Netanyahu missing Mandela memorial for cost reasons

[FarCenter]

AFP - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided not to attend a memorial service for Nelson Mandela this week because it is too expensive to travel to South Africa, Israeli media reported Sunday.

Netanyahu had notified the South African authorities that he would fly in but cancelled his plans at the last minute due to the costs involved -- around 7.0 million shekels ($2 million) for his transport and security alone, pubic radio and the Haaretz daily reported.

"The decision was made in light of the high transportation costs resulting from the short notice of the trip and the security required for the prime minister in Johannesburg," Haaretz reported.

The Israeli leader has been in the spotlight recently with revelations that taxpayers dished out almost $1 million last year to maintain his three residences.

The media highlighted a bill of 17,000 euros ($23,000) for water to fill a swimming pool at his villa in Caesarea in the country's north.

http://www.france24.com/en/20131209-netanyahu-missing-mandela-memorial-cost-reasons

[postulater]

1. Huh? Has he never heard of a bake sale to raise money?

[BeyondGeography]

2. All the Wrong Moves would be the film title of Bibi's last two years

[rurallib]

31. Bibi's life

couldn't believe they elected that putz again after removing him once.

[LittleBlue]

3. Could this guy be a bigger dick?

There is no cause for a world leader to use this excuse. It's like he's pandering to the extreme right wing of Fox News who think Mandela is a terrorist.

[CherokeeDem]

4. Good Riddance....

He's not worthy to be there to begin with.

But then this is not about Bibi... so why would he want to go?

[russspeakeasy]

9. Nailed it !

[JustAnotherGen]

33. +1

[riverwalker]

5. asshole n/t

[Warren DeMontague]

6. Stay Classy, Bibi.

[Behind the Aegis]

18. The whole thing is petty, though.

[Warren DeMontague]

21. No doubt, and some people are going to criticize Israel no matter what. Still

he ought to go, IMHO.

[malaise]

27. Well Carter is going and he best described

the treatment of the Palestinians as apartheid so why would Bibi show up.

Good riddance.

[2naSalit]

7. Just as well...

the guy's a bigot and an asshole of the first degree... not surprised he'd need a lot of security there. And there are probably more people relived that he's not going to show than are disappointed. He would try to grab all the attention, which is probably the real reason why, nobody would be willing to play along. If it's not all about bibi, he's not going.

Understand too that cost has never been a concern before... it's often American taxpayer $$ he's burning anyway.

He can stay home and sulk.

[Jesus Malverde]

8. Op-Ed: Mandela Was an Enemy of Israel

Nelson Mandela has already been mourned by many Jews around the world. And for good reasons. When Mandela was released from prison by de Klerk, he showed statesmanship and reconciliation rather than revenge.

But his biography reveals that he was an enemy of the Israeli people.

A post-apartheid Pretoria that joins in boycotting Jerusalem is one of the more powerful victories for the boycott and divestment campaign. And it’s Nelson Mandela’s legacy.

Historically, black leaders in South Africa such as Desmond Tutu viewed the Jews as a part of the “capitalist camp”, and therefore exploitative of the blacks. Neo Mnumzama, chief representative of the ANC (Mandela’s party) at the United Nations, called Zionism an “ally of apartheid” and “an accomplice in the perpetuation of the crimes of Pretoria against the South African people”.

In Mandela’s twisted version, Israel and South Africa - both, in his view, under apartheid rule - were small bastions of Western interests surrounded by a larger and non-Western people; both governed hostile majorities, using force and denying rights to subjugate them; both were run by nationalistic, racist governments unwilling to grant rights to these people but anxious to exploit labor.

Mandela always made it clear that those who are the enemies of the Jews are not necessarily his enemies.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14199#.UqUxL5G9XOE

[FarCenter]

11. And Israel was an ally of the South African apartheid regime

There were exchanges of conventional weapons and cooperation on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.

The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence.

The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/may/23/israel-south-africa-nuclear-weapons

[Jesus Malverde]

12. Selling nuclear weapons to a racist pariah state, boggles the mind.

I was under the impression it was joint development. It never occurred to me they would sell nuclear weapons. Stunning...

Thanks

[kelliekat44]

28. Why not? It was their testing ground. Mandela didn't hate Jews, neither does TuTu. What they hate

are the policies of the then and current Israeli government...as do many others. Of course they are all accused of anti-Semitism and hating Jews in general if you dare to share your disagreement of Israeli government policies and practices.

[FarCenter]

34. Some Afrikaners and some Israelis had a similar outlook

Both regarded themselves as racial and religious minorities surrounded by a hostile population that would exterminate them or drive them out if given a chance.

During the Boer War, the British rounded up the Afrikaners and put them in concentration camps as a method of countering the Boer's guerrilla tactics.

The term "concentration camp" was used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during this conflict, and the term grew in prominence during this period.

The camps had originally been set up by the British army as "refugee camps" to provide refuge for civilian families who had been forced to abandon their homes for whatever reason related to the war. However, when Kitchener succeeded Roberts as commander-in-chief in South Africa on 29 November 1900, the British army introduced new tactics in an attempt to break the guerrilla campaign and the influx of civilians grew dramatically as a result. Kitchener initiated plans to

flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly 'bag' of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children.... It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War#Concentration_camps_.281900.E2.80.931902.29

[Cha]

10. Freaking Wow! Is he on the wrong side of history or what?

"The Israeli leader has been in the spotlight recently with revelations that taxpayers dished out almost $1 million last year to maintain his three residences.

The media highlighted a bill of 17,000 euros ($23,000) for water to fill a swimming pool at his villa in Caesarea in the country's north."

[2naSalit]

13. And all those funds we send them

are "fungible" = they can be appropriated for anything, completely unspecified use of our "aid" money. I can imagine where most of it goes.

[Cha]

14. Damn!

[2naSalit]

16. Talk about

Welfare Queens!





Time to pull the Big Gulp sized straw from their mouth?

Edited to add: Ooops! I forgot to include my citation for that table...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93United_States_relations

[Cha]

17. Really.. nothing to see here.. move along.. as we

say.

[2naSalit]

19. Truly...

But I think we could just undo some sequestration strangulation with all that cash.

[Cha]

20. I know it's freaking ridiculous.. bibi has a lot of

gall.

[Cha]

15. K&R this thing.. more need to see it, I think..

[JI7]

22. maybe he thinks Bush will try to convert him

[uponit7771]

23. If Obama spent 23,000 on water alone I'd be pretty unhappy with that. Bibi sounds like a world class

... asshole

[Wilms]

24. ^

[kelliekat44]

25. I guess it's not because of Israeli gov't support for apartheid and

their diminished or lost ability to test their nukes and weapons of mass destruction in SoAf?

[malaise]

26. Fuck him

[madokie]

29. F* him

Racist bastid is more like it

[geek tragedy]

30. Israel/Likud supported apartheid in South Africa

so yeah best for everyone that he not attend. Especially their current apartheid- lite policies .

And , yes Bibi did find the money to attend Thatcher 's funeral.

[HappyMe]

32. What a classy guy.

I'm not surprised. He's a first class asshat.

[countryjake]

35. K&R!