Obama and Israel's self-victimization extravaganza
When President Barack Obama visits Israel later this month he will be treated to Jerusalem's full-dress victim show, a modern Via Dolorosa. Can't we offer our closest ally more than war memorials, nuclear nightmares and the Holocaust.
By Uri Misga | Mar.05, 2013 | 4:23 AM
Seven years ago an obscure young United States senator visited the Holy Land. Over the course of five intensive days he covered nearly every inch of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He took tours, heard explanations, held meetings and asked questions. He always carried a pen and a large notebook. His hosts were impressed by his energy, his likability and his insistence on arriving at his own conclusions.
Among other activities, the studious senator took the opportunity to hover over the state’s narrow waistline in an air force helicopter, to tour the northern border, to view a bombarded building in Kiryat Shmona and the computers in the community center of the Christian-Arab village of Fassuta, to meet the foreign minister, take in a variety of sites in Jerusalem, including in the Old City, to confer in Ramallah with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and to speak with Palestinian university students.
At Ben-Gurion International Airport, while waiting for his return flight, the senator even recorded his regular weekly radio broadcast to constituents. His conclusion: "This is an extraordinarily complicated place."
This month the visitor will return, not as a senator but as the president of the United States who recently began his second term. Judging by the itinerary planned for him by his hosts, when it comes to organized tours, it seems the conditions have worsened: Instead of an extraordinarily complicated land, this time he will see a flat, one-dimensional place.
remainder: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/obama-and-israel-s-self-victimization-extravaganza.premium-1.507226
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Anything but that!
