Dan Simpson: Retaliate against Israel for sucker punching us

The United States should not let Netanyahu derail its policies

March 25, 2015 12:00 AM

By Dan Simpson / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2015/03/25/Dan-Simpson-Retaliate-against-Israel-for-sucker-punching-us/stories/201503240047

Israel has delivered three major body punches to the United States this month, which means it is time to hit back — unless our government wants to be perceived by Americans, Israelis and everyone else in the world as a bad joke as a world power.

The first blow was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu using the House of Representatives as the site of a campaign pep rally for himself, with congressmen and senators as cheerleaders and majorettes. His speech on that occasion just happened to be an attack on a major American project: the achievement of an international agreement with Iran to control its nuclear ambitions and begin the end of 36 years of estrangement.

That agreement, by the way, is being negotiated in coordination with China, France, Germany, Russia and Britain. It is intended to remove a threat to Israel and the region from an Iranian nuclear program. The U.S. partners in these negotiations and the Iranians on the other side cannot have missed the humiliation administered to President Barack Obama by Mr. Netanyahu’s dissing the president’s policies in public in Mr. Obama’s own capital.

The second Israeli blow was administered when Mr. Netanyahu declared to Israeli voters that if they elected him there would be no Palestinian state. The prime minister’s sputtering attempts to walk that cat back since the March 17 election mean nothing. He is considered an inveterate liar by many people, friend and foe.http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2015/03/25/Dan-Simpson-Retaliate-against-Israel-for-sucker-punching-us/stories/201503240047