Mere Rhetoric
I kind of want to sympathize with him. Marty Peretz is reminding everyone - again - that the order to detonate the US/Israel alliance came directly from Obama, who is "rip shit" with the Israelis. Apparently learning about the Middle East via classes with Columbia professors, hallway chats with Ayers, and dinnertime talks with Said - apparently that failed to instill in the President an appreciation for Israel's security concerns.
There are even arguments that Biden has some genuine affinity for the Jewish State, though that's tough to square with his despicable sell out of Soviet Jewry.
In any case here he is again "condemning" Israel even while he insisting that the rhetoric - which is now accepted as a proxy for outright hostility unbefitting an alliance - should be no big deal. Why can't the Israelis just take blistering diplomatic insults in stride, ya know?
Biden said the United States and Israel need to "get over" the latest flare-up in tensions and insisted that the essential elements of the relationship between the two nations remain the same. "Israel'ssecurity is undeniably in our interest to make sure it is absolutely secure," the vice president said. Biden called the Israeli announcement of new settlements last week "provocative" and said it was "obviously designed by some in Israel to undermine a peace process George Mitchell finally got -- our negotiator -- finally got back on track." "And so the message is: We've got to get over this," Biden said. "Granted, I condemn the announcement made by that planning council. ... The irony is even that planning council acknowledging not a single new unit can be built at least for a year and maybe never will be built, it was provocative."
You're following this, yeah? It's "ironic" that the WH tried to detonate the US/Israeli special relationship over an announcement that - by Biden's own admission - had zero material consequences. "Ironic." That's their description for needlessly going nuclear on an ally, perhaps terminally undermining the peace process, and triggering a wave of Palestinian violence that's quickly escalating into a full-blown Obama Intifada. And those are just the links from this morning.
Anyway - if beat sweetening NYT writeups are to be believed - the Vice President has inordinate influence over WH foreign policy. That would make his reemphasis on "condemnation" an act of deliberate personal antagonism. If he's merely following Obama's directives then it would show, given the firestorm over that specific word, that the WH is still committed to slapping Israel around. And why wouldn't they be? After all, it's paying off.
