Israel Matzav

So why was she so anti-Israel?

Former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's family used to live next door to Prime Minister Netanyahu's family in Denver, Colorado some 40 years ago.

Before Condoleezza Rice would get down to the messy business of Middle East politics whenever she saw Binyamin Netanyahu, she first had a question for him: How’s your father doing?

Long before Rice became the first female US national security adviser and then the first black female secretary of state, she and her parents lived next door to Netanyahu’s parents in Denver, Colorado.

“One of the first things I always asked Prime Minister Netanyahu when I would see him is, ‘How’s your father?’” the former secretary of state told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Rice was a teenager at the time, and Netanyahu was in college. That meant they had little direct contact during the time both of their fathers worked for the University of Denver. But the ties did affect their future relationship.

“It allowed them to connect back to a common point,” a source close to Rice said. “It was very, very helpful.”

Her father, Presbyterian minister Reverend John Wesley Rice Jr., was an assistant dean, and Benzion Netanyahu, a professor of Hebraic studies, shared an interest in religion. One year her family even joined the Netanyahus at their Passover Seder.

Rice wrote about that incident in her new memoir, Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family, which she is currently promoting on a book tour. The book, the first of two volumes of an autobiography she will be releasing, focuses on her family and upbringing and ends just as she becomes national security adviser for former president George W. Bush.

Unfortunately, Rice's warm feelings for the Netanyahu family don't seem to have rubbed off on Israel. Her equation of the 'Palestinians' with American blacks of the '60's was most unhelpful.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:21 PM