Is America Israel's "underminer"?

When unconditional love harms

Back in 2005, Mike Albo and Virginia Heffernan published a book by the name of The Underminer. The subtitle: “Or, The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life.”

Today one might ask if that’s the kind of friend America is being to Israel.

From a distance, the United States seems to stand, nearly alone, as the biggest of the big countries giving Israel a bear hug: weapons, moral defense, strategic silence, abstentions at the United Nations, money, media coverage that humanizes one side.

But now, as legions of Israelis take to the streets to call out their leadership in a way that American leaders and media hesitate to do, one might ask: When does a bear hug become suffocating? When does unconditional love become enabling? Why is the U.S. and so many in its leadership class bent on not saying, out of some notion of politeness, what Israelis themselves say? Can you love a friend into self-destruction?