Once a blabbermouth, always a blabbermouth

John Bolton Compares Israel to North Korea

by Daniel Levy, Prospects for Peace

The annual right-wing Israeli shindig known as the Herzliya Conference has just drawn to a close. The conference is organized by Uzi Arad, former adviser to Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu, and has in the last years become an Israeli-American neo-con love-fest. Of course like on any good Fox News show, there is a generous sprinkling of non-neo-con folk who lend legitimacy to the gathering.

This year at least the conference was a little more open in wearing its politics on its sleeve—the program was officially held “in cooperation with the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, Shalem Center.” That Institute’s chair is Natan Sharansky (President Bush’s favorite author) and it’s sponsor—Adelson—is Sheldon Adelson of Freedom Watch infamy. Norman Podhoretz, Martin Kramer, and David Wurmser are just a sampling of the Herzliya speaker’s menu (presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani must have been short on advice this week).

But it was Ambassador John Bolton who really stole the show. He was firing off in all directions—Israeli and American—taking aim at the Israeli Prime Minister, media and military, and the US State Department and intelligence community to name just a few. But this line is undoubtedly the highlight, or rather low-point, of the Bolton rant. “Due to its government censorship the people of Israel can know what it feels like to be a citizen of North Korea” (he was referring to the censorship surrounding the Israeli strike on a Syrian facility last September).

(More here.)