[Don Joe]

"We keep waiting for israel to defend herself, and the state department keeps telling her she can't. When will they untie the hands and allow Israel to do what it must?"

I have a feeling that what's going on is that we're publicly saying "don't do it", and discretely giving them the opposite message through backchannels. Then, when they do take care of the countries that we "can't" tackle (for "diplomatic" reasons), we can wring our hands, shed a crocodile tear or two, and say how sad we are that the peace process wasn't allowed to continue, blah blah blah.

[sheik yerbouty]

You might have something there.