Israeli media doesn’t have a favorable impression of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his push toward peace in the Middle East, opening one opinion page posting with this title: “Clueless U.S. mediator.”

Ynet News’ Hagai Segal’s angle: Why is Mr. Kerry trying too hard to facilitate a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, when Egypt and Syria are in utter chaos?

Even The New York Times wonders this question, Ynet said. And his work to bring about this deal is only “placing American foreign policy in a ridiculous light,” the Israeli paper opined.
“The U.S. cannot make peace between Arabs and other Arabs, yet it believes it can make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. … Is it possible that John Kerry is more talented than all the American mediators who came before him? Not at all.”

The paper goes on: “Kerry’s mediation skills are limited to pressuring Israel to make dangerous concessions for the sake of negotiations that will lead nowhere. He lacks the intellectual and diplomatic ability to devise a permanent agreement that will satisfy both sides. He is a blind proponent of an impossible vision and is his own candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

An interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of “Infidel” • “From the perspective of the Arab leaders, reaching a two-state solution is to betray God. If you want peace and not merely a process, you must make peace with the people. The negotiators themselves are of no importance.”

There is something dignified in the quiet, determined manner of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as she rises from the audience and walks towards the podium to deliver her lecture. Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s intricate history starts in Somalia, where she was born to a Muslim family. At the age of five she underwent female genital mutilation. By her teens she was a devout Muslim. In her early twenties, upon learning of plans for an undesirable arranged marriage, she made her way to Holland, where she applied for asylum. Hirsi Ali studied at Leiden University and began publishing critical articles about Islam, the condition of the Muslim woman, and so forth.