MARTIN INDYK: THE CUR BARKS AGAINST ISRAEL
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Indyk barks up a storm as Obama’s Jewish “pit poodle”
http://israelinsider.ning.com/profiles/blogs/indyk-barks-up-a-storm-as
Even as the Obama Administration, mindful of the fallout from its serial humiliations of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, now tries to make nice and embrace the Israelis with tough love, the American Administration has apparently unleashed the Australian Jew turned State Department water boy Martin Indyk, a former Ambassador to Israel, to be the barking dog that threatens the Israeli government.
In an Army Radio last Wednesday morning, Indyk — who authored an inflammatory op-ed piece in the New York Times — “When your best friend gets angry” which blamed Israel for undermining Obama’s supposed efforts to isolate Iran — warned that Israel must choose between its policies over settlements and Jerusalem and its relationship with Washington.
“This is a serious crisis†in US-Israel relations, said Indyk, who spoke with Army Radio after writing a similar op-ed in The New York Times called, “When your best friend gets angry.†He warned Israelis about chalking up the recent tensions to poor chemistry between Netanyahu and Obama. “No doubt that is part of the issue, but that is not the thing that matters,†said Indyk. What is at issue here is that the US now believes that a continued Israeli-Palestinian conflict harms its strategic interests in the Middle East, he said, adding that this perception emerged under former US President George Bush, and is not just a consequence of the policies of Obama’s administration. “It is important for Israelis to understand that something fundamental has changed,†said Indyk.
The situation is now such that when it comes to east Jerusalem, “A zoning committee in the ministry of the interior can now do damage to the national interests of the United States,†he said. As a result, “Israel has to adjust its policy to the interest of the United States or there will be serious consequences,†he said.
The US is now involved in two wars in the Middle East, said Inyk. Obama signs 30 to 40 condolence letters a month, which is “many more than the Israeli prime minister signs,†he added, so it has a vested interest it reducing tensions in the region, implying that Israel is somehow responsible for the American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that reaching an Israeli-Arab agreement will make those other problems go away.
Indyk snidely warned Israel that it was a vassal state, depend on the United States, and that it had therefore better bow to its dictates: “If Israel is a superpower and does not need $3 billion in military assistance and the protection of the US, and the efforts of the US to isolate and pressure Iran, than go ahead and do what you like. If you need the US then you need to take American interests into account,†he said.
Indyk said that suspension of building for Jews in Israel’s capital was not a lot to ask. “I do not think that it is too much to ask that some building tenders in east Jerusalem be deferred, not stopped, just deferred, in order to get those negotiations going. That is what the Obama administration is asking [for] and that is what the Israeli government will not do,†said Indyk.
Indyk said he did not believe the comments Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman made were inconsistent with a two-state solution in which Jerusalem served as a capital for both nations. There can be a united city with shared sovereignty, he said. “I do not see Lieberman as the obstacle. He wants to separate from the Palestinians. He is a radical territorial compromiser,†said Indyk. “The problem is within the Likud party itself,†he added.
In his New York Times attack piece, Indyk wrote: “As he studies his options, Netanyahu would do well to reflect on the decisions taken by two earlier prime ministers from his Likud Party — Menahem Begin and Ariel Sharon. Begin gave up all of Sinai for a peace deal with Egypt that avoided a fight with Jimmy Carter over a Palestinian homeland. Sharon believed that the best way to survive politically was to allow no daylight to show between him and the president of the United States. That led him to propose full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in order to head off what he foresaw as inevitable friction with the United States over the West Bank and Jerusalem. Both Sharon and Begin were excoriated by their right wings.”
Too bad for Indyk’s argument that Begin’s sacrifice of area three times Israel’s size only deferred the issue of a “Palestinian homeland” and that the “full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza” only brought rocket attacks and cross-border infiltrations and kidnappings in its wake” and only postponed “friction” over the West Bank and Jerusalem. Indyk’s real aim here is to demand that Netanyahu make an eentsy-weentsy little gesture toward Iran’s main ally to the west, Bashar Assad: “Today, nothing could better help Obama to isolate Iran than for Netanyahu to offer to cede the Golan, as four other Israeli prime ministers have, in exchange for peace with Syria, which serves as the conduit for Tehran’s troublemaking in the Arab-Israeli arena.” Indyk didn’t refer to Ehud Barak’s middle-of-the-night flight from Lebanon, which invited the Second Lebanon War with Hezbollah.
Indyk warned in his interview with Army Radio that the Israeli-American relationship was like a marriage, and should not be taken for granted. “You have to work on it every day,†he said. Indyk is divorced.
Memo to the Obama Administration: When you’re serious about sending barking dogs, at least send us someone with better teeth.
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