Reprinted from Gush Shalom
WHEN A high-ranking official of one country calls the leader of another country "chickenshit," it may be assumed that the relations between the two countries are not at their best. In fact, they may be considered somewhat less than cordial.
This week, It happened. An unnamed very high-ranking US official said this in an interview with the respected American journalist who bears the very Jewish name of Jeffrey Goldberg.
No high-ranking official would use such a term for publication without the express permission of the President of the United States of America. So here we are.
HISTORY HAS seen many strange relationships between nations. But I dare say none stranger than that existing between Israel and the US.
On the face of it, no two states could be closer to each other. Just a minor example: the day the memorable Chickenshit remark made headlines, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution calling upon the US to put an end to its 50-year old embargo on Cuba. 188 countries, including the whole spectrum of EU and NATO countries, voted in favor. Two states voted against: the US and Israel.
Two countries against the entire world? No, not entirely. Micronesia, Palau and the Marshal Islands abstained. (These three mighty island nations generally support Israel, too, though few Israelis could place them on the map.)
Throughout the years, in hundreds of UN votes, Israel has stood loyally with the US, and vice versa. An unshakable alliance, so it seemed. And now they call our valiant Prime Minister chickenshit?
THE OFFICIAL based his uncomplimentary remark on Binyamin Netanyahu's disinclination to bomb Iran, as threatened repeatedly, as well as on Netanyahu's unwillingness to make peace with the Palestinians.
The first accusation is unfounded, since Netanyahu never seriously considered an attack on Iran. Some of my readers may remember that from the first day I assured them that such an attack would not happen, without even leaving myself a loophole in case I might be wrong. I knew that such an attack was quite out of the question. And not only because the entire Israeli defense establishment was against it.
The second accusation is even more groundless. Netanyahu did not chicken out of making peace. This would presuppose that he wanted peace in the first place. If the Americans really believe so, they should read a few good articles (especially mine).
Netanyahu never entertained even for a moment the idea of making peace. His entire upbringing makes this quite impossible. His late father, Ben-Zion, was such an extreme and rigid nationalist, that compared to him Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Zionist right-wing leader, looked like a leftist pacifist.
Every word Binyamin Netanyahu has ever uttered in favor of peace and the Two-State solution was a blatant lie. For him to advocate a Palestinian state is like the Chief Rabbi advocating eating pork on Yom Kippur.
Any American diplomat who does not know this should be transferred at once to Micronesia (or Palau).
LATELY IT seems that Netanyahu has been doing everything in his power to provoke a quarrel with the US government.
At first sight, this looks like an act of lunacy, an act so dangerous that any competent psychiatrist would commit him to the closed wing of an asylum.
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