RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Herzliya conference made front-page news today in Israel. The Jerusalem Post reported:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the core problem in the Middle East, and solving it will go a long way toward securing regional and even global peace, James Jones, US President Barack Obama’s former national security adviser, said Monday.

…

“I’m of the belief that had God appeared in front of President Obama in 2009 and said if he could do one thing on the face of the planet, and one thing only, to make the world a better place and give people more hope and opportunity for the future, I would venture that it would have something to do with finding the two-state solution to the Middle East.” Speaking to reporters after addressing the conference, Jones said Israel’s dispute with the Palestinians was the “knot that is at the center of mass.”

His remarks actually played worse among American attendees than with Israelis. A conservative couple from Texas told me, “People were aghast.” And yet a TV reporter who has been in Israel 30 years told me, “We are used to people saying these things.” True, the “Israel is the source of all woes” is a common theme for Israel’s foes, but usually God is not invoked.

Nevertheless, to American ears at the conference the recitation of the mantra that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the region’s central problem seemed decidedly off-key when Egypt is suffering an eruption, Tunisia has thrown off the shackles of its despot and Iran is on the offense in Lebanon, Gaza and elsewhere. It also puts Gen. David Petraeus’s comments along the same lines in context. One suspects that the upper echelons of the military are steeped in the brew of “Israel is the key to the region’s problems” conventional wisdom. In that regard, one is tempted to advise a great many generals and admirals to hush up and fight.

Moreover, Jones went on to suggest that what really frightens Iran is a Middle East peace deal. In fact such a deal is what Iran fears the most. This is linkage on steroids, in its most cartoonish incarnation.

This is bizarre, a reflection not of current Obama administration thinking that has attempted to back-burner the peace talks but of the abysmal judgment shown by Obama in ever placing Jones in a top security role.

A State Department spokesman declined to comment on the speech. Jones did make clear he was talking as a private citizen. For that we can be thankful. Unfortunately, in its fumbling, bumbling handling of Egypt that has managed to confound nearly everyone, the Obama team has not demonstrated that there is any current official able to navigate choppy Middle East waters.