Evelyn Gordon writes this week about Israel’s “diminishing returns”:
John Kerry’s speech at Harvard…and the State Department’s subsequent series of walk-backs left me with one clear conclusion: Israel ought to start building massively in the settlements and change the status quo on the Temple Mount. Because if it’s going to be blamed for doing both even when it is, in fact, doing neither, it should at least get the very real benefits that taking those steps would entail.
I’m with Evelyn. What’s the cliche: ‘might as well be damned for a wolf as for a sheep’? If the world is going to believe the worst about Israel anyway, why not just ignore the world? What is Israel gaining by repeatedly rolling over and letting the big dogs pee on it?
As of this writing, Palestinians have murdered at least eight Israelis. (In one horrific scene caught on video, a man deliberately crashes his car into a crowd and then gets out and starts attacking the wounded with a cleaver.)
But does anyone care? Is there support for Israel? Are people clear-eyed about who is the attacker and who the attacked? Hardly. “Deafening silence” is exactly the right phrase.
And it’s not like Israel has to play nice because of the “unbreakable alliance” with the US. What might the White House do: threaten to withdraw support at the UN, stonewall about nuclear negotiations with Iran, call its leader an “Asperberg-y…chickenshit”? Stop shipments of materiel during a war, accuse it of terrorism for defending itself?
Oh—wait—the Obama White House has already done all those things.
So the administration deplores the “cycle of violence” that “both sides” are equally responsible for. The UN professes itself deeply concerned—not about the terrorism, but about Israel’s “disproportionate” response.
And the media, well, they’ve outdone themselves with deftly spun, highly edited headlines like “Palestinian teen killed by Israeli soldiers.” The icing on the cake was a New York Times article that cast doubt on the claim that there had been a Jewish temple on the, um, Temple Mount.
And these are the people Israel is trying to impress? Why?
