U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday he would not let criticism of his Middle East peace efforts attributed to Israel's defense minister deter him from trying to achieve a framework Israeli-Palestinian deal.
"We just can't let one set of comments undermine that effort, and I don't intend to," Kerry told a news conference in Kuwait, where he was attending a donors' conference for Syria.
Israel's hawkish defense chief, Moshe Yaalon, was quoted by an Israeli newspaper on Tuesday as calling Kerry's efforts "messianic," and dismissing a U.S.-proposed security plan for the occupied West Bank.
Like mere words from some mortal could undermine Kerry's conviction that his purpose in life is to save the Middle East! He is the Secretary of The One, after all.
That pretty much defines a messiah complex, doesn't it?
UPDATE: If the charge isn't accurate, it is close enough for government obsession:
Evidently there is no graver offense for an ally of the United States to commit in 2014 than to describe its top diplomat as Captain Ahab without the whale – an assessment shared by a growing roster of allies, as it happens. There is, by contrast, a much higher threshold for indignities coming from avowed enemies of the United States.
Yeah, I mentioned the latter threshold difference, too.
