As befits the son of a historian, Benjamin Netanyahu loads his speeches with references to the past. He talks about 3,000 years of Jewish history in Jerusalem; he conjures up the Holocaust when he discusses Iran's nuclear program; he recalls the Arab rejection of partitioning Palestine in 1947 to show who's at fault in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Yet the prime minister's short-term memory seems to be vanishing. Otherwise, it's hard to understand his comments to a Knesset panel this week, explaining his decision to ease the Israeli siege on Gaza. The new policy of allowing free import of civilian goods, he said, was entirely in Israel's interest. It would "eliminate Hamas' main propaganda claim" and allow Israel to focus on its real security problems.
In itself, this is really quite sensible. Much more sensible than refusing to allow chocolate and coriander, not to mention building supplies, into war-ravaged Gaza. But from Netanyahu's words, one might think he had just taken office, reviewed the previous government's failed strategy for undermining the Hamas regime in Gaza, and dumped it. He doesn't seem to remember that he avidly maintained that inherited strategy for over a year. Nor does he recall that just three weeks ago, after the disastrous Israeli commando raid on a ship trying to reach Gaza with a civilian cargo, he defended the siege, describing it as an effort purely intended to keep Iranian arms from reaching Gaza by "air, sea, or the ground." Judging from published accounts of Netanyahu's remarks in the Knesset committee, Netanyahu has entirely forgotten the flotilla.
Read Full Article »