Again, lots of reporting on how the Obama administration, unlike Bush, is going to be tough on Israel, is essentially going to force Israel to make concessions to accommodate a Palestinian solution etc etc - even if this is possible, and I don't think it is, but even if you manage to pressure Israel to do or agree to something that it would rather not do or agree to, I'm shocked that no one is paying attention to what the consequences would be: Israel believes without reservation that it must be strong and be seen as strong in order to survive; Iran believes there is and will increasingly continue to be a direct correlation between a decline in Israel's real and perceived strength and a rise in its own. If Israel is perceived as having been pushed in a certain direction against its will and a native understanding of its best interests to the detriment of its aggregate strength - well, say hello to my little friend - I refer to of course Newton's third law of motion.
You get 'tough' with Israel, you 'force' it to make compromises in order to suit the dubious agenda of the international community - and very likely you end up with a situation that's as bad or worse then the one you think you're avoiding. [can't you say the same thing about getting 'tough' with Iran? Yes, you can make a case - but I'm not pretending that confronting Iran comes without potential dire consequences - I'm arguing that it's idiocy to think that a chastened Israel and an appeased Iran - and Iran will look and act the winner if Israel appears to be the loser - I'm saying how the fuck can you be stupid enough to think that adds up to a happy ending? If you have two options and they both potentially lead to bad things the best of those two is the one not encumbered by delusions and wishful thinking - it would seem trite and tired to bring up 'peace in our time' incriminations - sure - but I see a cold front of Israeli realism running into a warm front of Obama 'new world' rhetoric resulting in a shit load of bad weather - this is the guy who ran off and did a celebrity tour of Europe - having accomplish precisely squat as president - was lauded like the Christ child and left having achieved nothing but that insufferable lauding - no help with Afghanistan, no agreement on finiancial crisis - a votive promise to rid the world of nuclear armaments that was substantially revised, rebuked, repudiated, ridiculed by anyone who knows anything about the subject in the weeks following - yeah, a lot of bad weather coming this way].
