How they see us: Is there no criticizing Israel?

The U.S. is coming under fire for vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned Israel’s continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank as an obstacle to peace.

President Obama has chosen “oppor­tunism over morality,” said Akiva Eldar in Israel’s Ha’aretz. The U.S. has just vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank as an obstacle to peace. The Obama administration offered the “lame excuse” that denouncing settlements would harm the peace process. It’s hard to imagine just what harm could possibly come, since the peace process is going nowhere anyway. Obama had to have been motivated by a need to placate the U.S. House of Representatives, which is influenced by the Jewish lobby. It’s a “victory of domestic politics over foreign policy.”

And don’t think that Israel’s real interests have been served, said Gideon Levy, also in Ha’aretz. This veto—“a veto against the chance and promise of change, a veto against hope”—is actually “hostile to Israel.” Its meaning is unequivocal: America supports settlement-building, an activity that damages not only Israel’s chances for peace with its Palestinian neighbors but also its image abroad. Israel is an international “pariah state” condemned by everyone except a “weakening America.” Our neighbors in the Middle East are roiled by revolution, and as new regimes come to power, a peace agreement with the Palestinians has never been more urgent. “If the U.S. had been a responsible superpower, it would have voted for the resolution.”

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