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Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu yesterday updated US President Barack Obama on his plan to make an important political speech at Bar-Ilan University on Sunday, where he will outline his program for peace and security.
Meanwhile, according to Netanyahu confidants, he believes that Obama wants a confrontation with Israel since an open controversy with Israel would serve the administration’s main objective of improving US relations with the Arab world.
And in a further sign of the weirdness that is US-Israeli relations these days, US officials assured Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak last week that the Obama administration is not trying to topple Netanyahu’s government.
Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)
11:35PM: Introducing our latest weapon: Robot Snake!
More from the Jerusalem Post:
A robot snake, capable of recording video and sound on the battlefield, is on the way to join the the IDF’s hi-tech arsenal.
According to a Channel 2 report, the spying robot, which is about two meters long and covered in military camouflage, mimics the movements and appearance of real snakes, slithering around through caves, tunnels, cracks and buildings, while at the same time sending images and sound back to a soldier who controls the device through a laptop computer.
Able to bend its joints so well that it can squeeze through very tight spaces, the new device will be used to find people buried under collapsed buildings. The snake is also able to arch its body, allowing it to see over obstacles through its head camera.
Researchers studied the movements of live snakes in order to create the most natural and realistic robotic version.
The snake’s cost has yet to be determined, as it is still being developed; however, according to Channel 2, the IDF plans to provide combat units with these devices.
Besides recording multimedia, the snake may also be used to carry explosives.
The Defense Ministry, with experts from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, based their intelligence-gathering robot on a previous project of Ben-Gurion University, which created a slew of robotic animals with special abilities.
Eight months ago, researchers at Ben-Gurion University reported they had developed “robot snakes” capable of navigating through pipes and narrow openings.
The Ben-Gurion report also detailed other robot animals, including, a cat that climbs walls using its claws, and a “dog-droid” that responds to the human movements.
10:42PM: According to Egyptian sources, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been pressuring US President Barack Obama to set a two-year deadline for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, and have threatened to rescind the Arab peace initiative.
Don’t you just love the Arab concept of peace?
9:05PM: Palestinian police have shot and seriously wounded a palestinian man who was driving fast and erratically, while heading towards the convoy of a senior Abbas aide, after he ignored police warnings to stop. After the incident there were claims this was not an assassination attempt but rather the act of “a confused motorist who lost his bearings.” Sound familiar?
Meanwhile, it looks like he was shot by Star Wars stormtroopers.
The source claimed that security men signaled to the driver warning him to stop, however he did not stop, and as a result he hit a security vehicle. Security officers fired at the car’s tires trying to stop it, but the driver was hit in his legs.
6:18PM: PA security forces have arrested three Hamas women (Hamasholettes?) who were allegedly planning a suicide attack.
6:00PM: I seriously love this man.
It is all good, but if you really want to understand why I feel this way, start listening from 04:32.
3:25PM: US envoy George Mitchell is in a reassuring mood.
“I want to begin by stating again, clearly and emphatically, beyond any doubt, that the United States’ commitment to the security of Israel remains unshakable,” said Mitchell alongside President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. “We’re working hard to achieve our objectives for comprehensive peace in the Middle East, to which you have referred, Mr. President, including a Palestinian state side by side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel.” (an implicit rejection of the so-called palestinian right of return, and the palestinian approach to not acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state -ed).
“We all share an obligation to create the conditions for the prompt resumption and early conclusion of negotiations,” Mitchell continued.He also tried to calm Israeli nerves, saying the policy gaps “are not disagreements among adversaries” and that the two countries “remain close allies and friends.”
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On the way from Ben-Gurion Airport to Jerusalem, Mitchell instructed the US Embassy to circulate a statement, also read out Monday at the State Department briefing in Washington, denying quotes attributed to him that indicated a serious lack of good faith between Washington and Jerusalem.
US Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle said that Mitchell was “shocked and deeply dismayed to read in Ma’ariv that he was alleged to have said, ‘The Israelis lied to us all these years. It’s over.'”
Tuttle said that Mitchell asked him to state that the “quotation is totally false. It is a complete fabrication.”
Ma’ariv, in a front page story, said the source for the quote was a “prominent Jewish leader” Mitchell met last week in New York.
Tuttle said the only private meeting he had that day was with Mort Zuckerman, and that Zuckerman authorized the State Department to issue a statement denying this is what Mitchell had said.
“The Ma’ariv article is absolutely false,” Tuttle quoted Zuckerman’s statement as saying. “I find it outrageous. I have met and talked many times with Senator Mitchell, and he has never made such a statement or anything that could be interpreted in this way. I share his dismay and welcome the opportunity to set the record straight.”
1:38PM: Ha’aretz reports on Israel’s PR problem:
Arab public relations efforts in Europe and the United States have cast Israelis in an inaccurate light, a top Israeli public relations official said on Tuesday.
“The Arabs, our adversaries, have succeeded in doing to us what ‘Borat’ did for Kazakhstan”, Ido Aharoni told the Knesset Defense and Security Committee on Tuesday, referring to the 2006 Sacha Baron Cohen film in which Cohen portrayed a Kazakh filmmaker touring the United States.
Aharoni, head of the Brand Israel project, said Arab public relations measures “have created an image [for Israelis] whose connection to reality is very weak.
That is not the only similarity between the Arabs and Borat.
6:03AM: Charles Krauthammer with more scathing comments on Obama’s Cairo speech.
