Boycott Threats: Kerry Is Just Serving Livni’s Obsession

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is not anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian and does not put cruel or unprecedented pressure on Israel. A few American secretaries of state have been here before him; some of them put heavier, scarier, more threatening pressure on us. Today’s headlines focus excitedly on Kerry having already been here 10 times — but take a look at past newspapers, and you will find that previous secretaries of state and special ambassadors skipped over here more than 30 times.

Each one of them more or less fell back on the efforts of his predecessors; every one of them knew that his predecessors had failed to achieve an agreement and every one of them actually believed that he would succeed where all his predecessors had failed — until the moment arrived when each one realized that he would not succeed either, and that it really was not that big of a deal.

What stands out about Kerry in contrast to his predecessors is that he recites word for word Tzipi Livni’s agenda or the Geneva Initiative, and he is not smart enough to hide it. He is not the one threatening us with a terrible European boycott; it is Livni. He is just repeating her words. He is not the one explaining to us that, without an agreement with the Palestinians, our economy will collapse.

This is a new campaign coming from the Geneva Initiative that was already aired several days ago. He did not arrive at the conclusion that only an agreement with the Palestinians would save Israel and protect its Jewish, democratic identity; he read it in the English version of Haaretz. All the threats, bribes, explanations that we are hearing from Kerry — every single one, without exception — was “made in Israel.”

From here, we see that it is not just that Kerry is not anti-Semitic, but that he is actually pro-Israel. It is just that, in his eyes, Israel is not the elected Israeli government or majority of the Israeli public. Kerry is an enthusiastic supporter of the state of Tel Aviv, of liberal, leftist Israel. The obsession with a Palestinian state is not his own — it is ours, the Jews’: the ones who write in certain newspapers here, those who hang out among their colleagues on campuses throughout the United States, and also the ones among them who are serving in Netanyahu’s government. They are the obsessed ones. Kerry, as a friend of Israel, is only serving their obsession.

Yes, you guessed right. By “the ones among them who are serving in Netanyahu’s government,” I meant primarily Tzipi Livni. You listen to Kerry, and you hear her voice speaking from his throat. That is why she has such a key role. Since it is pretty clear that the negotiations will not end in an agreement, pretty soon we are going to face the old, boring question: Who is responsible for this failure, us or the Palestinians? Regarding this question, Livni has been given a decisive role: If she says that Abu Mazen is guilty, John Kerry will say the same and the world will accept it. However, if she says that Netanyahu is guilty, the wheels of boycott will begin to turn.

In short, he is not anti-Semitic, nor anti-Israeli, and he is not too smart. His messages and his threats were born in Tel Aviv, not Washington; he is just quoting them. The question is why did Netanyahu give Livni the keys to this whole disaster, transforming her from the most junior partner into someone capable of determining the fate of the entire government, and what can he do now to take those keys back out of her hands?