Civility in the Jerusalem Post

Yikes:

Painful retreats and peace-plans are only possible under popular prime ministers - Menachem Begin with the Egyptian treaty, Yitzhak Rabin at Oslo and Ariel Sharon and his disengagement. A discredited prime minister going ahead with such a controversial plan, whatever its merits, is a recipe for chaos and even civil war.

There's somethign wrong in a country's political culture - and I'm not speaking exclusively of Israel, as the US has the same syndrome - that the "dovish", sensible foreign policy can't actually be pursued by doves, for fear of domestic political consequences. So if McGovern had been President in 1972, it would have been impossible for there to be a rapprochement with China because "only Nixon could go to China." Or if Mondale had won in 1984 (Ha!) Gorbachev might have been a missed opportunity because as a pro-nuclear freeze Democrat, Mondale wouldn't have been able to do exactly what Reagan ended up doing at Reykjavik*.

It bears saying that this makes no sense at all.

*It also bears saying that, after tens of billions of dollars, the only thing that Reagan's SDI dreams have materially accomplished was to scuttle a Soviet offer in Iceland to eliminate all intercontinental ballistic missiles by 1996.