I DON'T know if the Guinness Book of World Records has a special section for Chutzpah.
If it does not, it should. That's the one competition where we might take home a few gold medals.
The first one would surely go to Binyamin Netanyahu.
THIS WEEK, on the eve of the first round of serious negotiations between the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu did two interesting things: he announced plans for several large new settlement projects and he accused the Palestinians of grievous incitement against Israel.
Let's take the settlements first. As explained by Israeli diplomats to their American colleagues, and repeated by all the Israeli media, poor Netanyahu had no choice. John Kerry compelled him to release 104 Palestinian prisoners as a "confidence building measure." After such a momentous concession, he had to pacify his extremist colleagues in the Likud and in the cabinet. A thousand new housing units in the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem) was the very minimum.
The agreement to release prisoners let loose a veritable Witches' Sabbath. All the newspapers and TV news programs were awash with blood -- the blood on the hands of the Palestinian murderers. "Murderers" was the de rigeur appellation. Not "fighters," not "militants," not even "terrorists." Just plain "murderers."
All the prisoners to be released were convicted before the Oslo agreement was signed, meaning that they have been in prison for at least 20 years. The probability that they would take part in future bloody activity must be minimal.
Some of the victims' families carried out staged stormy protests, with bloody hands and blood-smeared flags. The media vied with each other in publishing pictures of weeping mothers (TV loves weeping women) waving photos of their killed sons and blood-curdling descriptions of the attacks in which they died. (Some of which were indeed atrocious.)
However, not so long ago, Netanyahu had agreed to release more than 1,000 prisoners in return for one captured Israeli soldier. This means that one single soldier is 10 times more precious than the chances of peace.
The actual release bordered on the grotesque. In order to avoid photos in the morning papers of the rapturous reception of the prisoners by their families, the actual release of the first 26 prisoners took place after midnight, in a shroud of mystery. Which reminds one of the Biblical passage, in which David mourned for Saul, slain in battle with the Philistines: "Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon (both Philistine towns), lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph." (II Samuel 1)
Does all this testify to an atmosphere of peace on the eve of peacemaking? Wait, there is more to come.
THE DAY the new settlement projects were announced, Netanyahu fired off to John Kerry a furious protest against the ongoing Palestinian "incitement" against Israel. This missive could interest the adjudicators of the Guinness record for Chutzpah.
The main evidence for Mahmoud Abbas' perfidy, in Netanyahu's letter, is a text in which a minor Palestinian official called for a Palestinian state "from Rosh Hanikra to Eilat." Rosh Hanikra (Ras Naqura in Arabic) is on the Lebanese border, so this state would include all of Israel. Also, during a soccer event in Ramallah, anti-Israeli shouts were heard.
Awful, just awful. Kerry should spring from his seat in fury. Were it not for the fact that almost all leading Likud members proclaim that the whole of historical Palestine belongs to Israel, and Naftali Bennett, a pillar of Netanyahu's government coalition, just announced that the Palestinians "can forget about" a Palestinian state.
Not to mention a certain Daniel Seaman, the former director of the Ministry of Explaining (that's its real name. I didn't make it up). Israelis don't do propaganda, God forbid. Seaman has just been appointed to Netanyahu's own office, in charge of "explaining" on the internet. This week he posted a message on facebook addressed to Saeb Erekat, the chief of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks, telling him to "go and f**k himself." To the theological declaration by the Church of Scotland that the Jews have no special claim to Palestine he posted the reply: "We don't give a [obscenity] for what you say."
This genius of public relations is now setting up a clandestine group of Israeli university students, who will be paid to flood the international social media with government "explaining" material.
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