Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Photo: AFP
US President Barack Obama
Photo: AFP
New Yorker: Netanyahu places Israel's future at risk
Prestigious publication's editor David Remnick levels harsh criticism at Israeli premier; says he is taking unreasonable risks
Washington – "It is hard to overestimate the risks that Benjamin Netanyahu poses to the future of his own country," David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker magazine, states in his recent article.
Remnick leveled harsh criticism at the prime minister, accusing him of blatantly trying to intervene in the US presidential campaign.
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The article, titled "Benjamin Netanyahu's Neocon Gambits," slams Netanyahu over his cocky attitude towards the American administration and his alignment with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the neoconservative strategy of the American Right, which portrays US President Barack Obama as extremely naive.
Remnick, one of the most esteemed journalists in the United States, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book, "Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire." He published a book about Obama in 2010.
Foolish decisions?
As prime minister, Remnick said, Netanyahu "Has done more than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage."
Moreover, the Israeli PM seems more adamant than ever to "Alienate the President of the United States and, as an ally of Mitt Romney’s campaign, to make himself a factor in the 2012 election – one no less pivotal than the most super Super PAC."
Plagues by mistrust. Netanyahu and Obama (Photo: AFP)
Remnick further criticizes Netanyahu for dismissing the US' efforts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions: "In Netanyahu’s view, Obama, despite instituting crippling economic sanctions, despite carrying out a series of covert operations, despite diplomatic pressure, despite vows that an Iranian bomb is impermissible – despite all that – is weak and deluded," the article said.
Netanyahu, he continues, seems hell bent to forge on despite the objections of the military and political echelons, and despite the fact that the majority of the Israeli public opposes any move against Iran sans Washington's backing.
Remnick goes on: "The Israeli Prime Minister has made no secret of his distrust (of Obama)… His trusted American allies are not the elected President but, rather, his friends on the American right, the politicians, business people and lobbyists, who are never willing to disagree with Israel at all."
In the wake of the attacks on the US Embassy in Cairo and the killing of four American diplomats, including US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, in at attack in Benghazi, the neocon strategy, according to Remnick, sees Netanyahu and Romney "united and profoundly cynical."
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