Israel was shocked by Secretary of State John Kerry’s diplomatic maneuvers regarding Gaza. David Horovitz, the editor of the Times of Israel, a man who takesmiddle-of-the-road positions and chooses words carefully, called it a “betrayal” of an ally. Kerry snubbed Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, closeted himself with Turkey and Qatar, Hamas’s two main Islamist Sunni backers, and produced a proposal that, unlike the Egyptian cease-fire plan already on the table, incorporated most of Hamas’s demands while ignoring Israel’s, notably Israel’s need to defang Hamas of its offensive capabilities, especially the tunnels reaching under the border.
Kerry’s performance on Gaza was anything but shocking to anyone who has studied his roughly 40-year record of warmth toward enemies and aggressors, and harshness not only to allies but to America, itself. In the 1970s, when he led Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he accused US forces of “crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.” In the 1980s, he denounced the US rescue mission to Grenada as “a Bully’s show of force”; traveled to Communist Nicaragua to embrace the Sandinistas’ self-serving negotiation plan; and denounced President Reagan’s retaliatory bombing of Libya as “not proportional.” In the 1990s he opposed liberating Kuwait from Saddam Hussein and cast one of only 29 Senate votes against lifting the arms embargo to Bosnia’s besieged Muslims. In the first decade of the 21st century he made at least four visits to Damascus, striking up a warm relationship with the cuddly Bashar al-Assad. “President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of the discussions we have had,” he said, and“I believe very deeply that this is an important moment of change.”
Far from shocking, Kerry’s embrace of Islamist Turkey and Qatar and his coddling of Hamas were of a piece with his entire record.
