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Healing the U.S.-Israeli Trust Deficit

(Foreign Policy) Josh Block - For decades, the number one rule of ally-to-ally diplomacy governing America's relations with our closest friends was straightforward: We settled our differences in private. But when President Barack Obama's administration took office three years ago, that axiom appeared to fall out of practice - at least when it came to the U.S. relationship with Israel. The White House struck a confrontational stance with Israel from the outset, and even refused to acknowledge prior understandings. Trust matters. If Obama was prepared to so casually toss aside previous American commitments to Israel, what possible weight could American commitments to stop Iran's nuclear pursuit provide? In more recent months, as ideology gave way to reality, those who argued that the administration's publicly confrontational approach was faulty appear to have won the White House over to their side - a transformation that was on full display during the president's remarks at AIPAC. It is a very high bar for an Israeli leader to put the future security of the Jewish people in the hands of another, especially when faced with the truly intolerable threat coming from a nuclear Iran - which has pledged to annihilate the Jewish state. The writer, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, is a former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
2012-03-06 00:00:00
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