Sarah Palin is unlikely candidate to teach Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, a lesson about leadership, but it turns out her responses to questions, specifically about birtherism, are good (bad) models to not do. David Rothkopf writes for Foreign Policy:
When I read the Washington Post‘s story ”Palestinians Seek Recognition through South America” this morning, all I could think of was Sarah Palin. Now, some might think that is a kind of a disorder that calls for therapy more than it does another blog post. But I suspect you are probably jumping to the wrong conclusion about what I think about either issue.
In defense of my mental health (which needs all the defending it can get), one reason I thought of Palin was that as I was reading the article, she appeared on the television. She was being asked what she thought about birther claims that President Obama was not born in the United States. Without the hesitation or weasel words that have made recent statements on this subject by Michelle Bachman and John Boehner such indictments of their ability to lead, Palin said that it wasn’t an issue for her and that we ought to be talking about how to fix the economy. In this instance, she got it precisely right.
But the Palin comment and the birther debate also resonated with the story of the eight Latin American governments that in December and January recognized Palestinian statehood. representatives of the Netanyahu government including the prime minister himself apparently vigorously tried to persuade the region’s leaders not to join the almost 100 nations that have also acknowledged the legitimacy of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people.
Once again, the issue seems like a distraction to me. The response of Israel ought to be like the response of Palin, “Of course, the Palestinian people have a right to a state.” In fact, it’s only a bit of an over-simplification to say, the right response ought to be literally what Palin’s was: That it’s not an issue for them and we ought to be talking about how to fix the economy — that is we ought to be focused on how you go from the indisputable right of the Palestinians to have their own state to working together to create one that is self-sustaining and can do a better job creating opportunities for the Palestinian people than neighboring states (other than Israel) have done for their citizens. That’s the critical challenge for both Israelis and Palestinians together.
