Over the course of the past week, tensions between the U.S. and Israeli governments have intensified. That began after Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed last week when the Israel government announced an expansion of 1,600 settlements in East Jerusalem while he was visiting the nation.
Last Friday, Secretary Hillary Clinton expressed "dismay and disappointment" with the Israeli government.
today, relations sunk further when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's brother-in-law Hagai Ben-Artzi, in a radio interview on Wednesday, described President Obama as an anti-Semite (Netanyahu said he "utterly rejected" such comments).
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2010.