GOOD Editorial condemming obamAss and gang in N.Y. DAILY NEWS

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http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/03/16/2010-03-16_outrageous_outrage.html   










Outrageous outrage: Washington anger at Israeli gaffe was way over the top

Tuesday, March 16th 2010, 4:00 AM
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The Obama administration has just finished - it is hoped - an unfair, unwise and unconscionable pummeling of Israel, of which no good will come.

The deliberately calibrated fury directed at the Jewish state by Vice President Biden, Secretary of State Clinton and top White House aide David Axelrod since last week was grossly disproportionate to Israel's perceived offense.

And what was that? As Biden visited, hoping to advance tenuous peace talks, Israel's Interior Ministry blindsided Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by announcing plans to proceed with plans for building, in a few years, 1,600 apartments in East Jerusalem.

Setting aside the fact that the area is a Jewish neighborhood, and the fact that Israel's eventual sovereignty there has been taken for granted in round after fruitless round of two-state negotiations, the planning announcement was an ill-timed gaffe that complicated Biden's mission.

Netanyahu was profuse in apology. No matter. The vice president roared with moral outrage properly reserved for terrorism and other heinous crimes. Speaking more harshly than the administration does to, say, Iran, he began with the two strongest words possible: "I condemn."

Still worse, Biden's anger at what he called a "step that undermines the trust we need right now" was stupendously selective. The very next day, with the winking approval of Palestinian officials, locals renamed a town square in honor of Dalal Mughrabi, architect of one of the worst terror attacks ever on Israel.

The Palestinians lionized Mughrabi for leading a 1978 rampage, called the coastal road bus hijacking, that killed 38 Israeli civilians, 13 of them children. On that subject, Biden was silent when true condemnation was in order - condemnation for celebrating a human atrocity, not for a diplomatic dustup triggered by good-faith blundering.

Biden appeared to leave Israel satisfied by Netanyahu's several apologies and his promise to establish mechanisms to prevent future embarrassments. He also signaled that he had believed, incorrectly, that construction was imminent.

The vice president had good reason to feel reassured. The announcement was the work of a bureaucrat at the fourth level of a seven-step process. An order to start the bulldozers this was not.

Further, Netanyahu had no reason to intentionally stick a thumb in Biden's eye when postponing the announcement, had he known about it in advance, would have been simple.

And, finally, the area in question is most definitely not a disputed settlement. It is an existing Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. Every peace negotiation, including talks led by then-President Bill Clinton, has contemplated its formal inclusion in Israel, much as Arab enclaves have been envisioned under Palestinian control.
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Despite those facts, the White House let it be known that the secretary of state had followed up by dressing down Netanyahu for 45 minutes over the telephone. She then drove home America's displeasure in a conversation with the Israeli ambassador. And, for good measure, she said on NBC that the housing announcement "was an insult to the United States," not just to Biden.

Then, on Sunday, Axelrod took the overheated rhetoric further. He called the announcement an "affront" and insinuated Israel's actions "seemed calculated to undermine" peace negotiations.

Hardly could one have imagined Clinton participating in so harshly putting the screws to Israel.

In 1999, running to represent New York in the Senate, and in 2007, seeking the White House, she stood foursquare behind an undivided Jerusalem as "the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel." Which would, of course, include building apartments. Surely, the Hillary Clinton of those elections wasn't just playing politics to attract Jewish voters by supporting Israel?

The secretary is on a new team now, one that appears to believe, against the overwhelming weight of history, both that Israel is an obstacle to peace and that hammering an ally will bring the Palestinians into good fellowship.

This is naive in the extreme, and Axelrod's suggestion of Israeli sabotage was beyond dangerous. It fed the Palestinians' fabrication that Israel is intent on grabbing land, thus - the fiction goes - dashing fervent Palestinian hopes for living side by side with a nation they not only refuse to recognize but bombard with missiles.

Israel must be able to trust that America has its back, and the Palestinians have got to hear, loudly and clearly, the single message that terrorism, not manufactured grievances over Israel's rightful capital, is the barrier to their having a full-fledged state. The Obama administration's bullying has damaged both causes.