Andrew quoted this from Tony Judt’s short interview with Tablet magazine:

But this does seem an opportunity to point out that if Israel is a normal state then it just can’t behave this way and be our favorite ally. I think that the present moment may be propitious because the fact that it was Turkey—once Israel’s closest friend in the region, a NATO partner, a Western-oriented Islamic state which is also democratic and one with huge and growing influence in the region—that was affected, offended, and insulted meant that even the White House could not ignore what happened.

This is a nice thought, and I would like Judt to be right, but quite clearly the White House has done as much as it could to ignore what happened. Not only has the administration done nothing to acknowledge that it was Turkey that was “affected, offended, and insulted,” but it has also actively sided against Turkey on every one of its demands thus far. There is a coordinated campaign to vilify and demonize Turkey in the press, and the administration has made no public effort to combat the exaggerations and misrepresentations of Turkey’s critics. Turkey is the the eighth-largest non-U.S. NATO contributor to the war in Afghanistan, and Washington is effectively indifferent when another ally kills eight of its citizens. An ally that has largely become a strategic liability has seriously wronged a much more important ally that actually contributes to regional security and has approximately 1,800 soldiers in Afghanistan, and predictably the administration has sided with the former. We can hope that Turkey won’t withdraw its soldiers to protest the shabby treatment it has received on this and other issues, but it wouldn’t be surprising and it is entirely avoidable.