Chickenshit. Now there’s the power of language! It took one word, selected last week by a “senior Obama administration official” to describe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to underscore the fault line between Israel and the United States. And what a word at that – a sophomoric bit of linguistic blending, a colloquialism that under most other circumstances might not signal much of anything. But in this specific case it was oozing with meaning. And if everyone else is wading through it, we might as well get our hands dirty, too.

The immediate implication of the fowl formulation is blunt: Israel-U.S. relations are at a low point – though perhaps not, as some have suggested, the lowest point – there is no other way to read it. Jerusalem and Washington have been sparring almost incessantly since the summer war, accusing each other of jeopardizing peace and security, in Israel and beyond. Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama seem to be on different pages, and the frosty atmosphere has worked its way through the ranks of both administrations. For many of Israel’s supporters, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s apology to Netanyahu won’t be enough. The smell lingers. 

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s domestic opponents are squeezing him from all sides. The prime minister is accused of being petrified of peace on the one hand and shy when it comes to security on the other. But maybe that’s what Israelis want: a leader cautious on peace and security – it would explain why Netanyahu polls higher than any of his would-be successors to the right and left. As Israelis struggled to find a Hebrew equivalent for the rooster reference, last Friday, an editorial cartoon in Ha’aretz placed a smirking Bibi in the pilot’s seat of a plane set to crash into one of the World Trade Center towers. Whatever Israelis think about Netanyahu, most agreed that wasn’t a suitable translation.

And what about Canada? Where do we fit in this drama? It’s hard to believe Canadians would hear that sort of cock-a-doodle-do(o) from our governing party – these days, you probably wouldn’t hear it from the opposition, either. That speaks to the current relationship between Canada and Israel, which is as good as it’s ever been. Last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was greeted affectionately when he debuted new tax cuts at the Schwartz-Reisman Jewish community centre just north of Toronto. Perhaps Harper might next encourage his two good friends, Netanyahu and Obama, to search for some common ground. That would be an appropriate role for Canada to play here.

Back in Jerusalem, tension is mounting after the attempted murder of Yehuda Glick, a rabbi-lobbyist in favour of greater access to the Temple Mount for Jews. Israeli police killed his assailant, a veteran Islamic Jihad member, during a subsequent shootout in east Jerusalem. In a letter to the deceased’s family, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas described him as a “martyr, defending the rights of our people and its holy places” and denounced the “vicious assassination crime committed by the terrorists of the Israeli occupation army.” Sometimes there are simply no words to describe the essence of a man. Not even chickenshit.  — YONI