Author: Josef Olmert, Ph.D.

For nearly six months, Israel has been gripped in an internal crisis described by many as the most severe challenge to its very viability as a democratic state. Israel experienced significant crises, such as the Altalena crisis in June 1948, only weeks after the establishment of the state, the reparations from Germany crisis in 1952, the turbulent period after the Oslo Accords climaxed with the assassination of PM Rabin in 1995, and the Disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

Yair Lapid, the new provisional Israeli PM stated after President Biden left Israel for Saudi Arabia, that ”it was such an important visit, the full results of it will be known in years to come”. This was a typical pre-election statement of an inexperienced politician, but it is in line with the overall attempt by the post-Netanyahu Israeli government to portray with flying colors the relations between Israel and the Democratic administration.

It was an unusual meeting on 14 February 1945, aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal, between two heads of state. On the one hand, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), President of the USA, the unofficial leader of the free world, was on the threshold of the final victory over Nazi Germany.

It is arguably the case that the Biden Administration is almost exclusively focused on the Ukraine situation and the possibility of a Russian invasion. This is understandable, but here is what is most NOT understandable-the indifference towards an escalating and very dangerous situation in the Middle East, where Iran is flexing its muscles in a way unprecedented since the heydays of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

After the 1967 great victory in the Six Days War, Israel’s most popular musical hit song was; “The entire world is against us”. Somewhat surprising, isn’t it? On the one hand, a great victory, and with it a sense of relief, of renewed optimism and fresh hope, and then this self-flagellation of celebrating isolation.