Obma and NYT team up by Barry Rubin

But again what has happened to make the question Netanyahu's ability or willingness to make a peace deal. Here are the total charges against him: The announcement of building a set of apartments, for which he apologized, and another regarding 20 additional apartments.

It's not as if he and his colleagues daily broadcast incitement to murder people on the other side through schools, sermons, and speeches. It's not as if they refused to negotiate at all month after month. It's not as if they released or did not incarcerate extremists who murdered civilians on the other side. (Actually they did release prisoners who murdered civilians but they were Palestinian prisoners who murdered Israelis.) It's not as if they don't even control half the territory for which they purport to bargain.

Those are all characteristics of the PA, things the Times does not even mention. And if the administration or the Times wanted to take offense at anti-peace actions they could mention that at the time of Biden's visit the PA dedicated a major square to a terrorist who murdered a score of Israeli civilians and Gail Rubin, a U.S. citizen and niece of then Senator Abraham Ribicoff. Not only did the Administration not protest this action but Clinton mistakenly attributed it to Hamas in her AIPAC speech.

Consequently, this editorial is not merely slanted; it is so profoundly dishonest, distorting both the Palestinian and the Obama Administration role, as to be suitable to that published in a state-controlled newspaper in a dictatorship.

Once--and perhaps again in the not-distant future--the U.S.-Israel link was called a "special relationship" because it was so close. Now it is still distinctive in a special way: Israel is the only country in the world--a list that includes none of those countries sponsoring anti-American terror or trying to destroy U.S. interests--that this administration, perhaps only temporarily, wants to intimidate and defeat.

But is this all about Israel or is it about the desperation to defend an administration which has failed so badly and acted so erratically in foreign policy?

By so misrepresenting the facts and situation, some media can go on defending Obama's policies and actions. But that's no way to defend America and its interests, quite the contrary.

*Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.