"Lately we [in Israel] are flooded with friends. The 'Great of the Earth', past and present, come here to flatter us, to fawn on us, to grovel at our feet... They disgust me. Let's take for example the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Her pandering was free of any criticism and she reached new heights of obsequiousness in her speech to the Knesset....

Before that we were visited by John McCain's mentor, the evangelical pastor John Hagee... Oozing sanctimonious flattery from every pore, he forbade us, in the name of (his) God, to give up even one inch of the Holy Land and commanded us to fight to the last drop of (our) blood.

However, not one of them has come close to George Bush. Approaching the end of the most disastrous presidency in the annals of the Republic, he really forced a lighted match into the hand of our government, encouraging it to ignite the barrel of gunpowder between our feet." -- Uri Avnery