Eli Lake has often times defended Obama’s moves with Israel. Now he is out front in slamming Obama and his attacks on Israel. Watch the interview below:
Lake created a storm with his Tweet before Kerry’s speech
I apologize for the times I defended Obama to my pro-Israel friends. I was wrong.
— Eli Lake (@EliLake) December 25, 2016
Lake’s column on Bloomberg has been unrelenting in its attacked on Obama and Kerry:
No longer bound by official restraints, Kerry said things in public that U.S. diplomats usually say only behind closed doors.
But Kerry’s speech in a deeper sense was that of a man trapped in the past. Like Republicans and Democrats since the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, Kerry is a prisoner of a peace process from a bygone time.
In this respect he is not alone. Since George H.W. Bush, U.S. presidents have pushed and prodded the two sides to agree that there should be two states for two peoples. Kerry’s speech hit familiar notes. Palestinians must end incitement. Israel must stop building settlements. Time is running out. Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton’s second secretary of state, could have given the same speech in 1999.
But 2016 is not 1999. In the 1990s and the 2000s, the Middle East had plenty of problems. But its governments remained largely in charge, even after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Back then the establishment view was that a two-state solution was the key to unlocking stability for the region. The late Israeli leader Shimon Peres used to call this the “new Middle East,” where collaboration replaced conflict. Arab allies would finally cooperate with the U.S. if the Palestinians and Israelis could just share Jerusalem.
Nobody believes this anymore. Today the Middle East is coming unglued. Syria is no longer much of a state at all. Wars rage in Iraq, Libya and Yemen. Iran is meddling. Russia has entered the region for the first time since the 1970s. The jihadist Islamic State has suffered setbacks, but it still has its caliphate in Raqqa. These conflicts are complex, but they have nothing to do with settlements in the West Bank.
With more and more Americans and a majority of Congress attacking Obama and his team over Israel, the final few weeks of his Presidency is creating everything, but a positive legacy.
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