Chutzpah

I can't quite believe what we just saw between Obama and Netanyahu. The former's careful diplomatic hospitality was met with a forthright and quite unmistakeable snub.

Every issue with which the so-called peace negotiations are apparently concerned was effectively pushed off the table. Obama's call last night for contiguous 1967 (-based) borders was flatly contradicted by the PM. Obama's recognition that the US will have to deal with whomsoever the Palestinians elect was met with Netanyahu again contradicting him by saying there can be no peace agreement with, er, the people they're fighting.

Meanwhile, the biggest refugee problem in the world was equated with the counter-expulsion of Jews by Arab countries who were of course 'absorbed' by a country needing an ethnoreligiously defined Jewish majority. Plucky little Israel was invoked despite the manifest military supremacy which they enjoyed from day one. And of course, the fact that Palestinians are still being forced from their land to make way for the last old fashioned Eurocolonialist project was completely ignored. It was a masterclass in shameless hasbara.

Had you told me this is what Netanyahu was going to do beforehand I would have said great - Obama won't stand for another such insult, surely?

I wish I could be sure.