Why I love Netanyahu

As you surely remember, before the last Israeli elections, I endorsed Netanyahu as the candidate who, if elected, would do the most amount of good for both Palestinians and Israelis (admittedly unintentionally)

Well...

Netanyahu appears to be suffering from confusion and paranoia. He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communication normally with the White House. To appreciate the depth of his paranoia, it is enough to hear how he refers to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama's senior aides: as "self-hating Jews."

"He thought that his speech at Bar-Ilan would become mandatory reading at schools in the United States, and when he realized that Obama gave no such order, he went back to being frustrated," one of his associates said.

At a recent meeting with with Netanyahu, ostensibly about the understandings with the U.S. on the settlements, former prime minister Ehud Olmert was shocked to see the prime minister focusing mainly on the media. "Is this what he called me in for?" a source close to Olmert quoted him as saying.

Behind closed doors, Netanyahu's coalition partners - including Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman - have also expressed shock at his behavior. One senior minister told an aide that he is finding it very difficult to work with the premier. "He drives us mad," the minister said. "Every minute things change, and I am constantly busy doing maintenance on Netanyahu." (Haaretz, June 9, 2008)

Now that Rahm Emanuel has been called a "self-hating Jew", and called that by a true expert on the subject, I feel the label has been sorely devalued, and I kindly ask all our fiercest critics to find fresh ways to express their loathing of us.

PS. thanks to the economic crisis, the cost of being evil is going up, which, like the Madoff scandal, is a benign side effect of the general misfortune. Netanyahu and his Finance Minister, Yuval Steinitz (who is even more insufferable than Netanyahu), tried (and failed) to impose a value added tax on fruits and vegetable, i.e., a new regressive tax that would bear most heavily on the poorest consumers. You can't say this lot is not consistent in their utter contempt for their beloved "Amyisrael" (nor can you deny that their voters earned it).