Martin Indyk, another failed American messiah for the Palestinian Authority, and none other than hawkish Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman unwittingly were on the same soapbox Saturday to bash Jewish Home Minister Naftali Bennett for bashing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s incredible comments linking ISIS recruitment with the failure of the “peace process.”

Lieberman’s criticism of Bennett clearly reflects the dependence of the Netanyahu administration on the United States to cast a veto against any vote in the United Nations Security Council in favor of admitting the Palestinian Authority as a full member in the General Assembly.

For the record, Kerry’s spokeswoman Marie Harf claimed that Kerry never made such a suggestion although her convoluted explanation essentially said the same thing in other terms.

But Bennett stole the limelight with his remarks Friday that were very undiplomatic and politically incorrect, if not correct from the standpoint of truth, that Kerry was “encouraging global terror.

“It turns out that even when a British Muslim decapitates a British Christian, there will always be someone to blame the Jew,” Bennett said. “There is no justifying terror, only fighting it. To say that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is strengthening the Islamic State is encouraging global terror.”

Kerry stated at a reception for Muslims Wednesday, as reported here, “As I went around and met with people in the course of our discussions … there wasn’t a leader I met with in the region who didn’t raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation that they felt – and I see a lot of heads nodding – they had to respond to.

“And people need to understand the connection of that… It has something to do with humiliation and denial and absence of dignity.”

We will leave it to the reader to figure out how Harf could claim that there was no linkage.

Israel’s Communications Minister Gilad Erdan was just as caustic as Bennett and said, “Kerry is breaking records for a lack of understanding of what is going on in our region.”

Indyk, who has joined a long list of American “experts” at the State Dept’s ever-expanding foreign policy graveyard, tweeted, “There they go again: Israeli rightist ministers attack Kerry for wanting Israeli-Palestinian peace to help fight IS.”

He supposedly was defending Kerry but his tweet actually spelled out in capital letters that the cause and effect is obvious: Israeli-Palestinian peace will help the United States fight the Islamic State.

Lieberman’s defense of Kerry was not so idiotic.

The foreign minister, who is on top of the list of those panning Kerry’s Peace Talks Follies, can fairly be presumed to have applauded in his heart every word Bennett and Erdan said, but his position as foreign minister took precedence. He clearly is worried about the reaction from Washington, which already has been reeled by several remarks this year by Israeli officials that Kerry is “messianic” and doesn’t have a clue about the Middle East.

That is absolutely untrue. Kerry knows the Middle East is located somewhere between the Atlantic Ocean and the China. He also knows that the King David Hotel is located in Jerusalem, the part that is not “occupied.”

“Let’s state some facts,” Lieberman said. “When our ammunition supplies ran out during Operation Protective Edge, it was the United States that sent us more. It was the Americans who gave us money which enabled us to develop Iron Dome. It was the US who voted with us in the UN Human Rights Council. The United States is the only country that saves us a good deal of grief in the Security Council with its veto.”

The Obama administration stopped shipping to Israel all defense items – and not just Hellfire missiles as previously reported – for a short time in the middle of the war against Hamas, reported Israel Defense’s Amir Rappaport, the well-informed and highly credibly editor of the website.

Makor Rishon added to that report that the US actually cut off all communications with Israel’s Ministry of Defense purchasing offices in the US for days.

The Defense Ministry, now realizing it cannot always depend on the Obama administration in a time of crisis, already has decided under a “veil of secrecy,” according to Israel Defense, to manufacture a highly sensitive weapon in Israel instead of buying it from the United States.

The change in policy is a major step that would wean Israel away from dependence on the United States and which also would be a significant change in the policy of buying American-made weapons with most financial assistance from the United States.

American aid to countries, including Israel, usually is conditioned on a majority of the money being poured back into the American military-industrial complex.

“The Israeli defense establishment will reduce the production of weapon systems in the USA in the context of joint Israeli-American projects, and will rely more heavily on Israeli-made products” as a result of the punitive action taken by President Barack Obama, Rappaport wrote.

President Obama said during the war he was concerned about the high number of alleged civilian casualties from the Protect Edge counter-terrorist war in Gaza, and he was quoted as having warned that he his level of tolerance was approximately 1,000 deaths.

A final analysis of the death toll showed that most of the 2,000 who were killed in Gaza were terrorists, and a large number of the civilians who were killed acted as human shields, either by their own will or by force.

However, it was not only the death toll that concerned senior officials in the Obama, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was labeled as “messianic” earlier this year by Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.

The ministry also is examining the possibility of using Israel-made precision guided air-to-surface munition to replace Hellfire missiles, a project that is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions.

The crisis with the Obama administration in the middle of the war was revealed first by The Wall Street Journal, which reported at the time that the Pentagon held up the transfer of Hellfire missiles that the IDF needed to replace weapons that had been deployed in the war.

The United States not only stopped shipping the missiles but also held up other requests for defense materials. Rappaport wrote that the “order to stop the processing of all Israeli requests came from a senior echelon – probably the White House, among other reasons, because Israel had ignored the initiatives of Secretary of State John Kerry and preferred to end the operation through a direct channel with the Egyptian.” He added that the State Dept. also had not forgotten and apparently has not forgiven Ya’alon for his “messianic” comment.

The Defense Minister, who is flying to the United States Saturday night for a five-day visit, went to extremes to paint a luvvy-duvvy picture of American-Israeli relations.

“The United States assists Israel in a variety of areas, most prominently of course in the field of security, and we must remember that and acknowledge its leaders and thank them for this,” Ya’alon said in a press release. “The respective defense establishments in both countries have a relationship whose intimacy is unprecedented in scope and importance for Israel’s security.

“There is also a close, tight relationship with my friend, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.”

He also said, “We mustn’t allow any disagreements to cast a pall over those interests and values.”

Plans for a previously announced huge construction project in eastern Jerusalem were reported on Wednesday hours before the meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama Wednesday.

The 2,610 apartment project was not officially announced but was leaked through social network media and by Peace Now.

In fact, it was announced in December 2012 and includes approximately 800 units for Arabs in the nearby neighborhood of Beit Safafa, but everyone is jumping all over themselves as if this is a new plan.

Housing construction in Israel can take years from their announcement until bulldozers go to work. However, establishment media report every bureaucratic step in building plans as if the project is something new, resulting in fictional numbers.

Whether or not the plans for new homes were posted – or re-posted -  again by the government or by Peace Now, as a Housing Ministry official suggested, the report is a clear message to Washington that the Palestinian Authority can forget about dividing the city along the old 1949-1967 borders.

The project is slated for the neighborhood of Givat HaMatos, near Gilo in southern Jerusalem.

Housing Ministry spokesman Ariel Rosenberg did not confirm or deny the new project. But Bloomberg News reported, “Rosenberg said in a phone call that Peace Now probably released the information today to embarrass Netanyahu before his meeting with President Barack Obama.”

Referring to plans to develop an area in Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, Peace Now stated, “Like the E1 plan, it divides the potential Palestinian state and blocks the possibility to connect the Palestinian neighborhoods in south Jerusalem with the future Palestinian state.”

The European Union stated, “At this delicate moment after the Gaza ceasefire, it is essential to avoid actions that may increase tensions, in particular in East Jerusalem.”

There really is not much tension. The Palestinian Authority’s openly anti-Semitic remarks this week, calling Israel genocidal and comparing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with the ISIS leaders, has reduced the entire “diplomatic process” to an illusion.

There is no tension because neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority really cares what the other side says.

President Barack Obama’s direct contact with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to devise a long-term cease-fire plan follows a long history of American and U.N. ventures that have flopped, all of them at Israel’s expense.

Egypt has been the power broker in trying to maintain a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel, and Obama is trying to put his foot in the Middle East door to reclaim American influence based by whittling down the popularity of Netanyahu.

His “poll numbers are a lot higher than mine” and “were greatly boosted by the war in Gaza,” Obama told Thomas Friedman of The New York Times last week. “And so if he doesn’t feel some internal pressure, then it’s hard to see him being able to make some very difficult compromises, including taking on the settler movement.”

It’s always the fault of the settlers. If it rains on the picnic, it is because of the settlers. If Obama’s popularity drops, it is because of the settlers who are an obstacle to his illusions.

The war against terror in Gaza has made Netanyahu even more popular. A Knesset Channel poll released this week shows that the Likud party that he heads would win almost 50 percent more seats than it now has in the Knesset if elections were held today. That translated into 28 mandates compared with 19.

Obama must be politically jealous of Netanyahu, considering the president’s dismal ratings.

Jealous or not, Obama has the habit of most previous presidents to pressure Israel, often by blocking or threatening to block military aid. That is what happened during the war, when Obama stopped the United States from shipping missiles to Israel, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Obama’s phone conversation with Netanyahu was reported as “combative,” nothing new for the two leaders who have distrusted each other during the president’s two terms of office.

The American government’s one-track mind for the “peace process” blocks out all reality, which is a lot different in the Middle East than in the United States. The Jewish Home party’s Housing Minister Ur Ariel said it in a matter of fact way on Thursday – “Americans don’t understand what is happening in the region.”

But that doesn’t stop Obama from throwing his weight around and bullying himself into Iraq, Syria and Egypt only to look like a fish out of water.

Like Carter, Clinton and even Reagan, Obama has the freedom to exploit Israel’s democracy and run roughshod over the government to “make peace” with cease-fires that make war.

That is what happened in 2012 to conclude the Pillar of Cloud campaign against Hamas terror, and that is what happened in 2009 to conclude the Operation Cast Lead campaign against terror.

That is what happened in 2006, when the United Nations and the United States brokered a cease-fire that ended the Second Lebanese War and promised the moon, whose location has not moved since. Hezbollah was supposed to be dis-armed under United Nations supervision, which is like Hamas agreeing to dis-arm under Mahmoud Abbas’ supervision.

“For proxies such as the Palestinian Sunni faction Hamas and the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, the centuries old Islamic jurisprudence of Hudna (tactical truce) and Tahadiya (temporary calm) serve as a plausibly regrouping tactic that is continuously reshaped amid the changing face of modern warfare in the Middle East,” Israel Defense noted during the war.

Enter U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, whose “peace process” and ceasefires self-destruct.

He and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon orchestrated a humanitarian cease-fire last month. It lasted for 90 minutes. At least five other cease-fires failed.

Israel Defense reported, “Following the inability to transmute any ceasefire, Hudna or Tahadiya over the last decade into encompassing political progress, the tone is that ceasefires only exasperate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the medium-to long-term. Paradoxically, it is the achievement of these bitesize ceasefires as a short term benefit that has trampled on the utility of ceasefire.”

America’s younger generation that was born long after the pro-Israel enthusiasm fallout from the Six-Day War is far less enthusiastic about Israel than the older “baby boomers” and even thinks that Israel’s war against terror in Gaza was unjustified.

Media have reported that a Gallup Poll last month showed support for Israel, but a breakdown of the survey reveals that those between ages 18 and 29 criticized Israel by a 2-1 margin, The Hill reported.

Alec Tyson, a senior researcher with Pew, told The Hill that while the findings were “significant,” it was also important not to draw too sweeping a generalization from them. “He noted that when Americans were asked whether they had more overall sympathy for Israel or the Palestinians, Israel consistently comes out on top,” The Hill wrote..

But there is a drastic change in the numbers.

Tyson explained, “Young people are more sympathetic to Israel than the Palestinians by about two-to-one, rather than by about six-to-one among the oldest Americans.”

As recently as 2006, during the Second Lebanese War against Hezbollah, Americans in 18-29 bracket blamed Hezbollah more than Israel by a lopsided 3-1 margin, according to Pew poll cited by The Washington Post.

A Pew survey last month revealed that while Americans blamed Hamas for the violence in the war by a 40-19 percent margin, a plurality of those aged 18-29 blamed Israel.

“Israel has taken a PR battering in the current war,” Tevi Troy, who served as a liaison to the Jewish community for the administration of President George W. Bush, told The Hill. “There is a lot of anti-Israel propaganda.”

The report suggested that part of the change in opinion might be related to the phenomena of social media that has made information more immediate but also more opinionated, on all parts of the political spectrum.

Gory pictures of dead Arabs plastered all over the web during the war, even if some of the bodies were “borrowed” from Syria, Iran and previous wars against Israel, have had a far more powerful impact that photos of roofs of homes in Sderot damaged by rockets or even children taking cover from  an incoming missile attack.

The Hill also noted that older American remember the Yom Kippur and Six-Day wars, in which Israel was not branded as evil by the media outside of the Arab world.

The younger generation only knows Israel as a super-power and is easily pulled into the bleeding heart camp for Arabs who are promoted by UNRWA as “refugees” even though their permanent homeless status is a result of the United Nations’ singling them out as fourth and fifth-generation Arabs as refugees, a classification that is not made for anyone else in the world.

“Still, pro-Israel figures insisted that the shift among the young was nothing to panic about — yet,” The Hill concluded, along with the assumption – and it is just an assumption – by Troy that  “over the long run, America’s interests and Israel’s interests are aligned.”

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman thanks  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Wednesday night thanked the United States’ “unequivocal support for Israel” during the discussion held yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly.

“Thanks to the concerted effort, the adoption of a binding anti-Israeli resolution was prevented,” Lieberman said in a statement from the Foreign Ministry.

He also told Kerry that Israel is prepared for any resumption of war by Hamas in light of the terrorist organization’s statement that it is not committed to the continuation of the ceasefire.

Lieberman also Israel purposely has restrained form reacting harshly to recent rabidly anti-Semitic comments by Recep Tayyip Erdogan because “Israel is not interested in an escalation with Turkey.” He reasoned that the hyperbole may be related to the upcoming election in Turkey on Sunday and that it the verbal attacks do not die down afterwards, “Israel will respond.”

FM Liberman added that Israel has so far refrained from responding to the harsh statements and accusations by Prime Minister Erdogan against Israel, and hopes that after the Turkish elections next Sunday these attacks will cease. If not, Israel will respond.”

The U.S. State Dept. said Sunday it was “appalled” by an Israeli Air Force raid on terrorists near a school run by UNRWA and that Israel must “do more to meet its own standards and avoid civilian casualties.”

Hamas sources, which for some reason remain unquestioned by foreign and even Israeli media,  reported that 10 people were killed in the targeted strike on motorcycle terrorists near the school that was used to shelter approximately 3,000 Gazans.

“The IDF targeted three…Islamic Jihad…terrorists on board a motorcycle in the vicinity of an UNRWA school in Rafah,” the IDF announced.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was “outraged” at the attack on terrorists in a civilian area, as if there is a non-civilian area in Gaza where terrorists are located, called for those responsible for the “gross violation of international humanitarian law” to be held accountable. “This madness must stop,” he said , according to a spokesperson.

The harsh comments from Washington came one day after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu slobbered praise all over President Barack Obama and  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for their statements “regarding Israel’s right to defend itself against rockets and tunnels.”

The Geneva Convention clearly states in Article 51(7) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I, “The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favor or impede military operations.”

U.S. State Dept. spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who says what she is told to say, stated Sunday, “The suspicion that militants are operating nearby does not justify strikes that put at risk the lives of so many innocent civilians.”

Suspicion?