March 21^st

Today we will comment on some of Dr. Charles Krauthammer’s recent utterances. Dr. Krauthammer is a very well educated, perhaps even brilliant, psychiatrist whose political mutterings have attracted him to Fox News—or perhaps vice versa.

Dr. Krauthammer has recently claimed that President Obama “despises” Prime Minister Netanyahu more that he does President Putin or, indeed, the Ayatollah Khomeini. How Dr. Krauthammer knows this remains a mystery. He does not claim to have ever met the President. Perhaps psychiatrists have some special training that allows them to rank order the extent that “A” despises “B,” “C,” and so on.

We are told that President Obama is not happy about Netanyahu’s convincing win in the recent Israeli elections. This win was gained partly by Netanyahu reversing his pledge of a two state solution to the Palestinian problem and partly due to the race baiting Netanyahu did by claiming that Arab citizens were being bused in to vote. Krauthammer has decided in his column that Netanyahu’s reversal on the issue of Palestinian statehood was irrelevant. He claims that there would be no Palestinian state no matter who won. If so then why did Netanyahu destroy his credibility by admitting he lied about his views on statehood for the Palestinians?

It is not that Obama despises Netanyahu so much as Netanyahu despises Obama. He has made that very clear by his actions to address the Congress and to bash any negotiations with Iran that the President might undertake. The result is that Netanyahu has won an election but put the nation of Israel at considerable risk. His visit has encouraged the “47” Senators to attempt to scuttle the President’s negotiations with Iran and in so doing increased the Iranian hard-liners position.

Perhaps we might examine this “stunning electoral victory;” It happens that Netanyahu got exactly 23.2 percent of the popular vote, that’s right; he got less than a quarter of Israeli votes! That’s more than he was expected to get but it’s rather like a boxer who is not expected to last a full round knocked out early in the second round and claiming that  he won a great victory. Notice that this paltry 23 percent was obtained by admitting to a lie and playing on the not totally illegitimate paranoia of Israeli citizens. It happens that even in the settlements most at risk for Palestinian attacks and hence most expected to cave to Netanyahu’s message he still couldn’t get more than one-third of the popular vote.

Now this consummate politician has risked his strongest ally’s policy of protecting his country by vetoing any resolution condemning their lopsided response toward west bank attacks. Many Europeans would probably not differentiate between the Palestinian terrorists, Hamas, and Israeli terrorists, the Irgun. Netanyahu’s work to mend his fences has just started.