Countries alienated by Israel this week: New Zealand, France.
Next week? Potentially, the world.
And while I can already hear murmurs of "why does this matter, they hate us anyway," the fact is, it does matter. Is this week, when Israel needs all the help it can get in the UN, really the week when we want to make enemies of the French? Does a diplomatic crisis with New Zealand really improve our strategic position?
Through his calls for French Jews to escape "the wildest" anti-Semitism by moving to Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has shown himself to be utterly oblivious and insensitive to:
a. The real efforts made by the French political leadership this week to condemn and combat anti-Semitism, real and imagined
b. The fine line walked by every Jew in the Diaspora between loyalty to the country they live in and loyalty to Israel; it's one thing to make a general statement that "all Jews are welcome in Israel" and another to issue an appeal to Jews of a specific country and put the onus specifically on them
c. The rules of statesmanship and diplomacy, which dictate that a prime minister should avoid telling the citizens of another country what to do about internal problems.
When he became prime minister after a stint as opposition leader, Sharon famously stated that 'dvarim sheroim mikan lo roim misham' -- 'things you see from here, you can't see from there.' Perhaps Sharon should start looking at the world even more widely still.
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