Speaking of Israel...

[Tellos Athenaios]

and that state has frankly become an embarrassment to the West.

More seriously, it has frankly become an embarrassment to plenty of its own citizens.

To the west it is a liability with a severe case of psychopathy at best, and a little hellhole actively competing for "most insidous caste system based on ethnicity and religious fundamentalism" at worst.

Case in point: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...851982465.html

The sooner we disentangle ourselves from this entirely, the better. Who knows, it might even give us the opportunity to formulate a sane strategy towards the Middle East that gets us something in return.