of inciting the sociopathic Yigal Amir to plot and carry out his crime.

And just as it doesn't matter to the American media elites that Americans conservatives engaged in no such incitement, and that Loughner himself seemed motivated to act by a mad obsession with grammar, it didn't matter to their Israeli counterparts that Amir's closest associate and the man responsible for the most incendiary anti-Rabin propaganda was Avishai Raviv - a government agent.

Palin's characterization of the Left's appalling assault on her and her fellow conservatives as a "blood libel" was entirely accurate. Moreover, as her previous use of the term "death panels" in the healthcare debate brought clarity to an issue the Left sought to obscure, so her use of the term "blood libel" exposed the nature of the Left's behavior and highlighted its intentions.

RELATED: More blood libel, "Marxist Barbara Ehrenreich Exploits Arizona Shooting in Latest Smear on Glenn Beck."