"More important for Israel is the fact that releasing the prisoners is really aimed at pacifying President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry."

Israel and especially Netanyahu will receive no credit for the release of this group of murderers from this administration.
"Pacifying"?
Appeasement by any other name is still appeasement.

Howard Jacobson discussed this phenomena in a recent talk in Jerusalem:

"The syllogism goes like this:

Not all critics of Israel are anti-Semites.

I am a critic of Israel.

Therefore I am not an anti-Semite.

In this way has anti-Zionism become an inviolable space. Question it and you are deemed to have cried anti-Semitism (this, whether you have or you haven’t), and since to cry anti-Semitism is a foul, no position from which it is rational to question anti-Zionism remains allowable. By the infernal logic of this magic circle, the anti-Zionist is doubly indemnified, firstly against any criticism of his position whatsoever, since the status of such criticism has been reduced to that of “tactic,” and secondly against the original accusation of anti-Semitism, which anti-Zionism cancels out.

I don’t myself argue that anti-Zionism is a method for circumventing Jew-hating while indulging it, but were that to have been the intention, it could not have been better planned.

Criticism of Israel functions as a sort of antiseptic bath, or mikveh — no matter how mired in the impurities of anti-Semitism you might be when you go in, you come out as fragrant as a bride awaiting her groom."
http://forward.com/articles/185720/will-we-ever-b...

Seems as if they weren't able to get him in the ground after all. Far Rightists showed up and fought with protesters. Cremation is apparently still an option (according to some in the Italian press). Hopefully they'll cremate him and take his ashes and dump them in the nearest sewer.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/hun...

Bishop Richard Williamson, who made headlines in 2009 when he denied that any Jews were killed in gas chambers during the Holocaust, is a member of SSPX.

So he was buried today. On an encouraging note, it was not without protest:

"Hundreds of people jeered as the coffin of Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke arrived Tuesday for a funeral Mass near Rome organized by a splinter Catholic group opposed to Vatican outreach to Jews...As the hearse bringing the coffin arrived outside the society's church, people in the crowd slammed their fists and umbrellas on the car and shouted "We are all anti-fascist!" and "Priebke, murderer!"

http://htz.li/19EPjGf

Haaretz is reporting that the antisemitic order of the Society of Saint Pius X will be burying him.

Renegade Catholic priests to bury Nazi war criminal outside Rome

"The funeral for Erich Priebke, a convicted Nazi war criminal who died in Rome last week, is to be held Tuesday by a renegade group of ultra-traditionalist Catholic priests in a location outside the Italian capital, Italian media said.

The Vatican had forbidden the funeral to take place in Rome, where during World War II Priebke served and took part in the 1944 murder of 335 civilians at Fosse Ardeatine, Italy's worst wartime atrocity.

Instead of Rome, last rites for the former SS captain will be performed in Albano Laziale, some 25 kilometers south-east of the capital, at 5 P.M. in a college run by the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), Corriere della Sera said on its website.

However, the mayor of the town, which is next door to the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, said he would at least try to stop the ceremony and would deny Priebke a place in the local cemetery.

"I am very worried about public order, people are already assembling," Nicola Marini said.

The SSPX was founded in 1970 to protest the reforms introduced by the Second Vatican Council, including an official repudiation of the notion that Jews were collectively to blame for Christ's death. Its members have often been associated with anti-Semitism..."
http://htz.li/19EPjGf

Make no mistake about it- that tunnel would not have been built but for the pressure Israel received from the EU to allow building supplies to enter Gaza:

Here's an Al-Monitor article from last month about the pressure Israel received from the EU:

Israel Allows Construction Materials
To Enter Gaza Under EU Pressure
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/09...

A few days ago, Michael Rubin wrote the following:

"The Obama doctrine is a doctrine of betrayal. Just ask Georgia, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Honduras, Poland, and every Gulf Arab ally."

I added the Czech Republic to the list.

We can now add Egypt.

Keep the mother- evict Barack and Michele.

Another country to add to list of countries that Obama has screwed: Czech Republic

"The Czech Republic announced Wednesday that it was withdrawing from plans to participate in the United States missile defense program out of frustration at its diminished role in the system, which was conceived as a deterrent against a potential threat from Iran..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/world/europe/16...

One correction. You wrote,

"...the leftist media’s obsession with the idea that Netanyahu is ever meddling where the New York Times thinks he doesn't belong, namely American politics."

Actually, the NYT doesn't think the Israel belongs anywhere, but especially not in the Middle East. The mere existence of the Jewish State, with a right of self-defense, is not something the Sulzberger family and their hired quisling Andrew Rosenthal will ever accept.