Great minds: Yglesias also notes that Israel is not America’s best friend

Roi Maor By Roi Maor May 26, 2011 | Edit

I may have gotten there first, but ThinkProgress blogger Matthew Yglesias had the same reaction to Netanyahu’s speech as I did:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a lot of things in his address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, most of them foolish and some of them offensive. But one of his very first statements was among the most important: “Israel has no better friend than America,” he claimed, “and America has no better friend than Israel.”

The former is accurate. The latter is absurd.

These are almost my exact words, and I am obviously in agreement, and gratified that a great blogger like Yglesias had the same thought. He goes on to dismantle Netanyahu’s claim much more thoroughly than I did, and does so from an American perspective, so I warmly recommend reading his column. If anything, I think he is not harsh enough on Israel, considering that even within the framework of its current extreme policies, our government could still find some room to accommodate US interests, yet refuses to do even that little.

Roi Maor

I am an activist for social rights and human rights in Israel and Palestine, living in Tel Aviv. I’ve written several human rights reports and op-eds in ynet, Ha’aretz and the Jerusalem Post. Over the last few years, I volunteered and worked for several Israeli NGOs, including Yesh Din, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights. The views expressed in this blog are mine and mine alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the organizations I work for.

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