Two Americans, One Brave and One Insolent

What do Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu have in common? Both of them are American by origin; the first chose to remain American, and the second chose to become Israeli, placing Israel above America. The first learned courage, ambition and patience in America and that there is no barrier to success, becoming a symbol of how the impossible is possible. The second learned insolence, careerism, aggression and thievery in America.

When Obama and Netanyahu met in the White House, it was not the American president wielding the carrot and stick, but the former son of Brooklyn. The Israeli knows that he always has leverage in the White House whenever the president wants another term. While the first American spoke the language of diplomacy with the goal of satisfying all, the latter American used language that alarmed the world: For Israel’s sake, American must pledge to sacrifice itself.

This is Netanyahu’s most distinctive characteristic. The Arabs are drowning in the blood of their Spring, Americans are torn between the elections and other crises and the Europeans are learning how to play the bouzouki in Greece. Obama tried to get ahead of him so he wouldn’t have to be next to him; he told him that a nuclear Iran was a danger to America and the world, not just to Israel. He tried to persuade him, as senior commentator Thomas Friedman says, that Iranian nuclear power would launch a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that would threaten the whole world. Friedman believes that the sole calming factor could be the American Jews and their interests.

Misfortune is inevitable, and it may also accompany the elections. The Israelis are holding elections, themselves, and they also play a determining role in the elections of their number one ally. This is represented by the Netanyahu-Lieberman pairing. We aren’t free of misfortune either – when Obama arrived, the first thing he spoke about was the establishment of a state in the West Bank and Gaza, but how far from that are we now? It’s become the Iran issue and not the Palestine issue, as Salam Fayed has said. The issue has come to be the Arab Spring and its poppy-red rivers.

Two Americans, one trying to save his country from an era of meaningless wars that give birth to more wars, and one trying to make his second country share the fate of his first country – where war is life.