It is unfortunate that President Obama kept reporters out of his meeting at the White House yesterday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A closed meeting almost always suggests a serious rift has not been healed. In this case, it’s another indication that Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are veering off the “road to peace” in the Middle East. Clinton told American supporters of Israel Monday that “our credibility in this process depends in part on our willingness to praise both sides when they are courageous, and when we don’t agree, to say so, and say so unequivocally.” This moral equivalence might be appropriate if she were refereeing a schoolyard brawl. The stakes for Israel in the Mideast conflict, however, are nothing less than national survival. For its part, the United States has a vital interest in maintaining a critically important strategic alliance.
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