Normalizing Israel

OP-ED: An Ordinary Israel, By ROGER COHEN, New York Times, October 15, 2009

The gut of the piece's logic:

A shift is perceptible in the decades-old tacit American endorsement of Israel's undeclared nuclear arsenal. This is logical. To deal effectively with the nuclear program of Iran, an N.P.T. member, while ignoring the nuclear status of non-N.P.T. Israel is to invite accusations of double standards. President Obama doesn't like them.

I'd say there's a tenable case for Israel ending its nuclear exceptionalism, coming clean on its arsenal and joining the N.P.T. as part of any U.S.-endorsed regional security arrangement that stops Iran short of weaponization.

That would be serious movement all right. The nice byproduct is the Arab world's implicit diplomatic recognition of Israel as part of this regional security scheme.

Comments

[Louis Heberlein]

All the Semitic folk versus Persians?

[Tom Barnett]

The irony being that Persians, as a rule, lack anti-Semitic feeling, and tend more toward empathy.