Ha’aretz reported on August 13 that the US is raising the level of strategic talks with Israel. Why is this one of the year’s most embarrassing stories, for Israel and for Ha’aretz? No more is needed to answer this question than to translate the entire first paragraph:

 “At the end of this month the Sharon government will record an achievement in its relations with the US. A team of  senior officials from Israel will go to Washington, for the first round of ‘strategic dialogue talks’ with the Bush Administration. Prime Minister Sharon should feel satisfied: Despite the conflict with the Palestinians, the US is ready to cooperate with Israel in constructing its regional policy. The meeting highlights the unique standing of Israel in Washington. The Administration does not have a similar forum for political and strategic coordination with the Palestinian Authority, or with Arab states that are friendly towards the US, such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia.”

If you are an Israeli reader, you are undoubtedly already blushing. If you are an American reader, you are undoubtedly staring in amazement. Can this be true? Can this really be the attitude of a state considered the most powerful country in the Middle East, allegedly one of the world’s few nuclear powers, with an army capable of extracting prisoners from Uganda or bringing thousands of immigrants overnight from Ethiopia? Is this how a nation that is 4,000 years old and that lists among its creations the Bible, prophetic anger, the Talmud, midrash, holidays celebrating religious freedom and a relationship with the Divine – looks at its relations with other countries?

And can this be the way a distinguished newspaper reports the news? The reporter is literally gushing with self-satisfaction, overjoyed with the great accomplishment of his government, that his representatives are able to talk to high-level members of the Bush Administration. And the icing on the cake, of which every Israeli can be duly proud, is that the US talks to “us” in a friendlier tone than it talks to…Yasser Arafat.

Can Ha’aretz really have written this? 

Readers with a sense for history will already have discerned that the phenomenon we are describing is not new. It typifies an unfortunate character who appears in Jewish history, especially later Jewish history. Every nation has its heroes and its sinners, its great men and its lesser. The nation of Israel, which produced King David and King Solomon, Bar Kochba and Shlomo Molcho, Rabbi Akiba and Jabotinsky, also produced – the court Jew.

This story in Ha’aretz is all about the court Jews who are running Israel today, and running to be greeted by powerful people outside their own country, and fawning over having their pictures taken with a deputy secretary of state; and it reflects on the same types, who are writing for and running the local press.

This in part explains why Israel doesn’t adopt any independent policies, why it prefers to be dependent, why its leaders do not adopt policies in Israel’s best interest unless the US or UN or any outside power first nods its approval, why it continues to seek foreign aid long after any alleged need for it has ceased to exist. This is why so many Israeli politicians run to have their pictures taken even with a terrorist killer of children, or why they are grateful when the Pope speaks of them, even if His Holiness is insulting them. This is an embarrassing phenomenon, but it will not disappear unless it is first identified. Thus this Op Ed is essentially a public service announcement.

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