What Kerry did

Secretary of state John Kerry's valedictory speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unleashed a firestorm of criticism from the very same folks who had just finished hyperventilating over the US abstention on a Security Council resolution a few days earlier. The speech, itself, was divided into three parts. Kerry opened with an accounting of all that the Obama administration had done for Israel in the past eight years. And he closed with a list of principles he said should serve as the basis for a future Israeli-Palestinian peace. The largest part, the middle, was a passionate indictment of Israel's settlement policy in the West Bank and East Jerusalem -- the most comprehensive critique ever given by an American political leader