Netanyahu Gags on Concession Speech

[zenwalk]

The next word out of Balfour Street, where Netanyahu mulled the returns, was a warning to members of his Likud party to shut up about how they figure the premier might really feel. By then, the deputy speaker of the Knesset had already called Obama “naïve” and vowed Israel would not “surrender” to him.

Rarely has a foreign leader been more visibly linked with the electoral prospects of a U.S. president. Netanyahu, whose relations with Obama run from testy to fraught, showed up in a television ad for Mitt Romney. He welcomed the Republican nominee to a work meeting during Romney’s gaffe-riddled foreign swing, then had Romney and his wife over to dinner. The men worked together at a Boston consulting firm years ago. They shared positions, patrons – the Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson lavishly funded both men’s campaigns – and a keen, if unspoken on the Israeli’s part, desire to see Obama serve only one term.

The cheese stands alone.

http://world.time.com/2012/11/07/the...tulates-obama/

[zenwalk]

“It seems like it was not such a good morning for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” interior minster Eli Yishai, a leader of the ultra-orthodox religious Shas party, said Wednesday morning. “Well I think that’s an understatement!” a laughing Efraim Inbar, professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv, tells TIME. “Everybody knows he was making a bet. A risky bet.”

The risk for Netanyahu is amplified by the timing. Obama won four more years in office just as Netanyahu is beginning his own campaign. In fact, Israelis will go to the polls the day after Obama will be sworn in, a juxtaposition sure to be seized on by political rivals. They were already piling on Wednesday. “After what Netanyahu has done in the past few months – it needs to be asked whether the prime minister has a friend in the White House? I’m not sure,” said former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who is considering a return to politics after surviving a corruption trial. He accused Netanyahu of promoting Romney at the behest of the billionaire Adelson. The newly formed Yesh Atid party, a vehicle for former anchorman Yair Lapid, called on Netayahu to “fix his shaky relationship with the administration in Washington. During the US election campaign, the prime minister acted and spoke in a way seen as a gross intervention in favor of the Republican candidate.”

It's amazing what the will of one man can bring down upon the rest of us. We shall see how he fares come his own election.

http://world.time.com/2012/11/07/the...tulates-obama/

[ms maggie]

Live by the sword, die by the sword.