[caption id="attachment_124040" align="alignright" width="167"] The “chickenshit” kerfluffle might be a little bit bullshit. Photograph: Jason Reed/Reuters[/caption]
Is the US-Israel relationship in crisis? The prominent journalist Jeffrey Goldberg – the man a White House aide once called the “official therapist” of the relationship – seems to think so.
But while most coverage of Goldberg’s long article in The Atlantic revolves around an unnamed official calling Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu “chickenshit” – which the Obama administration spent two days disavowing – lost in the pearl-clutching is the insightful look at how Netanyahu’s policies on Iran are a direct affront on American interests.

Even most of the rest of chatter about the story focused on Israel’s expansion of settlement plans in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a sore spot in the so-called “special relationship” between the US and Israel. Settlements are certainly an effective test of Israel’s intentions in the peace process (and the US would be remiss to not denounce their expansion as harmful to prospects for peace).

This article was written by Ali Gharib for the opinion page of The Guardian on OCT. 30, 2014. Ali Gharib is an independent journalist based in Brooklyn working on US foreign policy.

 

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