Is Ahmadinejad a ‘Gift’ for Israel?

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"On Friday, just three days after basking in the spotlight of international attention — meeting with President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in New York to talk about reviving the Middle East peace process — Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, gave an address to the United Nations General Assembly devoid of histrionics that was almost completely ignored.

To a certain extent Mr. Abbas was simply unlucky to have been scheduled to speak on the same day that the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program flared up and dominated the news cycle. But even before President Obama accused Iran of building a uranium enrichment facility in secret, the Palestinian leader and the concerns of his people were marginalized when the Mr. Netanyahu chose to focus, in his address to the General Assembly on Thursday, on the threat from Iran and the fact that its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, expressed doubts about the Holocaust last week.

Despite the fact that Mr. Ahmadinejad defied expectations by not mentioning the Holocaust at all during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday — five days after he reportedly called the killing of six million Jews by Nazi Germany “a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim” — Mr. Netanyahu began his address on Thursday in New York with an outraged rebuttal of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s repeated questioning of the historical record."

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"Mr. Netanyahu went on to call the moral legitimacy of the United Nations into question for letting Mr. Ahmadinejad speak at all, and chastised delegates who sat through the Iranian president’s speech, in which he called Israel “racist” and said its treatment of the Palestinians amounted to “genocide.” As can be seen in this video report from Al Jazeera, Mr. Netanyau also said: “The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

There is no doubt that Mr. Netanyahu is outraged by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s claims about the Holocaust, but his decision to engage so passionately with Iran’s president, while all but ignoring the conflict at home, also helped to change the subject from a conversation that presents difficulties for Israel’s leader — how to make peace with Palestinians without alienating his supporters — to one that allows him to seize the moral high ground.

The arc of the conversation this week in New York — moving from discussions of Middle East peace on Tuesday, to the protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, to Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation of documentary evidence of the Holocaust on Thursday and to the full-blown international argument on Friday about Iran’s nuclear weapons — was undoubtedly more favorable to Israel’s prime minister than if Iran had been removed from the equation and the world had spent four days talking about Israel’s refusal to stop expanding its settlements on the West Bank.

The way the week played out instead recalls an observation made last year by a former head of the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, who told an Arab-language satellite channel that Iran’s current president is, paradoxically, very good for Israel.

As a reader of The Lede pointed out, last year, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the former intelligence chief, Ephraim Halevy, called Mr. Ahmadinejad a "gift," since his inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric "unites the entire world against Iran."

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Israel relieved as Goldstone Report scantly mentioned at UN

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"Following the release last week of the Goldstone commission findings which accused Israel of committing war crimes during its offensive in the Gaza Strip, diplomatic officials feared that the report would weigh heavily on the agenda of this week's United Nations General Assembly meeting.

Israel's fears proved to have no basis in fact as the report was cited by just a few world leaders.

The country that has thus far attracted the most attention is Iran. After accusing Israel of committing war crimes against the Palestinians, Iran itself was the object of criticism. Argentina President Cristina Fernandez blasted Iran for its involvement in the bloody terrorist attacks in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994."

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"France also took a forceful stand against Iran. "If the Iranians do not accede to the demands of the international community this will be a critical mistake," French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the UN Security Council.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the Security Council that the world should consider "far tougher sanctions" against Iran if its continues to seek a nuclear bomb.

"As evidence of its breach of international agreements grows, we must now consider far tougher sanctions together," Brown said."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1116786.html

It's more like they have a common interest in keeping the argument going.