Wednesday March 4 2015

I've Been Thinking:

I am shocked by responses to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech.

So much so that I am, jokingly, wondering if I missed the parts of the speech that everyone is critiquing. And to know me is to know that I missed nothing. I am not just talking about Pelosi saying she was insulted or Obama saying there was nothing new. That I expected.

The purpose of the speech Netanyahu gave was not to divulge new material - actually that is why he said you could Google all the info anyway. The Israeli prime minister has often been criticized for leaking details so he was deliberately not going to do that again, before the entire world and announce state secrets. Doing that is illegal both under Israeli and United States law.

Interestingly, Al Arabiyah had a very positive column saying how on target Netanyahu was. Their report was that the prime minister of Israel described the Iranian threat perfectly. And Palestinian President Abbas said that Bibi accurately described the explosive nature of the Middle East.

His message has not changed in over a decade. It is the same threat - it is just becoming more threatening.

The speech was not supposed to change people's minds. The purpose of the Netanyahu speech before Congress was to remind people of the danger, the very grave danger, posed by Iran and to explain why there is a difference between the US point of view and the Israeli point of view.

And in that, Netanyahu succeeded.

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