Why isn’t this in the New York Times? Great column by Roger Cohen, at NYtimes.com, published in the International Herald-Tribune: “Israel isolates itself” –and undermines American strategic interest. A realism that is no different from Walt and Mearsheimer’s. He’s responding to the flotilla raid. Note the key passages, emphasis mine. Who will do any reporting in the mainstream about these issues?
of course no U.S. president, and certainly no first-term U.S. president, would say what Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said: “The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable.” Even if there’s an American citizen killed, raising such questions about Israel is a political no-no. So it goes in the taboo-littered cul-de-sac of U.S. foreign policy toward Israel, a foreign policy that is in large measure a domestic policy…
Israel is losing one of its best friends in the Muslim world, Turkey. The expulsion last week of the Israeli ambassador was a debacle foretold.
Israeli society, as it has shown through civic protest, deserves much better.
“We need not apologize,” Netanyahu thundered Sunday — and repeated the phrase three times. He’s opted for a needless road to an isolation that weakens Israel and undermines the strategic interests of its closest ally, the United States. Not that I expect Obama to raise his voice about this any more than he has over Dogan.
Update: Earlier version of this post failed to state that the piece apppeared in the IH-T and not the Times. The Times makes these distinctions difficult to discern.
