Comment on Israel Is Free
Which is maybe why there’s so much of it!
March 18, 2010
Netanyahu earlier this week.(Jim Hollander - Pool/Getty Images)
Opinions! Everyone seems to have one. Can you believe, for example, that some people actually prefer vanilla to chocolate? And other people actually liked Avatar? And then there’s that whole whatever-you-want-to-call-it between Israel and the United States right now. People have opinions on that too! Here are some notable ones:
• Tablet Magazine Mideast columnist Lee Smith thinks (as he wrote on The Scroll) that President Obama’s lashing out at the Israelis only makes him look weak. [Slate]
• Tablet Magazine contributing editor Jeffrey Goldberg sees in the Israeli government’s incoherence—first announcing the settlements, then apologizing for doing so—evidence that Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost control of his weak coalition. Previously, Goldberg reported that Obama is trying to shake that coalition up further so that moderate Tzipi Livni can become prime minister. And we should listen to him: he is, after all, quite close to his fellow Tablet Magazine contributing editor Barack Obama. [Atlantic]
• Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy praises the Obama administration’s “tough love” for Israel. [Haaretz]
• Prominent Palestinian official and intellectual Mustafa Barghouti sees America as a “hostage” to “the last colonial system in modern history.” [LAT]
• Aluf Benn predicts that both Obama’s and Netanyahu’s reputations will take hits by the end of all this. [Haaretz]
• Fred Kaplan sees Obama’s harsh stance as ultimately more supportive of Israel than the most ardent pro-Israel cheerleading could ever be. [Slate]
• Oh, and Netanyahu’s brother-in-law thinks Obama is an anti-Semite. A Kenya-born one, no doubt. [Laura Rozen]
Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.
