Obama's Offer to Israel a 'National Humiliation'

Benjamin Netanyahu is a hostage to the extreme right of Israel’s government, and the Obama administration is trying to appease him—a decision the US “will come to regret.” The US offer of “security incentives and fighter jets” following a proposed temporary freeze in settlement-building makes Christopher Hitchens wonder: Why does America “acquiesce so wretchedly in its own disgrace at the hands of a virtual client state?”

The “Obama/Clinton grovel offer” is “a national humiliation,” Hitchens argues in Slate. Netanayahu is appeasing the right wing by “demanding concessions for something he has already agreed to in principle,” meanwhile “running out the clock” so that Israel can annex more land and kill a two-state solution. The US, for its part, is ignoring international resolutions and its promise to Palestine—and such action won’t go unnoticed.