It fell to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to play the role Khrushchev once played in toughening a young American president.
The former Soviet leader thought he could browbeat Kennedy only to discover, in Vienna, that the Kennedy charm was not unalloyed to steel (“It will be a long, cold winter.”) Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to think he could steamroll Obama. He earned a frosty comeuppance.
The Israeli leader toyed with Obama’s unequivocal call in Cairo last June for a “stop” to Israeli settlements. He allowed the ill-timed announcement that 1,600 apartments for Jews will be built in East Jerusalem. Then, rather than scrap that, Netanyahu chose cheap cheers from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee with “Jerusalem is not a settlement.”
(I say cheap because everyone knows Jerusalem is not a settlement. That’s not the issue. The issue is that the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem is rejected by the rest of the world and any peace agreement will involve an inventive deal on its status. To build is therefore to provoke.)
Obama was not amused. He airbrushed Netanyahu’s White House visit. The message was clear: The Middle East status quo does not serve the interests of the United States (or Israel). When Obama says “stop,” he does not mean “build a bit.”
Sometimes mistakes are needed. Through the law of unintended consequences they open new avenues.
So it is with the East Jerusalem housing fiasco. Nothing will happen in the Middle East unless the United States is seen as an honest broker able to criticize both sides when needed. Obama’s anger sped a needed clarification and freed debate.
As Andrew Sullivan has observed, a cultural shift is underway with respect to Israel: “The critics have been called ‘self-hating Jews’ if they are Jewish, or anti-Semites if they are not, but these barbs — once sufficient to end someone’s career — have failed to have an effect this time.”
Yes, indeed.
ANTI-ZIONIST LEFTIST SCUM LIKE COHEN AND SULLIVAN THINK THAT WHEN THE USA TREATS AN ALLY - ISRAEL - SHABBILY AND THE LEADERS OF FATAH WITH DEFERENCE THAT THIS IS BEING AN HONEST BROKER.
THAT SAYS IT ALL.
AFTER ALL: ISRAEL HAS BEEN BUILDING IN JERUSALEM SINCE 1968.
AND DURING BIDEN'S TRIP THE PA/FATAH DEDICATED A PUBLIC SQUARE TO A WOMAN WHO COMMITTED ONE OF THE WORST TERRORIST ATTACKS ON ISRAEL. AND NEITHER BIDEN OR OBAMA OR HILLARY SAID "BOO".
SO I GUESS THAT SILENCE ABOUT FATAH'S FAILURE TO LIVE UP TO OSLO IS OKAY TO THE OBAMA AND THE NYTIMES.