Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Ungrateful ally

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-06/robert-gates-says-israel-is-an-ungrateful-ally-jeffrey-goldberg.html
 
 
It was an extraordinary scene: President Barack Obama, sitting 
impassively in the Oval Office in May as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin 
Netanyahu lectured him, at considerable length and at times 
condescendingly, on Jewish history, Arab perfidy and the existential 
challenges facing his country.
 
What was extraordinary wasn’t the message -- it was not an untypical 
Netanyahu sermon. What was notable was that Netanyahu was lecturing the 
president live on television, during a photo opportunity staged so that 
the two leaders could issue platitudes about the enduring bonds between 
their nations.
 
That display of impudence left the president and his team feeling 
unusually angry. Shortly afterward, Obama’s chief of staff, William 
Daley, called the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, to 
communicate the displeasure of the White House in a reportedly heated 
way. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who watched her husband battle 
Netanyahu in the late 1990s, also expressed anger and frustration about 
the prime minister within the administration.
Nothing in Return
 
But it was Robert M. Gates, the now-retired secretary of defense, who 
seemed most upset with Netanyahu. In a meeting of the National Security 
Council Principals Committee held not long before his retirement this 
summer, Gates coldly laid out the many steps the administration has 
taken to guarantee Israel’s security -- access to top-quality weapons, 
assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence 
sharing -- and then stated bluntly that the U.S. has received nothing in 
return, particularly with regard to the peace process.
 
Senior administration officials told me that Gates argued to the 
president directly that Netanyahu is not only ungrateful, but also 
endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing 
isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps 
control of the West Bank. According to these sources, Gates’s analysis 
met with no resistance from other members of the committee.
Frustration and Resentment
 
Gates has expressed his frustration with Netanyahu’s government before. 
Last year, when Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel was marred by 
an announcement of plans to build new housing units for Jews in East 
Jerusalem, Gates told several people that if he had been Biden, he would 
have returned to Washington immediately and told the prime minister to 
call Obama when he was serious about negotiations.
 
Gates’s frustration also stems from squabbling with Netanyahu over U.S. 
arms sales to Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies. In an encounter in 
Israel in March, according to U.S. and Israeli sources, Netanyahu 
lectured Gates at length on the possible dangers posed to Israel by such 
sales, as well as by Turkey and other regional U.S. allies. Gates, a 
veteran intelligence officer, resented Netanyahu’s tone, and reminded 
him that the sales were organized in consultation with Israel and 
pro-Israel members of Congress.
 
The reason the administration’s hard feelings toward Netanyahu matter 
now -- and the reason several officials spoke to me on this subject last 
week -- is that the U.S. is once again going to the mat for Israel at 
the United Nations, where Palestinians intend to seek recognition of an 
independent state in September.
 
The White House plans to contest this resolution in the General Assembly 
(where the move already has majority support), and the U.S. would most 
likely veto it in the Security Council. The Obama administration is 
right to oppose this ploy, which would undermine the chances of 
reconciliation and could lead to an explosion of violence on the West 
Bank. But they’ll oppose it in spite of Netanyahu, not to help him.
 
Dislike of Netanyahu has deepened in a way that could ultimately be 
dangerous for Israel. Time after time, the White House has taken 
Israel’s side in international disputes -- over the UN’s Goldstone 
Report, which accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza; over 
Israel’s confrontation with the pro-Hamas Turkish “flotilla,” in which 
nine people were killed; and on many other issues.
 
Yet the Netanyahu government does little to dispel the notion among its 
right-wing supporters that the Obama administration is at best a 
wavering friend. This is self- evidently foolish, especially at a time 
when Israel faces an existential threat from its menacing neighbor Iran.
A Blunt Articulation
 
Gates’s feelings about Netanyahu are particularly consequential, in part 
because he’s not considered hostile to Israel, and in part because he’s 
a well-regarded figure who articulated bluntly what so many people in 
the administration seem to believe. Gates declined to comment for this 
column through his former spokesman, Geoff Morrell. But Morrell told me 
that Gates “worked extremely hard throughout his four and half years as 
secretary of defense to address Israel’s security concerns.”
 
A Pentagon spokesman, George Little, said that Gates’s successor, Leon 
Panetta, “agrees with what President Obama and former Secretary Gates 
have both said, which is that our defense relationship with Israel is 
stronger than ever.”
 
When I asked Oren, the Israeli ambassador, about Gates’s often-expressed 
feelings toward Netanyahu, he said, “We have nothing but the highest 
regard for Secretary Gates, and as allies, we don’t exchange 
accusations, we have communications. Israel deeply appreciates the 
excellent security relationship we have with the Obama administration.”
 
Netanyahu’s alienation of the White House has not gone unnoticed in 
Israel. Tzipi Livni, the head of the Kadima Party, said in a recent 
interview with me and Atlantic editor James Bennet that the average 
Israeli is more attuned to the importance of maintaining good relations 
with the U.S. president than is the current prime minister.
 
“For Israelis,” she said, “when they wake up in the morning and ask 
themselves, what is the general situation today, the litmus test for 
them is the health of the relationship between Israel and the United 
States.”
-- 
Namib
 
"La force ne fait ni raison ni droit ; mais il est peut-être impossible 
de s'en passer, pour faire respecter le droit et la raison" (Saint-Just)

 “For Israelis,” she said, “when they wake up in the morning
L'israeliano qua presente pensa a quel suo concittadino, gia'
avvocato difensore del criminale Barghouti, che per un numero per ora
impreciso di anni, ha spiato l'ambasciata del suo Paese per conto
degli USA  E ride.

 avvocato difensore del criminale Barghouti
 
l'israeliano là presente non ha ben assimilato le basi del diritto.


sara' che deve insegnarle lo spione