Several hours before US President Barack Obama delivered his Sept. 10 speech to the nation outlining the campaign against the Islamic State (IS), the chairman of Israel’s parliamentary opposition, Knesset member Isaac "Buji" Herzog, met with two top officials in the White House: Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Antony Blinken, the deputy to national security adviser Susan Rice. Herzog was granted prestigious quality time with those closest to the president, after a lengthy meeting the previous day with Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have a fairly good chance, at least for now, of returning to the White House in a little over two years.
Herzog got the impression that America was back. The senior American officials emphasized to him that it had never left. They laid out for him the extent of US activities around the world in general, and in the Middle East in particular. They told him about the successful targeted killing the previous week in Somalia, they stressed that the US commitment to maintaining the peace and security of its allies was as strong as ever.
