The State Department's Israel End-Run

Dr. Daniel M. Zucker
American Thinker
16 January '11

Under Barack Obama, America's relationship with Israel has taken on the character of a petulant teenager dealing with a parent.

Early on January 2, 2011, Israel's liberal newspaper, Haaretz, reported that U.S. President Barack H. Obama and Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton were furious with Israel's Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. Apparently Barak did not deliver on his promise to convince Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to agree to the proposed three-month extension of the building moratorium for East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Not twenty-four hours later, Israel's centrist paper, The Jerusalem Post, reported a denial of the first story on the part of the State Department's Spokesman, P.J. Crowley. The Jerusalem Post story informs us that the author of the Haaretz story, writer Barak Ravid, stated that he had five independent sources for his story and that "Even after the publication of the story, and during my conversation with P.J. Crowley, I received e-mails from different sources in Washington saying the complete opposite of what was being said by the State Department spokesman."

Anyone conversant with the standard operating procedure of governments in general and Foggy Bottom in particular knows that denial of a potentially embarrassing news leak is totally expected. However, what this story demonstrates most graphically is the current American government's inability to conduct a reasonable foreign policy. That America and Israel may disagree about the right of Israel to undertake construction in all of Jerusalem (its reunified capital), as well as in the West Bank, is to be expected. That the United States would try to influence Israel to accept a position closer to America's is also to be expected -- that's international politics, like it or not. But for the current administration to negotiate with a defense minister rather than the prime minister or his designated foreign minister, with the purpose of having the defense minister convince the prime minister to accept the U.S. position in spite of the known position of the prime minister to the contrary, is -- in short -- insanity! It's not only insanity, but it's foolish and childish as well. A child tries to circumnavigate a parent who refuses a request by going to the other parent and requesting help in convincing the first parent to change his position. But for a sovereign state to act like a spoiled child and pull this end-run game is nothing short of ineptitude, and in this case, a delusion.

(Read full "The State Department's Israel End-Run")


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