If anyone needs a reminder of how dire Israel’s diplomatic situation has become and how bereft our public discourse is of serious ideas for how to address it, they need only read Dr. Michael Oren’s article, “An Appropriate Diplomatic Response” (12/15) in Yedioth Ahronoth. (For the sake of transparency, Oren served as Israel’s ambassador to Washington while I was the consul general in Boston. We are friends, even though we strongly disagree on what constitutes effective diplomacy.)

In the article, Oren calls on Israel to “avenge” itself against the Netherlands due to its public broadcaster’s decision not to participate in Eurovision alongside Israel. His proposed response is to downgrade Israel’s diplomatic representation in the Netherlands – a country that for many years was one of Israel’s closest allies – from an embassy to a consulate. “If our prime minister cannot visit The Hague, senior Dutch ministers will not be able to visit us,” Oren writes, with considerable pathos.

This argument ignores the uncomfortable reality that the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC)........

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