...Despite some generally praiseworthy performances of the prime minister on his visit to the US - at his press conference with president Obama, in his speech at the AIPAC convention and his address to Congress - Netanyahu is being vilified in much of the Israeli press by leading opinion makers - for the responsible and resolute positions he took on several central issues.
Prominent Israeli journalists and academics have flayed him for not capitulating to unreasonable demands, for not committing to irresponsible concessions - and thereby for allegedly “endangering Israel’s relationship with the US”. Indeed, somewhat perversely - albeit not unpredictably - the mainstream media in Israel is arguably more critical of Netanyahu than the mainstream press in the US ...
As the level-headed Israel Harel pointed out in his recent perceptive article Israeli opposition should recognize Netanyahu's U.S. victory:
Even CNN did not hesitate to heap praise on Netanyahu. And The Washington Post last week attacked Obama for his attitude toward Israel.
...It is in this context I refer you to the latest article of the ever-incisive Caroline Glick ... In her Jerusalem Post piece, "Obama's diversionary tactics" Glick succinctly points out that :
"Obama would never have been able to create his diversion from the unwelcome fact of Palestinian duplicity and rejectionism, to imaginary problem with the size of Israel without the enthusiastic support given to him by the Israeli Left....the Israeli Left responded to Obama's full-scale assault on Israel's legitimacy by launching a full-scale partisan assault on Netanyahu"
Israel Harel echoes these sentiments in his previously cited article - and elaborates :Only in Israel...are such reactions possible: Members of both the American Houses of Congress applaud the prime minister of the Jewish state, rising to their feet time after time to emphasize their agreement with what he says, and the hearts of most Israeli commentators turn sour[!!!]
The peak of the fury came when Netanyahu declared, to the sounds of the most prolonged applause registered during the entire speech, that the Jewish people has an ancestral right to the land of its forefathers and it is not an occupier in Judea and Samaria.
Netanyahu's opponents…are full of frustration at his having succeeded in winning the heart of Congress and moderating the pressure from the White House. Is it any wonder the Palestinians waited for the disappointed reactions in Israel in order to recite them in their entirety?
The aim of the pens that took aim at Netanyahu was to minimize his important diplomatic achievement. They cannot forgive him for having proved that also standing on basic principles can enlist America's support, and to that end there is no need for total surrender...
...Without a clear understanding of the pernicious part played by the powerful "intellectual elites", it is impossible to understand or to make sense of events in Israel over the last two decades...
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