A senior administration official accuses Israels Prime Minster of cowardice with a crude obscenity. It is time for reason to resurface.
Another slingshot from the Obama administration: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is, according to a “senior administration official,” an . . . expletive deleted. Expletive elucidated: Netanyahu is a coward, a chicken.
All the denials by administration officials, all the way up to President Obama himself, and all the denials by Israeli officials, all the way up to Prime Minister Netanyahu himself, that Israeli-American relations are on even keel seem to be nothing more than diplomatic maneuver. Clearly, relations between Israel and the US, at least on the diplomatic level, have never been so low since President Eisenhower forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula in 1956, after the war there (which made eye-patch Moshe Dayan famous).
Name-calling is hardly evidence of an affirmative relationship.
Alas, the most recent round reveals a lot more about the “senior administration officials” than about either Israel or Netanyahu.
Which senior administration officials have successfully, personally, faced down armed terrorists in active military combat? Netanyahu has. Accusations of cowardice against Netanyahu — besides insulting, undiplomatic, inappropriate, beneath the dignity of allies — are false.
We have thought that so long as the US keeps supplying the Israeli military with sufficient weaponry to sustain its “qualitative advantage” over all the Arab armies combined, the diplomatic “chatter” between Israel and the US matters little. We are beginning to wonder whether this thought is fallacious. At some point, if the “chatters” becomes so raw, malicious, sustained and, frankly, ridiculous, it could well harm the overall America-Israel relationship and have negative repercussions on the critical Amereican-Israel military relationship.
We call the insolent American language about Israel “ridiculous” because it’s directed at the wrong address. The real enemies of the US — Putin of Russia, leaders of ISIS, heads of state in Iran, for example — the US says little to, or about.
There are many addresses for American anger that endanger American security. Israel enhances American security. It is time for this administration to stop talking as if it confuses the two.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
