NETANYAHU'S BOGUS COMPARISON OF US ANNEXATION OF TEXAS AND THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES

This is what passes as "rational discussion" on the president's recent speech on Israeli/Palestinian borders:

"Speaking to reporters accompanying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his long flight to the United States tonight, Netanyahu spoke of the injustice and hardship Mexicans have endured since American forces annexed Texas in 1845. “Tens of thousands of ordinary Mexicans were driven out of their homes – the only homes they had known for centuries – and forced to live in poverty and squalor south of the border imposed by American aggression,” Netanyahu said. “The Israeli and Mexican people agree on this: This festering wound will never heal until America takes bold steps to return to the internationally accepted lines of 1845. Clearly the settlement activity that’s taken place in occupied Mexico since then is illegal. When I meet the President tomorrow I will tell him to halt all building activity in Texas immediately. Two lands for two peoples, yes, but not on land taken by force from Mexico,” the Prime Minister said."

STUPID! And complete nonsense as well as a specious argument. 
 
Here's Juan Cole, an expert on the Middle East, to explain why this statement by Netanyahu does nothing to encourage a rational discussion on a very serious subject:
 
JUAN COLE:

"The reason Israel has to go back to 1967 borders is that the annexation of territory from a neighbor through warfare is illegal according to the United Nations Charter, which is a treaty to which Israel and the United States are both signatories. ‘Greater Israel’ apologists attempt to get out of this difficulty by saying that countries used to conquer land away from their neighbors all the time. This is a bogus argument, since countries used to do a lot of things, including sponsor the slave trade; Britain even insisted on China allowing the sale of opium in the early 19th century. The world changed when World War II ended and the countries of the world established the United Nations to forestall any recrudescence of Axis techniques of conquest and rule. If Israel does not believe in the UN Charter, it should renounce its UN membership."

[snip]

"It is not just the UN Charter. The Hague Agreement of 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbid a power occupying enemy territory in war time from annexing it or in any way changing the life ways of its people."

The bogus statement put forth by Netanyahu is not serious, and he's made a fool of himself for uttering such rot. What happened when the US annexed Texas happened in the 1800s, before there was a UN, and before Israel signed a treaty (and as stated above to which the US is also a signatory) that states NO TERRITORY CAN BE ANNEXED THROUGH WARFARE. IT IS ILLEGAL.
 
What is Netanyahu talking about?  Is he deliberately trying to look like a fool?  If so.  He has succeeded. 
 
And he continues to make Mr. Obama look like the consummate statesman that he is.