The United States has just revealed a stunning amount of information on some of Israel’s the most closely guarded secrets: information about its military cooperation with America and 20 years’ worth of details on Israel’s nuclear technology development, up to the 1980s.
The 386-page report, composed in 1987 by the federally funded Institute for Defense Analysis, (an NGO that operates under the Pentagon), is titled “Critical Technological Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations.”
It was declassified by the Pentagon in early February — but oddly, the report has been redacted so as to black out or withhold everything the Institute wrote on America’s NATO allies — but to reveal all that American experts assembled in Israel.
I agree. Since they want to return to the 7th century, I’d say it’s time to (with apologies to Samuel L. Jackson) go all medieval on their asses. And then do the same thing to the Iranian militias who are helping them.
The crisis in the relationship we discuss in our new editorial statement has entered a new and potentially unprecedented phase.
It may well be that the president is going to present American Jews with a choice over the coming months no American president should ask us to make—to become parties to and participants in his effort to create what, in 2009, he called “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel.
…If you want to hate what Netanyahu said, hate it. But here’s the thing: How the prime minister of Israel talks about Israeli citizens who possess equal rights under the law and have their own means of redress under the law if they are mistreated should have no basis whatever in the “assessment” of the bilateral relationship between the United States and Israel. The president has spent years making very nice patter with Turkey’s Erdogan and other foreign leaders whose treatment of minorities do not deserve mention alongside Israel’s and whose suffering small sub-populations have no means of achieving redress.
Even those who are furious with Netanyahu should really take a breath and a close look and consider this point carefully: The Arab-vote business is a pretext. American presidents, this one especially, typically do not revisit special strategic relationships based on election-day maneuvers in a democracy, however unpleasant they might find them. In my view, Obama is hoping once again to use liberal Jewish disaffection in the United States with Netanyahu as a wedge to give him space to make a major policy pivot from the special relationship—one for which he has hungered since he came into office.
“I’ll assume he’s alive until I see the corpse.” One other possibility is that there’s been a putsch, perhaps over the assassination, and he’s under arrest, but they haven’t figured out who’s in charge yet to make an announcement. But usually such things are resolved much more quickly.
Why is he doing so poorly? As noted, it’s certainly domestic politics — the Israelis have been living with an existential threat since the nation was founded.
[Early afternoon update]
I wish you guys could read Hebrew.. The butthurt from slanted Israeli journalists tweeting is so strong, it's gorgeous. Aww poor babies.
Hmmmm, not sure why I can’t properly embed that tweet, but here it is. he thinks the debate didn’t go well for the opposition, but we’ll see.
I’m sure you’ll be as shocked, shocked as I am to learn that there are huge temporal gaps in them. Because, you know, “most transparent administration in history.” Just like with the IRS.
Hey, it’s not like it’s eighteen minutes, like Nixon.