Erdogan's blunt term for Israel is surely accurate. Which prosperous ally gets $3 billion a year in aid, and a veto power over America's entire Mid-East foreign policy? Which ally refuses to cooperate with its military and political protector – even to the point of humiliating a duly elected American president? Which ally violates the Non-Proliferation treaty and manages to get its super-power protector to maintain total silence on this glaring fact? Which ally is threatening conventional warfare if its own nuclear monopoly in the region is in any way threatened? And which ally is making it harder and harder for the US to shape a credible and potent strategy against Islamism?
This, by the way, is not the view of a cranky anti-Semite. Bob Gates believes it as strongly as Erdogan does:
Gates believes Netanyahu's government has offered the Obama administration "nothing in return" for its generous security aid, which includes access to top-quality weapons, assistance in developing missile-defense systems and high-level intelligence sharing.
The former defense secretary said that not only is Netanyahu ungrateful, but his polices were "endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank."
Israel is the exception to every rule. And its intransigence is beginning to force the US toward a horrible choice between allying ourselves with the tectonic democratic forces in the region, or backing a fundamentalist-dominated state bent on expansion and war.
The Dish 