Even The Washington Post Thinks Kerry’s Israel Speech Was Nuts

The widespread condemnation of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Wednesday speech targeting Israel has now spread as far left as The Washington Post.

The Post issued an op-ed on Friday in which it stated, “The Obama administration is ending eight years of failed Middle East diplomacy exactly where it began in 2009 — with an exaggerated and misguided focus on Israeli settlement construction.”

The Post accused Kerry of railing at the continuing growth of West Bank Jewish housing “with a prolixity that Fidel Castro would have admired.”

The Post acknowledged the similarity of Kerry’s rhetoric to Barack Obama’s at the beginning of his first term, admitting that Obama’s actions catalyzed “Palestinian leaders to resist all concessions while seeking to delegitimize Israel internationally; the peace talks went nowhere even when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu imposed a temporary construction freeze.”

The Post continued, “Mr. Kerry’s speech was, above all, a vivid demonstration of the administration’s inability to learn from its mistakes or adjust the ideological tenets that Mr. Obama brought to office.”

Of course, the Post has no interest in supporting Israeli settlements, or recognizing that the Palestinians refuse to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist, snapping that those who favor a one-state solution include “members of the incoming Trump administration, which appears headed toward flipping U.S. policy to the opposite extreme, of cheerleading for settlements — a position that would be no less blinkered and self-defeating than Mr. Obama’s.”

“The Obama administration is ending eight years of failed Middle East diplomacy exactly where it began in 2009 — with an exaggerated and misguided focus on Israeli settlement construction.”

The Washington Post

After pontificating for a while that a two-state solution is still “entirely viable,” the Post offers its own idea for a solution:

The best U.S. policy would be to work to preserve the option of Palestinian statehood for the longer term, by combating Palestinian corruption and political dysfunction and by encouraging Israel to facilitate the growth of a viable West Bank economy. A new U.S. administration could also work to strike a deal on settlements that restricted all growth to areas that would not be part of a Palestinian state.

Condemnation of Kerry’s speech as come from figures such as British Prime Minister Theresa May, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio, radio host Mark Levin, and numerous others.