The timing of the Ramat Shlomo announcement was a bureaucratic oversight which ended up making Joe Biden look stupid, so he reacted. The incident amounted to bad manners on Israel’s part, whether intentional or not. Netanyahu has since revised procedures so that this does not happen again. Netanyahu has not defended what happened, so why should you ? (For clarity’s sake, I don’t have a problem with building at Ramat Shlomo.)

If you ever see the whole footage of Obama’s speech in Sderot, you will appreciate that Ehud Barak and Eli Moyal were both guilty of rank bad manners. This guy was already a frontrunner to become President, so the lack of respect shown was not clever. I’m a great admirer of Ehud Barak as a military man, but things haven’t gone so smoothly for him as a politician. The Israel Labour Party has nearly disappeared off the map, which for me is a real pity.

The article you post the link still ultimately links everything back to Israel (Stop the settlements. Rename Dalal Mughrabi Square. Now let’s talk.) as the sole cause of the problems in the middle east.

Sure, the guy makes mention of various things that terrorists are getting up to BUT ultimately he, like nearly every other msm munter does, blames everything back on Israel.

Mailman

“Does anyone understand this ? I’m with Robin on this one. Netanyahu apologised for the timing of the announcement, so this was no statement of defiance. It was a simple, old-fashioned cock-up. These things happen.”

Jonathan Karmi today at Melanie Phillips’s blog:

“But the Israelis have antagonised him through sheer bad manners. Not only the timing of the Ramat Shlomo announcement. Before he was elected, Obama visited Sderot on the border with Gaza, where he gave a speech to the world’s media. On the platform behind him stood Eli Moyal, the mayor of Sderot, in his sunglasses looking like some gaunt, seedy gangster, and Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, who was smiling, waving and winking to friends as Obama spoke. What a plonker. Sheer lack of class and bad manners. For Americans and Obama in particular, style is every bit as important as substance, so perceived humiliations and insults do not go down well. The natural instinct is to put offenders in their place.”

http://tinyurl.com/ykgofwv

I suppose there must be two Jonathan Karmis.

2) “given its impeccable even handed nature, it is very reluctant to assume the Palestinian/Arab really is as nihilistic and intransigent as it actually is”

By this, I mean that it can’t imagine that anyone could be as nihilistic and intransigent. It’s viewing everything through the positive sum, western outlook and cannot conceive of the honour/shame mentality that produces the nihilistic and intransigent behaviour.

This, by the way, is still the heart of the problem.

Here’s what happens:
1. The BBC starts out even-handed. I know. Bear with me. When I say “starts out”, I’m thinking some time at least before ~1970 or so.

2. The BBC wants to get coverage from the Palestinian side (because it’s wanting to be even-handed and, given its impeccable even handed nature, it is very reluctant to assume the Palestinian/Arab really is as nihilistic and intransigent as it actually is).

3. It files one or two tentative hedged reports suggesting that there may be some fairly unpleasant factions about.

4. It quickly discovers that:
a) it can’t get the access it wants to the people it wants
b) its people are in real danger

5. It learns to report from the Palestinian side under Palestinian restrictions. Further it learns that even to report that it is reporting under Palestinian restrictions invokes 4b above. So it doesn’t.

6. Bake under a hot sun at one end and add a dash of liberal nicey “can’t we all just get along – we wouldn’t mean such nasty things if we said them so I’m sure they don’t either” at the other for ~40 years and voila! you have the BBC mindset.

It doesn’t actually require malice or an institutional policy. All it requires is a lack of institutional leadership and backbone.

Doesn’t make it right though.

Easy that one. Netanyahu should agree to cancel the project on condition that the US moves its embassy to Jerusalem.