THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT AND ISRAEL

With the appointment of such as Samantha “Force-a-Solution-on-the-Jews” Power and similarly-minded denizens of academe to highest policymaking positions, the Obama administration’s policy toward Israel may finally fall in line with hoary anti-Israel State Department perspectives. More change that we are supposed to believe in, I suppose.

The Foggy Bottom prejudice is as old as Israel itself, as well documented. Quoth Abba Eban, of blessed memory, on p. 151 of his Autobiography: “…on April 4, 1954, Assistant Secretary of State Byroade went back to his campaign for the de-Judaization of Israel.” Mr. Byroade apparently went on to encourage Israel to view itself as a Middle Eastern state vice a Jewish one, and to harangue Israelis not to view themselves as conquerors who believe that force is the only policy that their neighbors will understand. Finally, he stated that “…unlimited Jewish immigration [to Israel] was a matter of grave concern.”

Mr. Eban, then Israel’s ambassador to the United States, had filed a protest against Mr. Byroade’s harangue, forcing a partial (!) retraction from the State Department. When, in a subsequent meeting with Mr. Byroade, he pointed out that the U.N. had asked Jews to form “a Jewish state, not another Middle Eastern state,” Byroade “could hardly believe his ears.”

“His ignorance is encyclopedic,” Abba Eban is reputed to have said about someone. One hopes it was about Mr. Byroade, but it might as well be about the State Department in general. Then, as now, Israel is always faced with the prospect of going it alone and being destroyed. To quote Abba Eban (again): “Israel was and is breathing with only a single lung.”

Naively playing footsie with terrorist states like Iran and Syria, as the administration is doing now, can only make matters worse for Israel. One hopes that President Obama gets burned quickly since, to quote the inimitable Abba Eban (yet again): “When all else fails, men turn to reason.”

An Obama administration that follows the dictates of cold, hard reason: now that would be change even I would believe in.