Obama acknowledges gaffe over Netanyahu insult but refuses to elaborate

[Violet_Crumble]

U.S. President Obama refuses to discuss the conversation he had November 3 with French President Sarkozy in which they were accidentally overheard disparaging Prime Minister Netanyahu.

By Natasha Mozgovaya and Barak Ravid

U.S. President Barack Obama mentioned on Sunday morning the embarrassing gaffe that took place on November 3, when what he thought a private conversation between himself and French President Nicolas Sarkozy was broadcast to reporters.

Obama acknowledged the incident but refused to comment on disparaging remarks he and Sarkozy had made about Prime Minister Netanyahu. “With respect to the ‘hot mic’ in France, I'm not going to comment on conversations that I have with individual leaders,” Obama said in Hawaii.

Unaware that a microphone in the meeting room at the G20 summit at Cannes was on , Sarkozy was heard on November 3 calling Netanyahu "a liar" in what he thought was a private exchange with Obama.

"I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar," Sarkozy told Obama, who was also unaware that the mic had been turned on and was being monitored by reporters via the headsets used for simultaneous translations.

Obama didn't exactly defend Netanyahu in that conversation, either. "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you," Obama replied, according to wire service reports.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/obama-acknowledges-gaffe-over-netanyahu-insult-but-refuses-to-elaborate-1.395581

[vminfla]

1. The only thing required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing

-- Thomas Paine.

Obama should have spoke up and condemned Sarkozy's statement.

[Pirate Smile]

3. Bibi is a liar and everyone knows it.

[vminfla]

5. Can you cite a lie?

Does he lie about his success with the ladies? Does he cheat on his taxes?

[Submariner]

6. A few of them

http://mondoweiss.net/2011/11/the-real-question-is-does-netanyahu-lie.html

[vminfla]

7. I did not see a single lie in the article

Someone merely has a difference of opinion and the authors unwillingness to acknowledge Israel's contributions. For example, Israel has protected religious freedom, unlike Jordanians who banned the construction of new churches when Jordan occupied the area.

[Violet_Crumble]

8. Of course he lies....

Apart from his lies back when Rabin was assassinated where he insisted he hadn't been inciting hatred and violence, there's also this article I posted only a day or two back.

'How many politicians, media people and ordinary citizens believe Netanyahu is sincerely interested in reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians? The reference, of course, is not to an agreement that will include Israeli control over the Jordan Valley for 40 years, as Netanyahu proposed recently to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

During the course of a condolence visit to one of the Jewish settlements at the end of the 1990s, Netanyahu bragged that he had succeeded in deceiving the Clinton administration during his first term as prime minister, in order to destroy the Oslo Accords. Believing the microphones and cameras had been turned off, Netanyahu related how he had extorted from the Clinton administration, in exchange for the Hebron agreement, a promise that Israel would be the sole entity entitled to define what the "military sites" are that will remain under its control. With a sly smile spread across his face, Bibi added: "I said that as far as I am concerned the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military site," and explained: "Why is this important? Because from that moment I stopped the Oslo Accords."

Yitzhak Shamir, Netanyahu's predecessor in the Likud leadership, put this in simple words: "For the Land of Israel it is permissible to lie." Netanyahu, a student of conservative American media advisor Arthur Finkelstein, has a more sophisticated formulation. In a lecture at a Likud conference in Eilat in July 2001, Bibi instructed the activists: "It doesn't matter if justice is on your side. You have to depict your position as just." '

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/why-should-anyone-believe-netanyahu-1.395439

[vminfla]

9. Then, I guess Haaretz lies too then

After all, here they are "inciting the assassination of Netanyahu"

[Violet_Crumble]

10. Not at all. How is calling for Nutty's government to be toppled inciting assassination?

Do you know what incitement is or know of the extreme incitement that Nutty was involved in prior to Rabin's assassination? I've posted some info on this in another thread, but I'll repost it for you...

eptember 21, 1993: Israeli Hard-Liner Compares Israeli Government Official to Nazi Appeaser

During the first Knesset debate on the Oslo peace accords (see September 13, 1993), Likud party chairman Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of US neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists, compares the accords to British attempts to appease Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler before World War II. Referring to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, he shouts at Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, “You are worse than Chamberlain.” Netanyahu is so aggressive in part because he has the public and private support of influential US neoconservatives and Christian fundamentalists. “I was ambassador for four years of the peace process, and the Christian fundamentalists were vehemently opposed to the peace process,” Israeli ambassador Itamar Rabinovich will recall (see July 1993). “They believed that the land belonged to Israel as a matter of divine right. So they immediately became part of a campaign by the Israeli right to undermine the peace process.” Netanyahu’s outburst on the floor of the Knesset is a deliberate part of this strategy.

October 1995: Right-Wingers Call for Israeli Prime Minister Rabin’s Death, Compare Israeli Government to Nazis

Most Israeli lawmakers and politicians distance themselves from the Jewish extremists calling for the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin over the Oslo peace accords (see September 13, 1993). However, Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu actively curries their favor (see July 1-2, 1994). On the floor of the Knesset, he often attacks Rabin (see September 21, 1993) for giving away “parts of our homeland.” After one particularly fiery speech, thousands of right-wing protesters gather in Jerusalem’s Zion Square, where they put of posters of Rabin wearing a Nazi SS uniform, display banners calling Rabin “Arafat’s Dog,” and chant, “Death to Rabin! Nazis! Judenrat!”—a particularly odious epithet referring to the “Jewish councils” that were forced by the Nazis to expedite the transfer of Jews to concentration camps. Housing Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer is horrified by the frenzy of the mob, and tells Netanyahu, who is orchestrating the demonstration, “You’d better restrain your people. Otherwise it will end in murder. They tried to kill me just now.… Your people are mad. If someone is murdered, the blood will be on your hands.… The settlers have gone crazy, and someone will be murdered here, if not today, then in another week or another month!” Netanyahu ignores the warning, and, basking in the chants of “Bibi! Bibi! Bibi!,” takes the podium, where he is optimistically introduced as the next prime minister of Israel.

http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1993bibiappeaser#a1993bibiappeaser

Here's a video of Nutty addressing a crowd of extremists. For those who don't understand Hebrew, the sign in English saying 'Death to Arabs' on the balcony Nutty's standing on sums up the sentiment...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MTx8O_1hzU

[Donald Ian Rankin]

11. "I support a 2-state solution" is the obvious big one. N.T.

[azurnoir]

18. Oh IMO Netanyahu didn't lie when he said that

because Jordan and Israel are two states right?

[Scurrilous]

13. Indeed. n/t

[kickysnana]

4. Only if it weren't true.n/t

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. Which is why we need BDS. N.T.

[LeftishBrit]

15. Disagree with you both.

BDS will only harden Israel's xenophobic isolationism; and in any case, it is unfair to boycott Israel when there are so many other countries that are doing bad things and no one is proposing BDS for most of them.

[LeftishBrit]

16. So calling Netanyahu a liar is 'evil'?

It may be undiplomatic. It may be hypocritical for Sarkozy or any politician to call any other politician a liar ('How do you know when a politician is lying?' 'Their lips are moving.') But it is hardly the sort of evil to which Paine was referring!

[bemildred]

17. My favorite Norman Mailer quote:

"It is worth reminding ourselves that the life of a democracy may also depend on the good and honorable use of language and not on the scurvy manipulation of such words as "evil" and "love" by intellectual striplings of the caliber of our president."

Norman Mailer
Letters to the Editor
The Boston Globe
For Whom The Will Toils
March 14, 2002

[Fumesucker]

2. Gaffe: (n) When a politician inadvertently utters the truth.. n/t

[bemildred]

14. Sarkozy: My remarks about Netanyahu 'taken out of context'

Compare how Obama handled this with Sarkozy.

French President, who was overheard earlier this month calling Israeli PM 'a liar,' meets with Jewish leaders in Paris and stresses his 'strong, long relationship and friendship with Netanyahu and his family.'

French President Nicolas Sarkozy met for lunch on Thursday in with leaders of the French Jewish community, and said that his description of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a liar "was taken out of context." The meeting was held at the the Élysée Palace in Paris.

Sarkozy made the comment during a private conversation with Obama during a G20 summit in the French riviera town of Cannes earlier this month and the remarks were overheard by a small number of journalists but not initially reported.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/sarkozy-my-remarks-about-netanyahu-taken-out-of-context-1.397541

[azurnoir]

19. Lol he did not however reveal in what 'context' his remarks were made

now that would have been interesting

[King_David]

20. I wonder what Netanyahu

has to do with Jewish leaders in Paris,

Strange