Defamation

Here. And that's before we start about "Iran's nuclear programme", or "Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map", or "Iran is a threat to the West".

"We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States," says Abe Foxman, apparently in complete seriousness. In the words of Henry Kissinger, there can be no worse fate on earth than to be an American ally, as no one ought to know, but for some reason mostly doesn't, better than Britain.

And then there is Joe Biden's 2001 reference to Israel as "the one ally we have in that part of the world," doubtless news, if they paid any attention, to Turkey and to the Gulf monarchies, especially Saudi Arabia, whence came the 9/11 attacks that very year.

Still, Foxman and those of like mind need to ask themselves how they have exhausted the patience even of Biden. Perhaps even he has finally noticed that their secular Ashkenazi nationalist position is not held by most Israelis, fewer and fewer of whom fall into all three of those categories? Or perhaps he has noticed that the American taxpayer is ultimately footing the bill for the maintenance on his soil of, in such forms as AIPAC and Foxman's ADL, the largest spy network maintained by any country on the soil of any other, to which Presidential candidates are even expected to go and pay court?

But will Obama bother to turn up in 2012? Will whoever the very much post-Bush Republicans nominate bother to turn up, either? What would happen if they didn't? In Obama's case, the Christian Zionists (by no means all of the white Evangelicals, quite a number of whom voted for him anyway) would never vote for him, no matter what, so he wouldn't be losing anything there. And the Jews, many of whom in any case do not agree with the Mossad position, mostly live in safely blue states.

As for the Republican, at their respective heights, the British Empire and the Soviet Union ran large and powerful spy networks in the United States. But they were real powers. And, courtly as Britons and Russians can both be, they certainly did not have the sheer effrontery to charge the Americans for the privilege of hosting those networks. Oh, the shame, the shame! Does a Republican intend to appeal to the heartland by celebrating that national humiliation?