I understand how you feel and have heard similar opinions from close colleagues. First, as elsewhere in the blogosphere and as written in the post itself, these are my own opinion, not the official position of JVP or any other organization.

Second, assuming you have been subscribed for a while, then you must have liked dozens of other posts I wrote. So a single disagreement leads you to threaten with a boycott of the site? IMHO, this is the single worst disease of the Left: the purity purges and circular firing squads over secondary disagreements. We are fighting a struggle against overwhelming, well-entrenched power and interests. We only have a chance if we can unite for the common cause despite our differences.

Finally, to the content of your comment. The tragically negative role US has played in Israel-Palestine is known: the financing and equipping of Israel’s military regardless of what it does, the diplomatic stonewalling, etc. etc. Obama has neither built this “special relationship” – that as you correctly state, enables Israel’s bloody military adventurism – nor has he expanded it in any meaningful way. Even had he wanted to, he could not undo all this structure in a few short years.

Moreover, Obama received I-P in general and the US attitude towards it in particular, in the worst possible shape – after 8 years of complete carte-blanche from G.W. Bush, and with Israel’s government and its allies in the US pretending that this is the new normal. Despite this, in his first term Obama tried to mitigate some side-effects of this and restart a process that would lead to Palestinian independence, but his attempts were feeble, naive, lacking in courage and generally unsuccessful.

Now, faced with the biggest challenge from Israel yet, and not even officially into his second term, Obama has passed it in flying colors.

I don’t care too much for rhetoric. If Obama continues talking about how fabulous Israel is, how responsible its leaders are, and how they have every right to activate their military – but on the ground, Israel ends up returning the Occupied Territories and consenting to genuine Palestinian independence – I will be a happy person, and I hope that you will too. Bill Clinton was great with words, but he didn’t stop the IDF when it pounded South Lebanon in 1993 and 1996.

In fact, if we look for the last time in which the US stopped Israeli military-territorial adventurism in the middle, in a timing not convenient to Israel – the most recent example is Sinai in 1957.

If you disagree that Obama was the major factor in bringing about this quick ceasefire (about which the center and right-wing in Israel are still fuming and whining, btw), that’s a different thing. I think I got the analysis right, though.

But if you acknowledge that it’s his hand behind this, then some intellectual honesty is expected. We are all very quick to berate Obama and hold him accountable for the “special relationship”. And rightly so: no one asks a person to go and become a US President. The immense power and prestige come with a price of being personally accountable for all that the superpower perpetrates. However, at the same breath, when on the single most important life-and-death situation on his hands in Israel-Palestine so far, he rises to the occasion and saves many lives – then we owe him thanks, regardless of the above.

And when he does it in a way that makes Bibi Netanyahu thank him in public, that is some nice icing on the cake.

Yes, I’ve seen the Daily News take twice, and laughed nearly as hard both times.

All in all, it seems that Bibi has – as is his habit once in a while – scored a huge own goal with this clownish display of disrespect to the world.

In the current format of The Only Democracy, the blog-post author’s name is below the post.

In this particular case, it is yours truly.

All the best, Assaf