My old friend Michael Muskal at the LA Times posted some interesting thoughts on Facebook today,  writing,  “A tough day for the Obama administration as it looks at U.S. Mideast policy after Netanyahu’s strong showing. U.S. policy has three legs: An agreement with Iran to halt nuclear development for a time; leading international efforts to stop, then roll back, ISIS; and solving Israel-Palestinian conflict with two states. It is unclear if any of those goals can be achieved, and if they can, certainly not in the way the Obama administration had hoped.”

He may be right.   I wrote the following response.   After seeing it, I felt it to be blog-worthy.    Here it is-

“What concerns me the most is that fear and not courage has become the great motivator in both Israel and the U.S., with the hard-right driving the charge for fear-based warfare promulgated by both countries and the concurrent death of any reasonable belief in diplomacy as a solution by much of the general populace.”

It feels like  the United States and Israel hold the keys to peace or continued warfare in the Middle East, but where are the peacemakers?    Will fear control and possibly destroy us?