I agree with Gates! clo
Robert Gates Says Israel Is an Ungrateful Ally: Jeffrey Goldberg
By Jeffrey GoldbergSep 5, 2011 8:00 PM ET
in part:
A Blunt Articulation
Gates’s feelings about Netanyahu are particularly consequential, in part because he’s not considered hostile to Israel, and in part because he’s a well-regarded figure who articulated bluntly what so many people in the administration seem to believe. Gates declined to comment for this column through his former spokesman, Geoff Morrell. But Morrell told me that Gates “worked extremely hard throughout his four and half years as secretary of defense to address Israel’s security concerns.”
A Pentagon spokesman, George Little, said that Gates’s successor, Leon Panetta, “agrees with what President Obama and former Secretary Gates have both said, which is that our defense relationship with Israel is stronger than ever.”
When I asked Oren, the Israeli ambassador, about Gates’s often-expressed feelings toward Netanyahu, he said, “We have nothing but the highest regard for Secretary Gates, and as allies, we don’t exchange accusations, we have communications. Israel deeply appreciates the excellent security relationship we have with the Obama administration.”
Netanyahu’s alienation of the White House has not gone unnoticed in Israel. Tzipi Livni, the head of the Kadima Party, said in a recent interview with me and Atlantic editor James Bennet that the average Israeli is more attuned to the importance of maintaining good relations with the U.S. president than is the current prime minister.
“For Israelis,” she said, “when they wake up in the morning and ask themselves, what is the general situation today, the litmus test for them is the health of the relationship between Israel and the United States.”
(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the author of this column: Jeffrey Goldberg at goldberg.atlantic@gmail.com
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