Via Newsbusters:
Starting off her interview with newly reelected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell acknowledged his win – then told him how bad it was: “Prime Minister, congratulations on your victory. But – there’s always a but – critics and analysts here and around the world are saying, ‘At what cost?’ Your hard turn right on the Palestinian issue, what you said about the Arab voters coming out in droves, they say, are costing you, costing you support around the world.”
Netanyahu pushed back on her assertions: “Well, neither one is – the premises in your questions are wrong. I haven’t changed my policy….What has changed is the reality. Abu Mazen, the Palestinian leader, refuses to recognize the Jewish state, he’s made a pact with Hamas that calls for destruction of the Jewish state.”
Moments later, Mitchell cited a series of liberal pundits bashing the Israeli leader:
Words have meaning. Tom Friedman wrote today, “They must have been doing high fives in Tehran when they saw how low Bibi sank to win. What better way to isolate Israel globally and deflect attention from Iran’s behavior?” Joe Klein in Time magazine called it “bigotry.” Jeffrey Goldberg said that it would be “calamitous,” the way you talked about Arab voters and they way you talked about not going for a Palestinian state.