John Kerry is quite obviously a friend of Israel. He was a friend in the Senate, and he is one as U.S. secretary of state. His work on behalf of a two-state solution seems motivated by a deep love for Israel and a fear that Israel will cease to be a democratic haven for the Jewish people — the world's only Jewish-majority country, its first in 2,000 years — if it cannot disentangle itself from the lives of the Palestinians, who seek a country of their own.
Israeli politicians on the extreme right who suggest that Kerry is anti-Semite, or a hater of Zionism, or the spawn of Satan, or whatever, are idiots.
Kerry's strategy in the Middle East is quite clever; he is systematically addressing every worry articulated by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an effort to neutralize Israeli anxiety. But I think that Kerry has been making one mistake in his approach to these negotiations: His need to publicly invoke — repeatedly — the specter of an international campaign to boycott Israel is not helping advance his cause.
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