Rick Sanchez: Urinating from the Diving Board

Rick Sanchez anchors the 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. edition of CNN Newsroom each weekday and serves as a contributor for CNN en Español. Sanchez's professional honors include an Emmy Award and an American Medical Association "Distinguished Journalist Award." Sanchez studied journalism at the University of Minnesota.

Yesterday (February 10), Sanchez mentioned the elections in Israel and brought an "expert" named Jim Clancy to explain the candidates to American watchers. Among other things, they stipulated that there is no “Left” in Israel and that Bibi Netanyahu never negotiated with Palestinians.

Here are the quotes:

"CLANCY: [Netanyahu] Hawkish, in the right wing, concerned about Iran, and has a record, a proven record of not negotiating with the Palestinians."

"SANCHEZ: Ehud Barak, Labor Party. And nobody in Israel is to the left, but if you were going to have somebody who is a little more center-left, that would be him."

There is a joke in Hebrew about a life guard in a swimming pool chasing away one of the swimmers for urinating in the pool. “So what? Everyone urinates in the pool”, protests the culprit. “Yes, indeed”, agrees the life guard, "But not from the top of the diving board”.

The blatant, publicly and proudly displayed ignorance and lies of Rick Sanchez’s guest reminded me of this public urinator. He has no problem peddling his easily debunked lies on the air, on national TV, in full sight of the truth. Call that some chutzpa.

“On the political left:

• the self identified Israeli "Peace Camp" is a coalition of parties and non-parliamentary groups which desire to promote peace between Israel and its Arab neighbours and to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict through a return to the pre-1967 border and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
• Anarchism in Israel: Israeli political movements with either an anti-nationalistic agenda or a fundamental opposition to government in general. Anarchists Against the Wall is a high-profile group that regularly protests the Israel-Palestine "wall".
• Peace Now supports territorial concessions in the West Bank and was critical of government's policy in withdrawing from Lebanon after the 1982-6 war and the subsequent withdrawal from South Lebanon.
• Geneva Initiative and The People's Voice (HaMifkad HaLeumi), two peace initiatives led by prominent Israeli and Palestinian public figures that surfaced in 2004. These initiatives were based on unofficial bilateral understandings between the two sides, and offer models for a permanent agreement.
• HaHistadrut ("The Union"; short for "the General Union of the Workers in Israel"), an umbrella organization for many labor unions in Israel. In the past, was identified with the different forms of the Israel Labor party; nowadays, the chairman of the Histadrut is Offer Eyni. The former chairman is Amir PeretzOne Nation party, which eventually merged into Labor in 2004, which Peretz led from November 2005 to June 2007. became head of the socialist
• Several radical left-wing organizations calling soldiers to refuse service in the West Bank and Gaza; the best known are Ometz LeSarev ("Courage to Refuse") and Yesh Gvul (There's a limit/border).
• Ma'avak Sotzialisti (Socialist Struggle) campaigns against privatisation and the worsening conditions faced by workers and young people in Israel.” (Wiki)

• 
  

And more recently this:

“The three left-wing Zionist parties - Labor, Hatnua Hahadasha-Meretz and Yisrael Hazaka - restarted their election campaigns on Wednesday, a day after the IDF withdrew all its forces from the Gaza Strip.”

There is also the fresh results from yesterday's elections showing the way the electorate divided the pie.

You may note that:

15 seats went to the Far Left parties

13 seats to the Labour Party - Left to Left Center party,

28 to Kadima, which is a center -to-Left party

It seems to me the Left is well represented in the Israeli Knesset, despite what Sanchez and his "expert" pronounced, with such unabashedly uninformed aplomb.

As for Netanyahu not negotiating with Palestinians:

“The Wye River Memorandum was an agreement negotiated between Israel and the Palestine Authority to implement the earlier Interim Agreement of 28 September, 1995. Brokered by the United States at the Aspen Institute's Wye River Plantation near Wye River, Maryland,^[1] it was signed on October 23, 1998.^{[2] [-]}

The agreement was finally signed by Netanyahu and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House, with President Clinton playing a key role as the official witness.

On November 17, 1998, Israel's 120 member parliament, the Knesset, approved the Wye River Memorandum by a vote of 75-19.

With the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, and the counter-attacks by the Israel Defense Forces, the Wye River's understandings and goals remain un-implemented." (Source)

This is not the first time Rick Sanchez and his "expert" try to smear Israel's reputation with damn lies. "Simply Jews" noted it before, here.

And this is also not the first time that Rick Sanchez enthusiastic interpretation landed him with egg on his face, proving beyond any reasonable doubt that the man is an idiot non-savant. Anyone with a modicum of self-respect, let alone intelligence, would have learned from his own experience. Obviously Rick is a man who does not learn from experience to observe the wise maxim that it is better to keep silent and be considered an idiot than to open one's mouth and be proven one.