NO DOUBT OBAMA/BIDEN WOULD WANT BIBI TOPPLED

Wesley Pruden writes on Jewish World Review about US vice-president Joe Biden's already blundering visit to Israel, and tells something I wouldn't be surprised the Obama administration would prefer:

"In light of the gaping disparity between the Obama administration's policies and those of the Israeli government," Caroline Glick, an Israeli analyst, writes in JWR, "the apparent goal of the Biden [visit] is to shore up the position of the Israeli left as an alternative to [Mr.] Netanyahu … the picture emerging from all of the senior U.S. officials' meetings with [Mr.] Netanyahu is that Israel's leader still feels comfortable defying them. Presumably they now believe that the only way to force him to toe their line is by making him believe that the price of defiance will be his premiership."

This worked before. A full decade ago, Bill Clinton, posing as the best friend the Jews ever had — feeling their pain, pointing with pride to his undying love for Israel and viewing with alarm the occasional venal sins of the Palestinians — imposed some of the most hostile policies the United State ever foisted on Israel. This so effectively undermined Mr. Netanyahu that he was booted from office.

But that was then, and the Israeli public, like the government, has scant appetite for saccharine this time. It's just as well. Mr. Obama reserves his sweet talk for Arab provocateurs; he made his apology tour of the Muslim world early in his presidency but still can't find time to visit America's only reliably democratic ally in the Middle East. Good old Joe is the best messenger the president can find to take the bitter medicine to Jerusalem. He's regarded, at least by himself, as the best friend Israel has at the White House. Some friend. As a senator, he voted against sanctions against Iran, said he didn't see anything necessarily wrong with Iranian nuclear ambitions and grumbled that George W. Bush should be impeached if he sent Americans to bomb the Iranian nuclear plants. He'll blow some kisses at Israel this week, but none of them will be wet. Good old Joe will only be going through the motions of a duty dance.

As the polls have shown, Israelis have a very low opinion of the Obama-led government this time, and we gotta hope they understand the same about Biden. But then, he's already made his positions clear about what he thinks of Israel's right to build within Jerusalem, so we have to hope Biden is no more good at wearing masks of good will than Obama is.