According to today’s New York Times, the conceit behind President Obama’s recent attacks on Israel was to redress what he felt was an imbalanced approach to American diplomacy. Apparently the president thinks Secretary of State John Kerry has been too nice to the Israelis during the course of his effort to revive peace talks with the Palestinians. Thus, the president has decided to play “bad cop,” to Kerry’s “good cop” in dealings with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. While the president’s assumption of the role of the bully in his Bloomberg interview with Jeffrey Goldberg was entirely convincing, the Israelis may be forgiven for wondering when the good cop will start making nice with them. This is, after all, the same secretary that has threatened Israel with boycotts and even a third intifada if they were not sufficiently forthcoming in the negotiations, leaving the impression that the American tandem was conducting a coordinated campaign of pressure rather than a more nuanced effort to convince Jerusalem to make concessions.I guess, then, it would be fair to call it a "bad cop"/"bad cop" routine.
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| The Obama team poses for a group shot |
2 comments:
Israelis can do nothing, short of committing national _seppuku_, to satisfy the likes of Obama. Their sin is to _be_ the gentrifying honkies in the Middle Eastern slum. To the contemporary Left, honkie identity is, like pride in Catholic moral theology, the source and root of all other sins.
The left (including, alas, the Israeli left) is completely out to lunch--and dangerously so.
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