In the opinion article, "Where Netanyahu Fails Himself and Israel," in the May 25 Washington Post, CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria blasted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for rejecting President Obama’s peace proposal invoking Israel’s pre-1967 lines. Zakaria compared the Israeli prime minister to former Soviet Union Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, known as "Mr. Nyet" for his stubbornness in dealing with the U.S.
Zakaria also charged that Netanyahu "might sound like Churchill, he acts like a local ward boss, far more interested in holding onto his post than using it to secure Israel’s future," and that Israel "continues to rule millions of Palestinians in serf-like conditions - entitled to neither a vote nor a country." Zakaria seemed to forget that, while Palestinians outside the boundaries of Israel who are not Israeli citizens do not get to vote in Israeli parliamentary elections, they did get to cast ballots for their own parliament in February 2006, with the terrorist group Hamas winning a narrow victory.
Contending that other Israeli prime ministers have bought into using the pre-1967 armistice lines as a basis for negotiation, Zakaria missed the point that such negotiations have previously been done in private - with the Clinton administration team in 2000, as recounted by CAMERA, refusing to put such a proposal on paper even while presenting it to Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak for fear that it would be used to undercut Israel in future negotiations.
The CNN anchor also ignored the Palestinian Authority’s refusal for the past two years to even take part in negotiations unless the Israeli government caves in to a request by the Obama administration to halt construction within the borders of existing Jewish settlements, as Zakaria charged that the Israeli prime minister’s "strategy has been to put up obstacles, create confusion and wait it out."
But Jewish settlements have in the past been uprooted by the Israeli government in places like the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula as part of agreements with Israel’s adversaries, demonstrating that, as a practical matter, the existence of settlements has not prevented Israel from making agreements to withdraw from and hand over land.
By contrast, Netanyahu has repeatedly offered to engage in talks without preconditions while the Palestinian Authority has demanded concessions from Israel first.
Notably, back in August 2010, Zakaria on the Fareed Zakaria GPS show on CNN ridiculously suggested that opponents of the Ground Zero mosque should learn a lesson about tolerance of other religions from Hezbollah as he naively read a quote from a member of the Lebanon-based terrorist group claiming that the group was accepting of Jews, just not Zionists, as the CNN anchor ignored more blatantly anti-Semitic quotes from the terror group.
