Sunday Reads: The Middle East that could have been, Netanyahu’s speech and the Israel lobby

US

George Will believes that the American public would do well to curb its pessimism about the dangers of the world:

The world might currently seem unusually disorderly, but it can be so without being unusually dangerous. If we measure danger by the risk of violence, the world is unusually safe. For this and other reasons, Americans should curb their pessimism.

Walter Russell Mead shares his thoughts on the recent outrage about Netanyahu’s upcoming speech in Congress:

It is President Obama who has tried to turn America’s Israel policy into a partisan issue. The bipartisan Congressional support for Israel reflects a consensus in American politics that is almost 100 years old (the Lodge-Fish resolution expressed U.S. support for the Balfour Declaration back in 1922). That only a small number of Democrats seem willing at this point to boycott the Netanyahu address is an indication of just how far away from the American consensus President Obama has allowed his Middle East policy to drift.

Israel

Liel Leibovitz argues that it wasn’t Bibi who breeched protocol in accepting Boehner’s invitation, it was the NYT:

So here, again, are the facts: John Boehner invited Bibi to speak on an issue of national importance to both the United States and to Israel, and Bibi accepted. The White House was informed of the invitation in advance, as is proper. Democrats were not consulted. Tzipi Livni, Buji Herzog, Jonathan Greenblatt, and the editorial board of the New York Times were not consulted either. This is all according to custom and according to precedent. Any other reading of this story is a violation of protocol.

Former Ambassador Itamar Rabinovich thinks that Israel should reassess its Syria policy:

In these circumstances, Israel’s best option is to signal to Hezbollah and to its Iranian patrons that its response to escalation along the Lebanese-Israeli border and the Golan will not be local, and that it may well target major units and installations of Assad’s regime, thus affecting the course of the Syrian civil war. This would not be a simple or easy decision. In the current conditions in Syria, it may play to the hands of the Islamic State and run against the grain of the Western offensive against it. It could also trigger a significant Syrian response… Caution and restraint may well prevail, but the foundation for the first major change in Israel’s policy towards the Syrian civil war has been laid.

Middle East

Nick Danforth examines a fascinating Wilson-era attempt at drawing alternative borders in the Middle East :

Today, many argue that a century of untold violence and instability—culminating in ISIS’s brutal attempt to erase Middle Eastern borders—might have been avoided if only each of the region’s peoples had achieved independence after World War I. But as the King-Crane Commission discovered back in 1919, ethnic and religious groups almost never divide themselves into discrete units. Nor do the members of each group necessarily share a vision of how they wish to be governed.

Cengiz Candar explains the curious reasons behind Erdogan’s crazy jibes at Obama, Biden and Kerry:

Thus, Erdogan’s remarks in Havana do not only reflect his obstinacy and persistence on seeing a mosque constructed on Cuban land, but they are also reflective of his implicit claim to the leadership of Sunni Islam against the Saudis.

His sniping at Obama, Biden and John Kerry during the joint press conference with his Mexican host, President Enrique Pena Nieto, should be read within the same framework. During prime time the evening of Feb. 12, millions of Turkish TV viewers saw their president lambasting his US counterpart, the vice president and the secretary of state.

Jewish World

This interesting piece in the New Yorker (written by Elizabeth Kolbert) takes a look at Germany’s latest efforts at prosecuting WW2 war criminals:

In principle, the Demjanjuk verdict opened up “hundreds of thousands” to prosecution; as a practical matter, hardly any were left. And this makes it difficult to know how to feel about the latest wave of investigations. Is it a final reckoning with German guilt, or just the opposite? What does it say about the law’s capacity for self-correction that the correction came only when it no longer really matters?

The Forward’s Nathan Guttman explains why the Israel lobby is the biggest casualty of the feud about Netanyahu’s speech:

The fight over Netanyahu’s speech, which was arranged with Republican leaders behind the back of Democrats and the White House, has dented the decades-old bipartisan pro-Israel consensus, which is a cornerstone of support for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other groups.

“It’s a tragedy of unintended consequences,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who broke ranks with other mainstream Jewish leaders to call on Netanyahu to scrap the speech. “The Jewish community is very, very anxious not to get caught in the middle.”