Report: 'Post-partisan' Obama makes Dermer price of detente

There may be nothing in the US-Israel relationship that has gotten Barack Hussein Obama more upset than Prime Minister Netanyahu's appointment of Ron Dermer as Ambassador to the United States. Dermer, an American immigrant, is the scion of a Republican family from Florida. Obama doesn't like Republicans. Now, Haaretz's Barak Ravid is reporting that Dermer's replacement is to the price of 'mending' Prime Minister Netanyahu's ties with Washington.

Senior administration officials said the White House is not planning any retaliation against Netanyahu, nor is it considering ways to punish him if he wins the election. Nevertheless, the wounds caused by the premier’s address to Congress are far from being healed, and Netanyahu will have to make great efforts to restore good relations with the Obama administration.

“We are not the ones who created this crisis,” said a senior administration official. “President Obama has another two years in office and we wish to go back to a reality where you can work together despite the differences. The prime minister of Israel is the one who needs to find a way to fix this.” 

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Although White House officials don’t say so explicitly, they seem to imply that one way to repair the relations between Netanyahu and Obama would be to replace Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer. The latter is seen as an instigator who concocted Netanyahu’s Congress speech behind Obama’s back with John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives.

In his speech to AIPAC, Netanyahu praised Dermer for standing firm and taking the heat in Washington. If Netanyahu wins the election and continues to back Dermer, the ambassador will find himself isolated in the American capital. As long as Obama is in the White House, nobody in the administration will work with him. 

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Former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer, who is close to the Obama administration, wrote in an article on Politico Magazine on Tuesday that “Dermer’s ability to function as the Israeli ambassador is now severely weakened, perhaps even fatally so.”

In acting more as Netanyahu’s personal envoy than Israel’s ambassador, Dermer “has lost touch with a large segment of Americans – including a majority of the Jewish community that votes for the Democrats. Ambassadors are an expendable lot – I know from experience – and Dermer has now outlived his usefulness as Israel’s envoy to the United States,” Kurtzer wrote.

 Petty. Vindictive. Describes Obama and his crew perfectly.