John Kerry Is Israel's Best Friend
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave a passionately pro-Israel speech this past weekend at the Saban Forum in Washington. On matters concerning Israel’s security, its international legitimacy and its demographic future, he showed himself to be a true friend. There are people in Israel -- there were people at the Willard Hotel, where Kerry gave the speech, in fact -- who did not consider this speech pro-Israel, but they are deluding themselves.
Kerry proved a couple of things. First, while he is more than capable of loose-cannoning his way across the Middle East, and while he is on occasion alarmingly optimistic about a range of issues that don't warrant optimism, he is also committed, in a bone-deep way, to Israel’s well-being. He is an exemplar of a slowly vanishing type of Democratic Party leader, someone with great, and uncomplicated, affection for the promise of Zionism.
Second, while it may be true that Kerry is seeking a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Israel-Palestine conciliation, he's also working for something that most Jews, in Israel and around the world, desperately want -- a secure Israel with internationally recognized borders that becomes an honored member of the family of nations, rather than a target of never-ending opprobrium.
The setting for this speech, the forum's keynote address, was extraordinary, and not only because President Barack Obama had appeared at the forum earlier in the day as a kind of inadvertent warm-up act. (In the interest of disclosure, I moderated a panel on the Iranian nuclear controversy, not for pay, but because I was looking to give myself a headache.) Five Israeli cabinet ministers were in Kerry’s audience -- including the foreign minister, the dyspeptic revanchist Avigdor Lieberman (who tried to win over the audience the previous night, without much success) -- along with many senior figures in the Israeli security establishment. Also in attendance were a number of Israel’s most prominent overseas supporters, first and foremost Haim Saban himself. Saban is the Israeli-American billionaire behind the Saban Center (which is part of the Brookings Institution), who has become perhaps the central figure trying to bridge the various divides between Israel and the U.S.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-11/john-kerry-is-israel-s-best-friend-.html
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