It was not long in coming: After the Obama administration claimed to be "insulted" over plans to build 1,600 housing units for Jews on an empty hill in East Jerusalem overlooking the narrow corridor leading into West Jerusalem, the U.K.'s Advertising Standard Agency ruled on Wednesday that an Israeli tourism ad picturing the Wailing Wall with the Dome of the Rock in the background can no longer be shown:
“We noted the ad stated, ‘You can travel the entire length of Israel in 6 hours. Imagine what you can experience in 4 days,' and, 'Visit... now for more itineraries in Israel,' and considered that readers were likely to understand that the places featured in the itinerary were all within the State of Israel,” the Advertising Standard Agency said in its ruling.
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The Israel Government Tourist Office advertisement was held to have breached the Advertising Standard Agency’s guidelines on truthfulness.
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=173169
In an earlier post, I observed, "It will be interesting to see whether Obama & Co. will now also seek to halt new construction in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jersualem, which was totally reduced to rubble - both homes and synagogues - in 1948 by the Jordanian Arab Legion" (http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2009/07/obama-foreign-affairs-hypocrisy-or.html ). Although the Obama Administration has yet to take this next "logical" step, it didn't take long for the U.K.'s Advertising Standard Agency to pick up upon the Obama administration's enmity and declare that the Wailing Wall, Judaism's holiest site which was off limits to Jews from 1948 to 1967, is not part of Israel.
Meanwhile, as Israel continues to be ostracized and is the object of intense pressures to make further concessions to restart peace talks, Palestinians continue to express their repugnance to a two-state solution involving land swaps of the kind already proposed by former Israeli prime ministers Barak and Olmert. In a poll of Palestinians conducted on April 8-10 by the Center of Opinion Polls and Survey Studies at An-Najah University in Nablus, Palestinians were asked "Do you accept the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with some land exchange as a final solution for the Palestinian problem?" and "Do you support or reject making Jerusalem a capital for two states: Palestine and Israel?" The results re the two-state solution with land swaps were 66.7% against, 28.3% in favor, and 5% who did did not express an opinion or did not know. Concerning Jerusalem as a capital for both states, 77.4 said they rejected such a plan, 20.8% were in favor, and 1.8% had no opinion or did not know. (http://www.najah.edu/index.php?news_id=6411)
Always anxious to appease enemies and undermine friends, the Obama administration never considered that they were applying pressure to the wrong party.
Hi, Jeffrey
ReplyDeleteWhy do you say that Obama is "closet" new left?
You say, Obama "never considered" that he puts pressure on "wrong party". You mean that he is just naive, and not anti-Semite? What else has he do to convince you that he is not naive?
He is willing to incite hatred against Israel, even though it makes peace impossible and hurts US interests. I do not see how one can make this type of "mistake" again and again without being driven by personal feelings toward Jews and Israel.
Marina,
ReplyDeleteI believe that Obama and friends sincerely believe that by forcing an agreement upon Israel, they can then bring Iran into the fold and achieve "world peace". Yes, I suppose there is a kind of naivete at work, which even Ray Takeyh recently acknowledged has no basis in Middle East reality (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040905075_pf.html). Does this game plan involving appeasement of Iran and Syria pose an existential threat to Israel? Yes, particularly as Syria supplies Hezbollah with Scud-B missiles (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1162658.html).