RUTHFULLY YOURS

If there is any comfort in Israeli Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren’s remark this week that the current U.S.-Israeli diplomatic crisis is the worst between the two countries “in 35 years,” it’s that no one had the slightest idea of what event 35 years ago Mr. Oren was talking about. It was, it turns out, a dispute over an Israeli military withdrawal from part of Sinai as part of the post-Yom Kippur War disengagement process. Hopefully, 35 years from now no one will remember this awful week in U.S.-Israeli relations, either.

But awful it has been, starting with the incredibly stupid blunder of an Israeli announcement of plans for a new housing project in the over-the-1967-lines Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo just as Vice President Biden was setting out to visit Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, and ending with the even stupider and undoubtedly more malicious American reaction. A few more weeks of this and even 35 years may not suffice to forget them.

Whoever was responsible for the Israeli gaffe, no sane person can believe that it was Prime Minister Netanyahu or anyone close to him. Mr. Netanyahu may or may not be the scoundrel that several American presidents, past and present, seem to think he is, but no one has ever accused him of being a brainless idiot or a suicidal depressive. He would have had to be one of the two to want news of the new housing project to be released when it was.

But in any case, this is not the real issue. Nor – although this is what President Obama and his associates would like to turn it into – is the issue whether Israel should or should not build for Jews in some or all of the parts of Jerusalem annexed by it in 1967. A weighty question in its own right, that’s not what’s at stake now.

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