My much-alluded-to essay in the National meditating on the flotilla raid, Netanyahu’s coalition, Israel’s illiberal bent, American evangelicals, and Dan Senor’s Start-Up Nation — a long essay that proved to be the scourge of my vacation — is now out. Special guest appearance from President Obama: A generation ago, Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, two [...]

THE BEACH — So I’m going to break a promise to myself because of the enormity of the Gaza flotilla raid. This Andrew Exum post does a great job of framing several important currents in Israel and the U.S.-Israeli relationship. I want to try to connect them. First is a point about strategy. Since the collapse [...]

Hi from an undisclosed beachlike area, where many of your favorite and least-favorite bloggers, artists, technerds, lawyers, communications professionals and policy wonks are enjoying a much-needed respite. I’m deeply grateful to Shani, Megan, Scott and Erin for holding this place down while I’m away. Because this week is a hell of a week to try [...]

This isn’t really my beat, but it strikes me as silly to suggest — as New York Times’ Helene Cooper does — that President Obama needs to “mend fences” with the American Jewish community: The White House effort, which included remarks by senior White House officials before the national leadership conference of the Anti-Defamation League [...]

Can you really blame Benjamin Netanyahu from bailing on President Obama’s nuclear security summit? Look at it from his point of view: you govern one of the only undeclared nuclear powers, which for decades has declared itself disinterested in joining the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, here’s your one indispensable global ally places nuclear nonproliferation at [...]

The following is a translation provided by Peace Now of a Yedioth Aranoth interview with Moshe “Boogie” Ya’alon, Israeli Vice PM and Minister for Strategic Affairs. Gestures, statements, negotiations—nothing will come of it in the end. That is the bottom line as far as Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe (Bogi) Yaalon [...]

The U.S.-Israel military-to-military bonds are strong as ever, Robert Gates said at a press conference this morning. He wants people to stop acting like what the right is calling “linkage” is controversial. “The U.S. has considered peace in the Middle East to be a national security interest for decades,” Gates said at a press conference [...]

This is the first time I felt like I see eye-to-eye with people making Mideast policy for the Obama administration. According to the Washington Post, Obama and Netanyahu have nearly come to terms on a series of confidence-building measures to get back to direct talks with the Palestinians. We don’t know their terms (or at [...]

I am very happy the Washington Independent let me run this headline for a post about the frigidity emerging from yesterday’s Obama-Netanyahu meeting. The question becomes: is Obama Gucci or is he Jeezy?

Via Andrew Sullivan, check out this bit of Stratfor analysis. I generally like its approach of looking beyond personalities and toward structural relationships to explain given sets of behavior, bloodless as that approach might be — and sometimes bloodless analysis overlooks very human concerns, aspirations and especially miscalculation. I’m not sure how I feel about [...]