Israel on John Kerry

[Sangersteve]

But none of those [previous] episodes . provoked the kind of outraged disbelief at Kerry's performance that has been emanating from the Israeli leadership in the past 48 hours. Leaked comments from unnamed senior government sources to Army Radio, Channel 2 and other Hebrew outlets have described the secretary as amateurish, incompetent, incapable of understanding the material he is dealing with - in short, a blithering fool.

But actually, it's worse than that. What emerges from Kerry's self-initiated ceasefire mission - Israel had already accepted the Egyptian ceasefire proposal; and nobody asked him to come out on a trip he prefaced with sneering remarks about Israel's attempted "pinpoint" strikes on Hamas terror targets - is that Jerusalem now regards him as duplicitous and dangerous.

...Whether through ineptitude, malice, or both, Kerry's intervention was not a case of America's top diplomat coming to our region to help ensure, through astute negotiation, the protection of a key ally. This was a betrayal.
-- The Times of Israel [roughly equivalent to our NYT in terms of ideology and influence]. This editorial gave the Obama administration a case of the sads.