Rahm Emanuel - Tag Search

A senior Obama administration official has now denied to Yedioth Ahronoth that Middle East envoy George Mitchell threatened to cut off aid to Israel (a claim that was never terribly believable to begin with).

"It was not a threat and not an implied threat," the senior official told Ynet.

Other U.S. officials are also pushing back against Mitchell's remarks: Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut -- traveling in Jerusalem -- said today that Congress would never approve a reduction of aid to Israel.

I've been trying to figure out Hamid Karzai's strategy with regards to the Afghan election and the possibility of a runoff. You can sum it up in one word: delay.

The latest news is that the Independent Electoral Commission, an Afghan panel stacked with Karzai loyalists, has delayed the release of the U.N.-backed Electoral Complaints Commission's recount. The ECC is expected to announce that Karzai's vote tally has dropped to 47 percent, necessitating a runoff.

IEC officials tell The Guardian they're considering legal challenges to the recount.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set out on a couple media wooing attempts in the wake of a meeting today between himself, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Barack Obama in Washington, D.C. - an attempt to "narrow the gaps" between their views on how to proceed with peace negotiations.

There's not a lot of news out there about how the talks went; probably there weren't any substantial advances, but hey, at least they shook hands. Netanyahu, meanwhile, seemed to do a skillful public relations job.

Yedioth Ahronoth reports on a questionable story from Al-Jareeda, a Kuwaiti newspaper, which claims that Israel asked the U.S. for permission to attack Iran shortly after the election and received no reply. The report is based on an interview with an unnamed "U.S. diplomatic source located in Jerusalem."

According to the source, Israel was serious about its intentions to attack Iran and hit it hard, but the US's lack of response to the request left Israel frustrated and the operation was called off.

Two things strike us as odd: First, that a U.S. diplomat would leak this to a Kuwaiti newspaper (why Kuwait?); and second, does anyone believe that the Obama administration would ignore a request to bomb Iran? How would that conversation go?

"Listen, Rahm, if Bibi calls again about that bombing Iran thing, tell him I'm out playing golf, okay?"

Consider us a little skeptical about this report.

Akiva Eldar, writing in Ha'aretz, has a smart take on Benjamin Netanyahu's suggestion that Obama's advisers (David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel) are "self-hating Jews."

It is easy to imagine what an uproar there would be in Jerusalem if an Arab leader or newspaper dared to claim that an American president was favorable to Israel because of the influence of a Jewish adviser. Netanyahu, who spent many years in the United States, knows very well the extent to which Jewish administration officials in key positions are sensitive to the slightest hint of dual loyalty - to their birthplace and their historic homeland. It turns out that for him, politics bends the iron-clad rule that "all Jews are responsible for one another."

Many American Jews -- and definitely a majority of the young ones -- are already closer to Obama's view on Israel than to Netanyahu's. It doesn't do Bibi any good to suggest that Obama is a clueless naif in thrall to his self-hating Jewish advisers.

A banner week for the Netanyahu administration, really. First we learned that Bibi is somewhat paranoid about the Israeli media, and that he thinks Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod -- two of Obama's top advisers -- are "self-hating Jews."

Then he told Germany's foreign minister that the West Bank can't become "Judenrein," the Nazi term for an area cleared of Jews. This prompted a stunned nod from the foreign minister. (I guess the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has dragged on long enough that Godwin's law now applies?)

And now we learn his administration wants to keep "much" of the Golan Heights in any peace agreement with Syria.