The issue of whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s March 3 speech to Congress halted, or at the least delayed, Iran’s nuclear program reminds me of something said by Thomas Pickering, the senior US diplomat who served as undersecretary of state during the Bill Clinton administration and before that as ambassador to the United Nations, Russia, India and Israel. “The problem with you Israelis,” he told me sarcastically, “is that you lack sensitivity to nuance.” He was referring to the harsh criticism that senior members of the US administration, himself included, had leveled against the settlement enterprise through diplomatic channels and occasionally in public.
Any other country — or one might say, any “normal” country with a population of about 8 million — would not dare to provoke the president of a superpower with more than 320 million people. A reasonable leader of a country whose army is equipped with American weapons and whose diplomacy relies on the veto power of the United States would never wager his free pass to the White House. On the other hand, considering the polling results shortly before the prime minister's trip to Washington, it would appear as if the people of Israel had heard only a feeble echo of the shrill cries in opposition to the speech coming from the White House, Democratic Party representatives in Congress and broad swathes of the American Jewish community. Here are a few of the "nuances" that got lost in the commotion surrounding the speech.