Grading Bibi's Speech
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Did the Israeli leader make an important step in endorsing a Palestinian state-or did he defy Obama by refusing to halt settlements? Les Gelb, Mort Zuckerman and other Daily Beast regulars assess the address.
Why Obama Should Listen to Bibi
Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In his speech Sunday, the Israeli prime minister made security points that Team Obama must not ignore-and absent Palestinian concessions, he went as far on settlements as any Israeli leader could go.
Bibi's Bait-and-Switch
Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals.
With today's speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could have had his Nixon-in-China moment. Instead, says Eric Alterman, he chose to ignore Obama's message from Cairo-and seal his political fate despite his conditional acceptance of a two-state solution.
Israel's Dangerous Choice
Reza Aslan, a contributor to the Daily Beast, is assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and senior fellow at the Orfalea Center on Global and International Studies at UC Santa Barbara. He is the author of the bestseller No god but God and How to Win a Cosmic War.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's new prime minister, is every bit as radical as Hamas, says The Daily Beast's Reza Aslan. So where's the international outrage?
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Peter Beinart, senior political writer for The Daily Beast, is a professor of journalism and political science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
Gerald Posner is The Daily Beast's Chief Investigative Reporter. He's the award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism. His latest book, Miami Babylon: Crime, Wealth and Power—A Dispatch from the Beach, was published in October. He lives in Miami Beach with his wife, the author Trisha Posner.
Martin Jacques is the cofounder of the UK think tank Demos, writes a regular column for The Guardian, and is a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre. His new book, When China Rules the World, is available now.
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