I finally managed to get all the way through Richard Stengel’s fawning cover story about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 
At a moment when incumbents around the world are being shunted aside, he is triumphant. With his bullet-proof majority, he has a chance to turn himself into the historic figure he has always yearned to be.
And it traces what it says is Netanyahu’s appeal to U.S. audiences:
He appeared regularly on Nightline and became the Israeli-American It boy–confident, handsome, fearsomely articulate in virtually accentless English. Every suburban Jewish mother had a crush on him.
“Bibi was the streetwise local anchorman who told it like it was,” Stengel adds.
You might find that all a bit much, but Stengel badly misleads readers with this:
When Obama took office, people thought he would bring a new dynamic to the talks that would favor the Palestinians. Obama asked Bibi to freeze settlement construction for one year as an act of good faith. And then Abbas did not come to the table. When Abbas was finally coaxed to do so, he presented Bibi with the same package Olmert had negotiated. Abbas says he won’t talk while settlements are being built, and Bibi says he wants talks “without preconditions.” The only freeze now is in the negotiations themselves.
But Israel’s supposed “settlement freeze” didn’t actually freeze settlements. As I wrote in Extra! (12/10), a few outlets noted that the “freeze” months were hardly any different than the non-frozen ones. As the New York Times noted (7/15/10), “In many West Bank settlements, building is proceeding apace,” since the so-called freeze “came with the assertion that some 3,000 units were grandfathered in and would proceed during the moratorium.” And an Associated Press investigation (9/23/10) revealed: “How much of a freeze has there actually been on West Bank Jewish settlement building by Israel? Very little, an Associated Press analysis of the numbers suggests.”
Stengel gives Netanyahu points for his ability to woo U.S. media. Indeed.
Stengel smacks a double in the myth department.
His portrait of Bibi as all conquering potentially “historic figure” …
And his comparing him to “the streetwise local anchorman who told it like it was”.
Is an allusion to “the tough as nails street cop with a heart of gold” following close behind?
(And don’t you find the juxtaposition of such an endearing nick as “Bibi” with the reality of the suffering his actions cause so many to be more than a little calculated?)
Netanyahu has explained that the truth repeated over and over will defeat every lie. His MO for years has been to lie to conceal the truth….. Mr. 180. Not only a liar but a thief and bully. He leads the State of the Jews away from humanity and is its and our existential threat.
Of course Bibi speaks perfect American English. He lived in and was educated in the US at least from High School on, although I think earlier. He is a bully and a fraud. Putting him on the front cover of TIME and writing glorious things about him is just the kind of propaganda AIPAC believes he deserves. Meanwhile, the settlers are threatening the Palestinians in Bethlehem and threatening to destroy the Mosque and the Palestinians. Bibi should be attending to the problems at in Israel and get his nose out of our election. Anyone remember the noise the right made about Al Gore and the Orientals? Every hear such a roar about Israel and AIPAC? Enough said.
Bibi wants to kill two birds with one attack: the Iranian nuclear program and Pres. Obama’s re-election chances.
Oops. Lots of typos. My bad, so drop the “y” and the errant “at” Thanks.
Also, Mr. Garcia, you are right on.
It would be great to have a U.S. Middle East policy made in the U.S.A. and not in Tel Aviv or not by AIPAC.
In Latin, bibi means, ‘I drank.” Bibi ergo sum? Maybe that describes the writer from TIME?
Whenever I see a picture of Mr. Netabyahu, I think of Rachel Corrie, and the flotilla, and wonder why after 60 plus years the Palestinians still don’t have their country. Mr. Netanyahu makes me sad and so does the state of the world.
This fawning-over-NuttyYahoo crap is typical of TIME, that worthless Establishment rag.
Elizabeth and Elaine, you have said it well. Right on! Why American administation after administration we concede to Netanyahu so discourages me. We have not had an even hand with Palestine and Israel, and Netanyahu and his policies go out without impunity from either US or UN. He is an arrogant bully no matter the “American” veneer he uses which he acquired at Cheltenham High School in Pennsylvania.
usually I have something to complain about, but both the article and the comments are super good. The is evil. He reaks!
This is the second time you have done this to me. PLEASE LOOK AT THE SCREEN. THERE ARE FIELDS THAT HAVE AN ASTERISK AND THEY ARE FILLED IN. i HAVE COMMENTED ON YOUR SITE MANY TIMES AND NEVER HAD TROUBLE BEFORE.
iF YOU ARE NOT SEEING THE TWO FIELDS FILLED IN THEN YOU ARE THE ONE WHO IS NOT SEEING WHAT’S ON MY SCREEN !!!!!
Time magazine, yet another example of “Liberal” attacks on Israel in defence of the “terrorist Palestinians.” Or not. All sarcasm aside just another reason why the USA should stay out of negotiations. Not being a non-biased party the US can’t be trusted to do anything but what the Israeli hard liners want. A one party state of Israel, no Palestine or Palestinians.
Follow the money. Simple enough? I’ve been watching the cultural shift from “an attempt to seem objective” to one of “the Israelis know what’s best for them and we should never presume to know more than they do” as it progressed over the years since the mid 60’s. I once had hope. After all, the US was during the post WW2 years viewed favorably by the Arab world. The Brits were the villains then, along with the French. Had we only kept a bit of distance from the Saudis (instead of giving them weapons and training throu the Vinnel Group, a CIA front) ANC the Egyptian tyrants (we strongly supported Egyptian dictatorship at he behest of the Israel lobby) and insisted that Israel limit it’s territorial ambitions after 1967 when the likes of Moshe Levnger and other religious fanatics insisted on laying claim to West Bank land (instead of going along with a wink and pretending not to see them carry out their cynically titled “facts on the ground” deceit, we might still be viewed favorably by the masses of Islam and perhaps not have to look forward to many decades of fear of being in a building or subway targeted by people who hate us. But we had no choice. The media, the culture told us the Arabs were evil and hats all we should know. And Shen Susan Sontag stopped to ask “why do they hate us?”, she was made a Parrish.
Ask yourselves 1) why did Netanahu get 24 or 25 standing ovations before the Joint Session of Congress when he told our resident o go shove it? 2) Would we still favor Israels unconscionably colonialist policies if in the US there were 5 or 6 million mainly successful middle glass and wealthy Muslms and only maybe 2 million mainly struggling Jews living in suburbs of Detroit and Patterson NJ? 3) how could Mearschimer and Walsh write an essay about the overwhelming power of the Israel lobby in America and it’s ability to control the parameters of our thinking on the middle east situation and then find they could NOT even get it published in the US (it was published by the London Review of Books) without causing an enormous outburst of satirical laughter and 4) quite seriously. If Israel for announced reasons of seeking to abort a terrorist mission aimed at it preemptively attacked Brattleboro, Vermont with naval weapons and missiles, would our Congress aside from denouncing such attack on an American city cut off aid and weapons supplies to Israel or ( far more likely) assign a committee to study the subject? What’s your best guess?
I remember meeting, and getting to know Netanyahu in the very late 1960’s and early 1970’s through the brother of a U.S. general. He would stop in Southern California and collect money at UCR, UCLA and USC–this would not always break even –but with truly “galloping” Israeli inflation dollars held would gain against the Israeli Shekel and see an appreciation against Israeli Shekel and the dollar holder would then see a gain. The newly formed LIKUD thus had a fund raising advantage, as the GAL (Greater Israel Party) dissolved and formed the LIKUD with religious parties. Netanyahu had no recognition until he could consistently bring money to the Likud, he was the only good English speaker in that obscure faction at the time, and he curried attention from Begin by giving him a recent biography of G. Garibaldi which he bought in the United States on one of his fund raising missions. He thus became a natural for foreign, that is US, comment and cemented his reputation as an international leader–in Israel– in a rather narrow and self-absorbed political party and movement. Others in Israel and other countries have called him a liar, and a number of people have questioned as to how he has passed himself off as a leader–
the answer is that he was able to establish himself as connected in the US.