Leaks are a perennial problem in Israel, but here’s one that Bibi Netanyahu could especially do without (courtesy of Ha’aretz):
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.
And the prime minister’s father isn’t helping either:
Channel 2 reported Wednesday night that the prime minister had told his father, 100-year-old historian Benzion Netanyahu, that he purposely set the conditions knowing that the Palestinians would never agree to them.
"He doesn’t support [a Palestinian state]," the father said in a phone interview. "He set conditions that they won’t ever accept. That’s what he told me. He set the conditions and they won’t accept even one of them."
So we know that Netanyahu and Emanuel have at least one thing in common: a quotable father.
