MSNBC Denounces Netanyahu as a ‘Panicking’ ‘Racist’

Reporting live from Tel Aviv and campaigning hard against the re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on her MSNBC show on Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell invited on one guest after another to denounce the Likud party leader. Turning to New York Times Tel Aviv bureau chief Jodi Rudoren, Mitchell declared of Netanyahu: “He’s clearly fearing that this center-left coalition and the prominence of, for the first time, a united Arab voting policy, Arab-Israelis who can vote, might make a difference.”

Rudoren replied: “This morning he posted on his Facebook a video saying that Arabs were flocking to the polls and he called on right-wing supporters to come out and block them. And the left came and said that that was a racist remark, sort of comparing it to suppressing African-American votes in the United States. So it’s been a very provocative and ugly last few days…”

n a separate segment later on the program, Mitchell brought on former Israeli General Danny Yatom and touted his opposition to Netanayhu: “You are one of more than a hundred retired generals who came out against Netanyahu because you don’t think that his positions are good for security….You just said to me he’s panicking.”

Yatom argued: “Yes, it looks to me that he feels as if the polls that were published until two days ago are real, realistic, and that he’s going to lose….So it looks as if I don’t have any other explanation but to say that probably he’s caught in panic.”

Mitchell then teed up James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute: “I know that you’ve been a long proponent of having a two-state solution….What is going to be the reaction in the Palestinian community – let’s say that Netanyahu is elected or is in part of a unity government, a coalition government – to the end of any hope of having their own state?”

Zogby ranted:

In the animal kingdom there’s nothing more dangerous than a panicked politician and Netanyahu is panicking. And so he’s scaring people about foreign conspiracies, about security threats, and about the Arabs. And if you take his words about the Arab vote and translate it into American politics and call it “the black vote,” you see how racist this is.

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