The Obama administration has now engaged in veiled threats against Israel.

Secretary of State Kerry stated on Feb. 1 – in Munich, of all places – that if Israel failed to resolve its dispute with the Palestinian Arabs by Passover, “there is talk of boycotts and other kinds of things” (New York Post, Benny Avni, 2/6/14, p. 27). The “other kinds of things” might include new Palestinian violence, based on his statement last November.

As Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz has stated that such talk is “unacceptable… Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a gun to its head” while coping with issues “critical to our national interests.”

Although Kerry has since claimed that he was opposed to boycotts, the Jerusalem Post noted on Feb. 5, “Row continues over Kerry’s boycott comment and criticism of it.” Only the most naïve would believe that these statements are anything other than veiled threats.

First, if Kerry was really opposed to boycotts, he would not publicize threats, but instead would oppose them within the European Union and seek to nip them in the bud.

Second, we must evaluate his statements in the context of the Obama administration’s hostility to Israel: humiliating her prime minister when he visited the United States several years ago; demanding that Israel retreat to the 1949 cease-fire lines, where the border at one point is only 9 to 11 miles from the sea, with land swaps that are only “mutually agreed;” negotiating lranian nuclear deals behind Israel’s back; and, when Israel pleaded for the Senate to consider her concerns, urging the Senate not to listen to her.

Third, as Anti-Defamation League National Director Abe Foxman stated, Kerry’s boycott statements make it “more, not less, likely that the talks will not succeed,” and “more, not less, likely that boycotts will ensue.”

If Kerry really believed that his so-called “peace” framework was good for Israel and would bring her lasting peace and security, he would be arguing the merits. Instead, his use of veiled threats appears to admit impliedly that on the merits, it is unsustainable; that its provisions would constitute, in the words of Jeremiah, “broken cisterns that can hold no water;” and that its advocates will be ultimately revealed as false leaders who cry “‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 2:13, 6:14). But once an agreement is signed, it will then be too late.

David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, once wrote: “we have sinned for 2,000 years, the sin of weakness. We are weak – that is our crime” (Allis and Ronald Radosh, A Safe Haven, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel, 2009, p. 80).

The Obama administration appears to be playing to this perceived weakness. By exploiting alleged European boycott threats, it is actually aiding and abetting them, in the words of the criminal law.

Let’s hope that we’ve learned enough from history to stand up to these Obama administration tactics.

Daniel R. Schaefer, Hartford