Netanyahu views the Arab Spring with complete contempt

Haaretz reports: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday blasted Israeli and world politicians who support the Arab Spring revolutions and accused the Arab world of “moving not forward, but backward.”

In his sharpest Knesset comment since the wave of uprisings swept out of Tunisia and across the Arab states in January, Netanyahu expressed his complete contempt for the Arab people’s ability to sustain democratic regimes, and his nostalgia for Hosni Mubarak’s regime in Egypt. He said he feared the collapse of Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy and also reiterated his absolute refusal to make any concessions to the Palestinians.

“In February, when millions of Egyptians thronged to the streets in Cairo, commentators and quite a few Israeli members of the opposition said that we’re facing a new era of liberalism and progress…They said I was trying to scare the public and was on the wrong side of history and don’t see where things are heading,” he said.

But time has proved him right, Netanyahu said. His forecast that the Arab Spring would turn into an “Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave” turned out to be true, he said.

Netanyahu also slammed Western leaders, and especially U.S. President Barak Obama, who had pushed Mubarak to resign from power. At the time this was happening Netanyahu said in closed talks that the American administration and many European leaders don’t understand reality. On Wednesday, he called them “naive.”

“I ask today, who here didn’t understand reality? Who here didn’t understand history?” he called from the Knesset podium. “Israel is facing a period of instability and uncertainty in the region. This is certainly not the time to listen to those who say follow your heart.”
Netanyahu used the upheaval in the Arab world to justify his government’s inaction vis-a-vis the peace process with the Palestinians.

“I remember many of you urged me to take the opportunity to make hasty concessions, to rush to an agreement,” he said.

“But I will not establish Israel’s policy on illusions. There’s a huge upheaval here…whoever doesn’t see it is burying his head in the sand,” he said.

“That didn’t stop people from coming to me and suggesting we make all kinds of concessions. I said we insist on foundations of stability and security…all the more so now,” he said.

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3 thoughts on “Netanyahu views the Arab Spring with complete contempt

  1. rosemerry

    What a leader! So many nations try to avoid peace, especially the USA with the help of NATO “partners”, but Bibi outdoes them all and never pretends to have the slightest interest in fairness, peace, justice for anyone, even Jews in Israel who are now being divided up in the same way Bibi would like the Arab world fragmented. As for this quote:
    “I remember many of you urged me to take the opportunity to make hasty concessions, to rush to an agreement,” the hasty non-concessions have so far lasted at least twenty years, purposely ensuring that NO progress towards Palestinian statehood is possible.
    The USA does nobody a favour with its warped foreign policy.

  2. Norman

    Well now, what better Thanksgiving gift for the “O”? He pardoned the Turkey, now he can do so with the other Turkey; Bibi. How about this, the U.S. will shoot down everyone of your jets on the return from bombing Iran, not because of any change toward the program, but because of your arrogance and disrespect toward the U.S. who has protected your sorry – – – all these years, at the expense of American people.

  3. DE Teodoru

    The GOD’S CHOSEN PEOPLE mantle is now grabbed up by the most cynical and secular of Israelis to justify their privileged plenty while the rest of the world tightens its belt. A Congress that denies its own citizens benefits silently passed $4 billion “aid” to Israel without a peep. This is plenty of reason for Israeli politicos to feel like the master race, yanking food out of Americans’ mouths to perpetuate the luxury of select Israelis. In their eyes we’re such “dumb goyim” that they must be the master race. From that perspective they look at the Arab Spring and imagine their own youths rebelling against the rot and corruption in Israel exploiting Palestinian and Jewish Israelis alike. And so the old Holocaust psychosis is once again invoked to claim that all the Muslim Spring turmoil is Muslim Brotherhood mischief, aimed to surround Israel with blood-thristy Muslim “anti-Semite”– forgetting that Arabs too are “Semites.” EastEuro Jews imported to Israel the kill-all mentality that so bathed in blood the Balkans. Now they want to get the US troops in Iraq to do it for them to the Muslims. But the fact that the Arab Spring is PRO-democracy and ANTI-corruption scares this anti-democratic corrupt state of Israel to its boots. And so Bibbi invokes, once again, the Holocaust, demanding that America protect his Israel by more “crusades” against Islam. I would deem that criminal; but it really is innocent by reason of insanity. I hope Israel recovers because it has lots of good people in it that can save the Middle East once the “chosen” can accept that they are only family rather than masters of the region.

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