Another look at exactly what went down at the UN yields a bout of boggles
Now that the pundits and newsmakers have had a good and restful Shabbat to think over just what Benjamin Netanyahu said to the UN on Thursday, several of them return to the subject Sunday, including the prime minister himself.
The most blatant case of delayed head-scratching comes from Yedioth Ahronoth’s Nahum Barnea, who wants to know (in big red letters) what Netanyahu was talking about in his “red lines” speech when referring to “90 percent.” Barnea already devoted much of his analysis/opinion piece on Friday to confusion over Netanyahu’s use of numbers and red lines and now he returns to the subject with a vengeance.
“There are a few thousand people for whom the nuclear issue is dealt with not as a comical lecture but as a strategic problem. These people fill senior roles in the governments of the US, Europe, Iran and Israel,” Barnea writes. “They are having a hard time understanding which red line Netanyahu is talking about. 70% or 90%? The Iranians have gotten to 70%, he said. We can’t let them get to 90%. 70% of what? 90% of what?” (Psst. Nahum, I think he’s talking about uranium enrichment. But I could be wrong).
Barnea goes on to take issue with Netanyahu clarifying himself on TV on Saturday night that Israel is not bound to wait until the red line of spring/summer 2013 to act. “If Israel plans to act when it wants, next week or next year, the red line is meaningless.”
Touche, Nahum, touche.
Netanyahu’s TV interviews (along with the drizzle that signaled the onset of fall) on Saturday night were a divine gift for the editors of Maariv and Israel Hayom, who may have been stretched thin by the big holiday edition coming so soon after the big weekend edition.
Maariv leads off with the prime minister’s promise that Israel will protect itself no matter when. The story also follows up on Netanyahu’s UN speech, his various meetings in New York, and Jerusalem’s coordination with the White House, noting that the Americans were less than enchanted with the clear setting of red lines. The paper also reports, via an unnamed Jerusalem official, that Israel will take a break from all these red lines and bickering with the US until after the November 6 election, since it runs the risk of having a chilling effect on Obama’s chances for reelection. So much for the hunt for red lines in October.
But all this hemming and hawing is just a bunch of hullaballoo, if you read the main headline of Israel Hayom, which is also serving as Netanyahu’s mouthpiece, as is its wont. “Netanyahu: The world got the message,” the headline reads. The story goes on to detail that the man in charge thinks he and his staff did a dandy job in New York, making their point about Iran and repairing ties with the US.
Writing in an analytic capacity, the always fawning Boaz Bismuth says that Netanayhu got it 100% percent right and that Nahum Barnea can go suck a nuclear egg. (Ok, maybe not that part.) If the world didn’t understand Iran’s nuclear threat before the speech, they sure do now after seeing that cartoon bomb: “The red lines address of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the UN General Assembly did not stop, it seems, the centrifuges from spinning over the weekend. But the speech uncovered before the whole world, in the clearest and simplest manner, the danger of an Iranian nuclear bomb.”
Avigdor reads the tea leaves
Haaretz skips over the easy prey and starts things off with an interview with Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, whose Magic 8 Ball tells him the Iranian regime will be overthrown, Tahrir style, within a year, by a populace sick of sanctions. “I didn’t do a poll, but from conversation with people who have visited Iran, if they held a referendum – nuclear program or quality of life – 70-80% would choose the second option,” Liberman says in the wide-ranging interview. “It’s not that they are against nuclear, but they are not ready to pay these crazy prices.”
The interview with Haaretz, a publication the right-leaning Liberman once boycotted, comes on the heels of a leaked report in the paper last week of a Foreign Ministry document showing that sanctions are working. The interview and leak are likely part of a drive to paint Liberman as a moderate.
Derring do, Deri does
Speaking of politicians thinking ahead, Yedioth Ahronoth plays up its interview with disgraced former minister and convict Aryeh Deri, who announces he’ll be returning to politics once elections come around again. While he’s not sure if he’ll rejoin Shas or another party (or start his own), he’s sure that the people want the former bribe-taker back where he belongs, in the halls of power.
“When I left Ma’asiyahu prison, I was sure that it was over, the part of my life of public service was finished. But since then I’ve seen the support of people on the ground, the expectations, and I understand that that’s my calling. Twelve years I’ve been out of politics, I was convicted of fraud and sat two years in prison, and still there is a sizeable public that expects me to return. How is that logical?” I’m sure you’re not the only one asking that question, Aryeh.
Sukkot, the feast of tabernacles, starts tonight, so what better way to mark the holiday, as Maariv does, than by running large stories on twins, bad kids, and a 75-year-old — composer and radio presenter Amos Ettinger — who married a lady 45 years his junior and is living the good life. “We thought it wouldn’t hold, but look, we’re 10 years together. Forget the stigma, age doesn’t play a function,” he told the paper. “What? You think we don’t have arguments. We do, but they are not connected to the age.”
Whatever shakes your lulav, man.
