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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35145 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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Today on "nefarious insidious things Jews can't get away with": making a pager joke.

Israel’s Netanyahu brings his dirty laundry to Washington. Literally.

Over the years, the Israeli leader has developed a reputation among the staff at the U.S. president’s guesthouse for bringing special cargo on his trips to Washington: bags and suitcases full of dirty laundry, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The clothes are cleaned for the prime minister free of charge by the U.S. staff, a perk that is available to all foreign leaders but sparingly taken advantage of given the short stays of busy heads of state.

“The Netanyahus are the only ones who bring actual suitcases of dirty laundry for us to clean,” said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details of a foreign leader’s visits. “After multiple trips, it became clear this was intentional.”

The officials who confirmed the past uses of laundry bags included both political and career officials spanning the Trump and Obama administrations.

https://archive.is/K67pJ

Dirty laundry of course being an idiom which means “questionable activities that one wants to remain secret, but which someone else may use as blackmail.”

Reading the full article it appears that he is more of a greedy kleptocrat who wants free stuff, rather than a head of state making some devious underlying diplomatic statement. Interesting article though.

Do you really think that Netanyahu, worth $14m, brings his laundry all the way to America to save $6, when his own assistants undoubtedly do laundry for him back home? If this is a genuine belief, why would you think this?

What do you think it is?

  • a way to humiliate the White House staffers
  • a secret-not-secret hint that White House covers up Netanyahu's dirty business
  • "free shit" syndrome, corresponding, amusingly enough, to one of the Jew stereotypes
  • insert your own

Netanyahu doesn’t have it out for the random maid staff that the White House employs. It is just as free if they do laundry in Israel. It is either saying that America launders the dirty secrets of Israel or that Israel’s “dirty laundry” goes through America. Its either criticizing America’s intel sharing or showing symbolic dominance over America such that we do their dirty deeds for them.

Cool it with the anti semitic remarks

"Average Gold-Plated AK Fanboy vs. Average Gold-Plated Pager Enjoyer: a History of the Modern Middle-East"

Obviously the gifts that world leaders give each-other are symbolic. It always has been this way. The idea this is just a joke and there's no underlying symbolism intended by the people who designed and made the gift is just being willfully blind.

Netenyahu selling the idea of the US controlling Gaza while gifting him a gold-plated pager has meaningful underlying symbolism. It's not a joke, it's serious.

The obvious play here is for Trump to gift Netanyahu a gold plated copy of the The Protocols. As a joke, of coarse.

I think this is more a reflection of the gift's recipient than the gift's giver - would you expect the Israelis to give a golden pager to any other Head of State?

It's a reflection of both, it's layered with meaning. It's flaunting Israel's insolence to someone who is so enamored with Israel he's going to take it in stride.

Part of it is "we totally undermined Biden by just doing stuff and he couldn't stop us, but we really want to work with you so you're in on the joke." When the gift itself is portraying a bomb disguised as an innocuous object, as Netanyahu tries to drag the US into this mess further by appealing to Trump's own proclivities.

What proportion of allied Heads of State haven't done something undignified or distasteful in the interests of catering to Trump's ego? I agree that this was extraordinarily distasteful, but it's pretty low on my list of concerns about Israel, to put it mildly.

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