[kitchencabinetforum] MITT AND BIBI, PERFECT TOGETHER!

The strong friendship between Romney and Netanyahu causes a stir in the US election campaign. Romney and Netanyahu first met at the Boston Consulting Group in 1976. Romney and Netanyahu can speak in shorthand and they share common experiences and have a perspective and underpinning which is similar. Mitt and Bibi, perfect together!

Mitt and Bibi gree that Ankara's condemnation of the only longstanding democracy in the Middle East is
always swift and unequivocal. The Arab League always engages in a frenzy of
denunciation, even before all the facts are established. Israel is the U.N.'s favorite whipping boy. In the past four years, three quarters of the resolutions passed by the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) condemned Israel. Israel always faces hypocrisy and a biased rush to judgment. http://venitism.blogspot.com

Before Romney makes a questionable statement on Middle East, he gets on the phone to his friend Bibi Netanyahu and say: Would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do?

Martin Indyk points out Romney's remark implies that Romney would subcontract Middle East policy to Israel! But Israel does not interfere in internal political affairs of the United States and greatly values the wide bipartisan support it enjoys in America.

The outsourcing claim is silly, as it is simply common sense in international relations to consult as much as possible. It is wrong and naive to assume that just because both are friends and share common perspectives, that as president and prime minister they would simply fulfill each others political wishes or demands.

Mitt and Bibi declare Israel is a bastion of freedom and Graecoroman culture, an economic miracle, and
a leader in science and technology. Israel is the only free country in a region
dominated by Arab monarchies, theocracies and dictatorships. It is only the
citizens of Israel, Arabs and Jews alike, who enjoy the right to express their
views, to criticize their government, to form political parties, to publish
private newspapers, to hold free elections.

When Islamists deny the most basic freedoms to their own people, it is obscene
for them to start claiming that Israel is violating the Palestinians' rights.
All Muslims who are genuinely concerned with human rights should, as their very
first action, seek to oust their own despotic rulers and adopt the type of free
society that characterizes Israel. http://venitism.blogspot.com

The personal chemistry between leaders plays an important role in bilateral relations. But it's also crucial not to exaggerate what the impact might be. After all, both people will be leaders of their own countries and they will primarily be concerned with their understanding of their own countries' interests.

That is because long-standing national interests don't change suddenly just because two leaders share close personal ties. After all, democratically elected leaders don't live in a vacuum, but are part of an intricately woven web of political, electoral, economic, and medial connections that form their national constituency.

Mitt and Bibi lament that persecution has driven the Jews nearly to extinction. So many murdered, so many forcibly converted to Christianity and Islam, so many choosing the dubious path of assimilation as a defense against hatred and isolation. The Jews of today are a remnant of a remnant. It wasn't merely the German Holocaust, but a history of holocausts, that brought the Jewish people to such an infinitesimal position.

The Spanish Inquisition was not motivated by religious feeling, but by racial hatred. Conversion wasn't enough to save the Jews. The Spaniards hated the idea of Jewish blood mixing with their own. The Inquisition presaged the Holocaust. Physical acts of antisemitism are always preceded by years of hate-filled rhetoric meant to desensitize the world to the coming slaughter.

A sound relationship is generally preferable to a fraught one, because a relationship of trust and confidence between two leaders is always good as long as that basic policy formulation is right. That applies to the Romney-Netanyahu relationship as well.

Netanyahu has a tendency to inform and even to lecture and to explain in great detail his perspectives and those from his point of view of his country. Romney with his close personal bond with Netanyahu should certainly listen to that, but could then also express his own views very candidly.

Benjamin Netanyahu is the only Israeli politician today who could deliver the majority of Israel's Jewish population to a painful compromise with the Palestinians. He is also one of the few whose endorsement of a deal between Tehran and Washington would allay the concerns of even more hawkish Israelis. The average Israeli trusts that Netanyahu would not sell out their interests for a Nobel Peace Prize. It's fairly difficult to push Netanyahu to do something he doesn't want to do, and it would appear unlikely that this would change under a Romney administration.