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| "One reason the press loves covering Israel: It's one of the cushiest, most beautiful locales from which to report. I'd take this beach in Tel Aviv over Beijing or Baghdad any day." |
Jerusalem is everywhere. No matter where you are, Jerusalem is. The power of that holy city intrudes into the strangest and most profane of places. [...] The Middle East has always been a place for Anglo-Saxons to project their various fantasies onto, no matter how far away, no matter how dim the dreamers' grasp of its reality. And yet, after Iraq and Afghanistan, America and the West in general already have been disengaging from the Middle East intellectually as well as militarily. That blessed time when we don't care anymore can't come soon enough. [...]
One reason the press loves covering Israel: It's one of the cushiest, most beautiful locales from which to report. I'd take this beach in Tel Aviv over Beijing or Baghdad any day.
Standard foreign-policy wisdom holds that Israel is the key, that once the crisis there is solved, everything else in the whole of the Muslim world will improve. The terrorists will no longer have the necessary symbolism for recruitment. But the only thing that would satisfy the terrorists is Israel's ceasing to exist, and Israel, rather gauchely, insists on existing. The symbolism cannot be solved; only its power can be diminished. The real historic opportunity at the moment is for the secretary of state to stop going to Israel, and for everybody else to stop talking about what there's no point discussing.
