Being the last friend on earth of a country the size of Houston puts us in an impossible position, all because Obama wasn’t nice enough to Bibi Netanyahu:
If there were no cracks in the relationship with Jerusalem, Obama could join in the criticism, while quietly working to restrain the UN Security Council from a lynch-mob-style response, and without casting doubt on the willingness of the U.S. to defend the Jewish state from a growing multitude of enemies.
But Obama has not handled Netanyahu well. So the White House’s cautious initial response to the incident — even as Israel was being beaten up by its closest friends in Europe — reflected a deeper dilemma about how much more tension an already strained alliance can bear.
That’s Jackson Diehl in the Washington Post. We may see some sane commentary in other papers after our hardworking journalists come back from vacation, but until then, Haaretz is doing a pretty good job of taking its own government to task, with headlines like Seven idiots in the cabinet.