British Prime Minister Publicly Scolds John Kerry Over Israel Speech

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May meets US Secretary of State John Kerry in her official residence in 10 Downing Street, London Tuesday July 19, 2016. Kerry will later meet Britain's new Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. (Hannah McKay/Pool)

If you recall, last week John Kerry gave a rambling and incoherent speech blasting Israel for looking after its own welfare rather than meekly being sold down the river by a former ally, that, of course, would be us.

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This is the official transcript.

It was a wordy restatement of decades of failure based primarily on the inability of the United States to comprehend that the Palestinians and Arab states do not want a solution. They want an issue. And they want to eradicate Israel. They state this every day and why we fail to believe them is beyond me.

And there was invective: “The Israeli prime minister publicly supports a two-state solution, but his current coalition is the most right wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements.”

Essentially, he blamed Netanyahu, a democratically elected leader, for Kerry’s own ineptitude and stupidity while delegitimizing Netanyahu’s government.

Today British Prime Minister Theresa May took Kerry to task over his remarks:

In a statement that echoed Mr. Trump’s fierce criticism of the Obama administration, Mrs. May chided Mr. Kerry for, among other things, describing the Israeli government as the “most right-wing in Israeli history, with an agenda driven by the most extreme elements.”

Mrs. May does “not believe that it is appropriate to attack the composition of the democratically elected government of an ally,” a spokesman for the prime minister said, using the department’s customary anonymity.

Mr. Kerry’s speech was praised by other European nations, including France and Germany. So the British slap — especially after Mrs. May’s government voted last week for a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement construction — was something of a shock to Washington.

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I think what we can infer from that statement is that May, unlike Obama and Kerry, realize that Israel’s cooperation is essential to any Nobel-Prize-winning endeavors someone may attempt in the Middle East. And Israel’s cooperation is only possible if it believes someone, the United States, has its back. Without that night light and comfort blanket for its security, Israel has no incentive to participate in negotiations which seem scripted to end up in another Holocaust and Diaspora. Kerry singlehandedly knocked the pins from underneath the entire premise of the alleged peace process that has been in place since the Carter era.

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