Obama on Netanyahu: ''Smart, cunning, tough. Sees himself as the defender of the Jewish people'''

November 14, 2020   

Former US President Barack Obama believes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a "smart, cunning and tough man, and also an excellent communicator" - who can be "charming, or at least eager," when it comes to things that might benefit him. Nativ Real Estate Company celebrates 30 • And how do you earn benefits that will never come back? The former Democratic president wrote these things in his autobiography, "The Promised Land," which is due to hit stores next Tuesday. According to excerpts from the book published on the Jewish Insider website and quoted in Israel Hayom, Obama also believes that Netanyahu "sees himself as the Jewish people's chief defender against disaster, which allows him to justify almost any action that would keep him in power." In his book, in which he wrote about his eight years in the White House, the former president recounts a meeting he had with Netanyahu at a Chicago airport in 2005, shortly after he was elected to the Senate. He said the prime minister praised him for fighting for what Obama called "a trivial pro-Israel bill," which he had supported while serving in the Illinois state legislature. But when it came to disagreements over policy, Obama believed that Netanyahu used his familiarity with politics and the American media to thwart his administration's efforts as president. Obama also wrote that his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, warned him upon entering the White House: "You will not be able to move forward with the peace process when the American president and the Israeli prime minister come from different political backgrounds." The former president wrote that he began to understand Emanuel's words after having several meetings with Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas. "I wonder sometimes if things would have happened differently," if another president had been in his place, if another person had led Israel instead of Netanyahu, or if Abbas had been younger. The former American president further says that when he first ran for president of the United States in 2008, there were those who tried to portray him as "not supportive enough, or even hostile, to Israel." Although he received more than 701% of the Jewish vote in the United States, "there were still many members of AIPAC who saw me as suspicious, as someone with divided loyalties." In contrast, Obama described how his sense of connection to the Jewish community, "with whom I share a story of exile and pain," led him to "fiercely defend" the rights of the Jewish people to a land of their own, even though these values ​​"made it impossible to ignore the conditions in which Palestinians living in the occupied territories are forced to live.".