It was shocking to read of the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman describing the new special envoy, Sen. George Mitchell, as “fair-minded” and “even-handed” and then declaring this to be a problem. M.J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum writes aptly of the need for precisely these qualities in his piece of Jan. 30, “Post-Gaza Sea Change.” The take away for me is especially in these two paragraphs:
“Obama’s America is going to be even-handed in the Middle East not only because that is what Obama is, but because it is what most Americans today expect and want. Younger people, in particular, cannot even imagine that anyone would suggest that even-handedness is bad. To them, that is like saying that the best referee is one who bends the rules to favor one team.
“It is offensive to assume that even-handedness is bad for Israel. To decry even-handedness as intrinsically anti-Israel is to argue that any fair observer will choose the anti-Israel position. That is as perverse as it is wrong. And it is insulting to recommend that the United States be anything but an honest broker in the Middle East.”
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