Sunday, August 26, 2007

Former IDF Chief to foreign envoys: "Leave Israel alone"

Moshe Ya'alon's piece in the LATimes, here and Matt Yglesias' comment below.

"There's an awful lot wrong with this Moshe Ya'alon op-ed in today's LA Times and I don't have the time to go through the whole thing right now, but just note the first sentence: "After a few years of benign neglect, Israel is back on the itineraries of well-meaning foreign emissaries."

Israel was hardly being neglected by the United States during the years before Condoleezza Rice semi-rediscovered the Arab-Israeli peace process -- it was, then as now, our country's largest recipient of taxpayer dollars. Less quantifiably, but also significantly, Israel continued to receive a very large quantity of American diplomatic support. One can sympathize to some extent with Israeli officials feeling like their country attracts a disproportionate quantity of busybodies pushing peace plans, but while it would be one thing for Ya'alon to genuinely argue that Israel should be left to its own devices, it's another thing entirely to say that the United States should just be totally indifferent to how our most generously subsidized client state relates to its neighbors and to the millions of stateless Arabs over which it rules."

1 comment:

bishop said...

i didn't read the article... and i am no friend of Israel... but it seems to me that that guy's statement would make a little sense if he was talking about the interaries of ALL countries. of course America didn't neglect Israel. to argue that would not be smart. but Israel could argue that many other countries, especially some Arab ones like Suaid Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey has warmed to Israel more recently...