More on the \u201capology\u201d to Turkey<\/p>\n
Posted on 03\/31\/2013 by Meryl Yourish<\/p>\n
Lee Smith says that it wasn\u2019t President Obama who got what he wanted. It was Bibi.<\/p>\n
According to Obama\u2019s senior advisers quoted in the New York Times, the president \u201cprodded\u201d Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with Obama \u201craising the importance of a makeup phone call every day he was in Jerusalem.\u201d Netanyahu\u2019s apology, according to the Washington Post, was \u201cbowing to a long-standing Turkish demand.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reality is somewhat different than the official administration account. Jerusalem has long been looking to mend relations with its onetime strategic ally in Ankara. Contrary to popular narrative, it was Erdogan who was intransigent\u2014not Netanyahu. Nor was Obama the prime mover here, \u201cprodding\u201d the Israeli prime minister to do his bidding. If anything, it was Netanyahu who used the commander in chief as something like a blunt instrument to force Erdogan to accept the same deal that his government had first put on the table at least 18 months prior: Israel would apologize; it would pay compensation; but it would not, as Erdogan had demanded, end the maritime blockade of the strip.<\/p>\n
From Netanyahu\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s all to the good that Obama is getting the credit for the reconciliation. Bibi got what he wanted from Erdogan and gave Obama a big trophy to put on his shelf. The Turkish premier, despite his bluster, has little choice but to swallow it, and the American president now owes Bibi a favor. Netanyahu\u2014often denigrated as a clumsy politician and preachy ideologue\u2014is in fact a much more adroit statesman than he is typically believed to be.<\/p>\n
There is a lot of anger against Netanyahu for \u201capologizing\u201d to Turkey. They cite stories like this, where the families of the terrorists killed on the Marvelous Marbles insist that they will not drop their lawsuit against the Israelis. Or the billboards in Turkey that thank Erdogan for \u201cdefeating\u201d Israel. But Israel was not defeated, and her enemies are not emboldened. Saying it doesn\u2019t make it so.<\/p>\n
Erdogan wanted a full apology in which Israel took blame for killing Turkish citizens. He didn\u2019t get it. Erdogan wanted Israel to completely lift the Gaza blockade. He didn\u2019t get it. Erdogan wanted Israel to pay millions of dollars in compensation directly to the victims\u2019 families. He didn\u2019t get it.<\/p>\n
This was not a win for Erdogan. It is a win for Netanyahu, and a win for Israel. Normalizing relations with Turkey gets one more thing out of the way during a very dangerous time for Israel. The Syrian war is threatening to run over all of its borders, not just the ones with Arab nations. Israel has set up a field hospital on its border with Syria.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s Lee Smith\u2019s conclusion:<\/p>\n
What Obama truly deserves credit for\u2014and it\u2019s no small thing\u2014is realizing that an ally in whom he\u2019d invested so much confidence was essentially a blowhard. Moreover, he saw that Israel, with whom he\u2019d had contentious relations, was an ally he could count on. And that\u2019s a very big win in Netanyahu\u2019s column.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sticking with him and Barry Rubin on this issue. It\u2019s a thorn out of Israel\u2019s side, using the time-tested \u201cI\u2019m sorry if what I said offended you\u201d non-apology apology. I can live with it.<\/p>\n
via More on the \u201capology\u201d to Turkey | Yourish.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More on the \u201capology\u201d to Turkey Posted on 03\/31\/2013 by Meryl Yourish Lee Smith says that it wasn\u2019t President Obama who got what he wanted. It was Bibi. According to Obama\u2019s senior advisers quoted in the New York Times, the president \u201cprodded\u201d Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apologize to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":30672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[8968],"class_list":["post-68981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-natenyahu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68981\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}