There are 3 scenarios that can play out...

1) Israel can continue to take a hard line, do nothing and the killings on both sides will continue

2) Israel can attack the Palestinians.  But judging by the IDF's recent incursion into South Lebanon chances for success against a non-traditional force is slim.

3) Israel can re-open negotiations with the Palestinians.

Of course I think choice #3 is the only option.  But the Israeli's view of foreign policy is the same as the Bush Administration's...any negotiations/concessions are a sign of weakness and therefore are unacceptable. 

Some of the Palestinian demands/concessions sought from Israel are intended for Israel to say "no".  Not even close to all the blame for the current situation should be pinned on Israel.  But at some point the amount of casualties will reach an unacceptable level and something will need to be done.  When does Israel reach that tipping point?  How many have to die?

So the people living in Israel have no say in this?  The course change, if and when it happens, will be mandated by the Israeli people and nobody else.  If they find the situation, i.e. the rocket attacks/terrorist bombings, tenable then nothing will happen...

Guess what, Libertine. The international community
has a say in situations which threaten the whole world. The United States has a say when it provides more aid to Israel, by far, than to any other country in the world.
No one is asking Israel to sacrifice its own security. But the "world" certainly has a say when it comes to ending an occupation which is considered illegal by the entire world and under international law.
It is the occupation that is the threat.

No disagreement on the the world community's vested interested to get the Palestinian/Israeli situation resolved.  And the occupation is one of the main issues that must be resolved.

There has been progress in fits and starts.  Camp David, Olso, etc.  But everytime there is progress the people on the Arab side who don't want to see the process go forward try to derail it.  Then the hawks on the Israeli side, who prefer no negotiated solution also, say there can be no peace.

Does there need to be more world pressure for a negotiated settlement?  Yep.  But the bottom line is internal pressure needs to be brought to bear on the Israeli government to move the process forward.  And to do that the meme, which says that anyone in favor of negotiations wants to see Israel cease to exist, needs to have a stake driven through it's heart.  At least that is the way I see it...

France, Spain and Italy are to be commended for at least caring enough to want to suggest something. Contrast them to everyone else in the world who just wishes there would be a news blackout from that part of the world, or that both sides would emigrate en masse to Boca Raton and Detroit, respectively, and leave the entire region as an International Park.

Seriously, people can only handle so much hopelessness. Eventually we all reach a point where we have to block out remedy-less horror or risk losing our sanity. If I were Israeli or Palestinian, that's what I would be most anxious about. G-D knows, even American Jews don't want to talk seriously about the future of Israel/Palestine these days, and I have to think that this is because, deep down inside, we all realize there is no future over there.

I've got this fantasy, Mr. Rosenberg, of the Israeli public being persuaded by people like you to start reflecting on the kind of peace they might ideally like to achieve with the Palestinians some day. Wouldn't they like to hopefully arrive at a point where they no longer have to fear the plots and plans of bitter Palestinian males? Wouldn't they like to some day see smiles on the faces of their Palestinian neighbors? Wouldn't they like to feel the warmth of Good Will radiating from the hearts of the Palestinian people?

If that’s what they want, then they are going to have to try a much different approach from the Tough Guy approach their right wing leaders have pushed for the past six decades. It just hasn’t worked. There is no peace and there is no prospect of peace. Only endless conflict. But might there not be a better way? Some new, fresh approach to negotiations? There is. It's called Extreme Generosity.

The only way it's going to be possible for the Palestinian people to ‘let go’ of all the bitterness and resentment they feel now and start having positive feelings of friendliness for the Israelis is if they are able to walk away from the negotiations table feeling as though they had won a tremendous victory. They need to end up with a settlement that is so incredibly generous, and so filled with face-saving Israeli [and American] concessions, they won’t be able to contain their joy at their good fortune. They need to feel as though they have won a great victory and their Muslim sympathizers around the world need to see that the Palestinians are delighted with their good fortune.

What the Israeli people need to understand is that this is the kind of Peace Settlement they are going to want the Palestinians to end up with because it is the only kind of settlement that is going to give them (the Israelis) the Lasting Peace—-the freedom from fear—-that they truly want. They need to change the hearts of the Palestinians with something dramatic. The Israelis will know that they have finally achieved true peace when they start seeing smiles on the faces of the Palestinian people, smiles that reflect authentic feelings of gratitude and friendliness toward them.

The Israeli people may feel as though their founding fathers achieved a great thing when they resurrected the state of Israel from the dustbin of history, but they really haven’t achieved a thing, yet. How about impressing the world with a dramatic and historically unprecedented move to change the deeply resentful feelings that your current enemies have toward you? How about giving the children of Israel a future that is cleansed of their fear of annihilation?

Agree to a compensation package that overwhelms the Palestinians with its generosity. Give them [virtually] everything they’ve been demanding for the past forty years plus a little bit more. Pre-1967 borders. Jerusalem becomes either an international city, or a multi-capital city. If it becomes supremely important to Israeli negotiators to turn some of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank into Israeli land, then the Palestinians must be given twice as much pre-1967 Israeli land in compensation. The way to win the good will of the Palestinian people is by shocking them with your 'new leaf' commitment to astounding generosity.

The Israelis need to get over the urge to get best deal they can by bargaining "tough" with the Palestinians and threatening them with more pain if they don’t give the Israelis the things that they want. Instead, they need to stun the world with an amazing display of good will and a generous spirit. On top of all the territorial concessions, throw in a huge amount of cash at the Palestinians. Make them feel as though they had all just "won the lottery." Would $30,000 per family be enough? $50,000? Pour an equally generous amount of money into the construction of new businesses, industries, and modern infrastructure in the new Palestine.

Where would all the money for this come from? Well, if we were to take all the money that Israel and the United States are now spending on their Wars on Terror and then solicit big contributions from Europe, Japan, China, and the rich Arab states, it should not be difficult to put together a pot of around $500 billion, which should be more than enough to overwhelm the Palestinian people and instill within them a feeling of great pride and satisfaction. They would finally have Peace With Honor.

What will the Israeli people get for the high price they might ultimately have to pay? Only their "Right to Exist" from the only people who can legitimately grant them that right, the people who used to own the land before Israel’s founding fathers took it from them at gunpoint. Yes, the Palestinians will be willing to grant the Israelis the right to inhabit and rule the land they once owned, but only if they feel as though they have been handsomely compensated for it.

What do you think, sir?

(There's one more thing that would guarantee the success of this approach, but it's too much to go into here now...)

The myriad of arguments against negotiations can be pared to two:

a) negotiations are totally unnecessary, Israel does well without them, thank you very much

b) negotiations are futile, Israel is doomed.

I was a bit shocked when after lengthy discussion with a proponent of a) my interlocutor finished "moreover, b)".

The first real problem with negotiations is that to give them any meaning, Israel would have to make some immediate concessions that could weaken her security. If anything bad happens afterwards that can be attributed to those concessions, responsible polititians have a "Horton". It is much safer to keep the status quo and if anything bad happens, it is the fault of Palestinians. I think about concessions like relaxing the siege of Gaza, e.g. by allowing Gaza to import/export by sea and air, with customs in the hands of, say, NATO or neutrals like Swiss and Switzerland.

The second kind of concessions would be freezing the settlements and dismantling those that are illegal according to Israeli definitions. (Can any friend of Israel explain a non-ugly rationale for keeping those?) The risk is that of getting assasinated, and at the very least having huge riots with violent militants.

Israel in short term has an excellant security situation and Israeli politicians can "painlessly" avoid
those troubles. In the long term, they seem to believe that Iran is a mortally dangerous enemy, and if it is true, Israel is doomed.

I would think that there is no natural love between Syria and Iran, except that Syria is pushed into a corner with Iranian support being the only option to survive. A peace with Palestinians and Syria would remove any reasons for Syrians to be subservient to Iran. Otherwise FUBAR in Iraq creates nasty possibility of contiguous aliance from Strait of Hormuz to Golan and Litani.

I admit that this is quite hypothetical danger, and it is hard to believe that it could happen next year. Although, I would be much less sanguine about two-three years. If USA withdraws from Iraq, lock stock and barrel, the chances are at least 50%. So we will be withdrawing gradually etc. But this creates the second, even more pernitious danger for Israel: the war in Iraq is increasingly pointless (from the point of view of American interests) and unpopular, and if it is an integral part of our support to Israel, the popularity of the latter may suffer too.

The good news is that Israel recognizes the danger and the government created a special cabinet level position to make plans how to deal with it. By the way, is the man chosen for this position (Avigdor Lieberman) up to the task?

Commenting only on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

Yes , it's surely true that the Isrealis fear  any negotiated settlement stands a good chance of making them less secure. And , that fear's probably justified.

So doesn't it follow from that for any settlement discussions to even begin , much less for them to succeed , any Isreal leader will have to be offered something else that will cause him to think Isreal will be at least as secure as the status quo ?

Hoping that some future Isreal leader will just decide to take a greater risk isn't going to work. In his place , would you ? So what could that something else be ? Is that worth discussing ?

Arabs are killing people every day in Darfur so what do people like you do: babble on with nonsense over the lack of a Israeli leadership that will make concessions to Hamas.

Bush does not live in the real world vis-a-vis Iraq. You don't live in the real world vis-a-vis
Gaza/West Bank.

When Israel unilaterally gave up the Gaza, land which they captured from Egypt in 1967, to the Palistinians, what did they get in return?

They got nothing but hell from their own people who they forced to clear out of the area, and they got what every common sense Israeli politician had warned about: they gave the Palistinians control of an area from which they could freely attack them in the ongoing effort to remove them from the "occupied territories."

Mr. Rosenberg, you and I both know that to every Arab living in the Middle-East the "occupied territories" are NOT simply the land captured by Israel as a result of victory in the 5 major Arab wars waged against them. Every Arab leader, whether he openly admits it or not, considers every single square inch of Israeli territory, even that which was legally partitioned to them by the United Nations, as "occupied territory!" And the Palistinians, along with their terrorist leaders and their Syrian, Iranian, and many other less vocal Arab neighbors, will never rest until Israel is removed from the region.

Those more vocal Arab leaders that continuously put out public calls for the murder of all Israelis, like Iranian President Ahmadinejad or Hamas leader Nasrallah who publically calls for the death of Jews all over the earth, are obvious threats to Israel. But even the "so-called" moderate Palistinian leaders have made it abundantly clear that their ultimate goal is to gain control of the entire region either through violent armed conflict or by negotiating the "right of return" so they can take over by democratic means. But make no mistake, there is absolutely no negotiations that will ever suit them that does not include gaining full control of Palistine and/or the annihilation of all Jews in the middle-East!

Why would anybody willing to face the reality of that truth demand that Israel negotiate anything, anywhere, anytime with such single minded, persistant enemies?

If that’s what they want, then they are going to have to try a much different approach from the Tough Guy approach their right wing leaders have pushed for the past six decades. It just hasn’t worked. There is no peace and there is no prospect of peace. Only endless conflict. But might there not be a better way? Some new, fresh approach to negotiations? There is. It's called Extreme Generosity.

I spent a year studying in Jerusalem in 1971. While I was there the Israeli government has just finished a multi-year $70 million (US) project building Mosques all over the nation which not only included places of worship for Muslims, but also adjacent community centers and social service centers. This was the most "Extreme" form of generosity I had ever seen in my life, especially since these facilities were serving people who had built up a military force 10 times more powerful than Israel's just four years earlier and threatened to wipe them off the map!

Unfortunately, to show the mindset of Arab Muslims, they refused to use any of those facilities and within six months nearly all of those Mosques and community centers had been bombed or burned to the ground. Since that time I have never criticized Israel for those occasions when they have refused negotiating with people who think in such a hateful and spiteful way.

And P.S. the statement that Israel has had "right-wing' leaders for over six decades is ludacris. For decades Israeli labour governments were considered extremely leftist. When I was in college in the 1960's many of my friends wrote their masters thesis papers on the kibbitzum in Israel which were considered by many as the closest thing to true Marxist Communism ever realized! The socialist governments of Europe swooned over Israel in those days, it is only in the last 15-20 years that the conservative Likud Party has taken control and dominated politics in Israel. Read a history book before you make assumptions that Israeli politics has always been right-wing!

I don't find it at all surprising that the Arab Muslims you refer to were spiteful in the face of an anomalous act of "extreme generosity." From their perspective, the 'kindness' of the Israeli initiative would be quite suspect, given that it is offered to people who feel as though they are living in prison. If someone were to invade your home and take your property and then build a little shrine for you as an act of "extreme generosity", I suspect you would also find it difficult to feel some real gratitude toward your persecutors.

I didn't use the term "right wing" to comment on the economic policy objectives of all Israeli leaders past. I used it only to characterize Israel's national behavior with respect to the Eagerness to Use Military Force spectrum. On the right wing of this spectrum, you will find Bush and Adolph Hitler. I am sorry that this confused you.

Some real classic posts here today from the "All Arabs want all Jews Dead" crowd.

You're right. It's the Iranians who are working on that project the most diligently at the moment, and Persians are not Arabs.

Most Israelis and Palestinians would rather live.

Palestinians have a damned funny way of showing it by blowing themselves up so regularly, then.

Here's an "airtight" (unintentionally revealing choice of words there) question for you: how did a people come to expect to have more than nothing when they routinely sabotage the economy they're dependent on, when they've taught their neighbors to fear each of them, down to children and pregnant women, as killers? Why do they expect anything but to be shunned? Why do they believe anyone has an obligation to help them yet they have no obligation to help themselves?

When the hell do they have to bloody well GROW UP? Maybe when the international community stops bailing them out. We have blame for their situation but not in the way you imagine-- it is because we have apologized for every barbarism they've committed, we've prevented them from facing the consequences of their own acts, and so like any spoiled child they just grow worse and worse.

That was a conservative message, yes, but not in the caricatured way you imagine.

Palestinians have a damned funny way of showing it by blowing themselves up so regularly

Regularly ?

How often between Oslo and Sept 28 2000 when Sharon visited the Temple Mount? My guess is 0 .

Which is one less than the number of times during that interval that an Israeli assassinated the prime minister or entered a mosque and killed dozens of worshippers .

Yes , it's surely true that the Isrealis fear any negotiated settlement stands a good chance of making them less secure. And , that fear's probably justified.

Less secure than what? The reality of the situation without a negotiated settlement, or a fantasy of what the situation will be without a negotiated settlement, "once victory is achieved"?

Is Isreal less secure from attack by Egypt now than they were before Camp David?

By contrast, is Israel more secure after hobbling the Fatah administration and helping to get Hamas elected? Is Israel more secure after the invasion of Lebanon that fueled the growth in power of Hezbollah?

Hamas suicide bomber, Hadera, April 13, 1994. 5 killed.

Hamas suicide bomber on bus, Tel Aviv, October 19, 1994. 22 killed.

Islamic Jihad suicide bomber at Netzarim Junction, November 11, 1994. 6 killed.

Islamic Jihad suicide bomber, Beid Lit Junction, January 22, 1995. 21 killed.

and many more, regularly, each and every year to 2003.

P.S. And a special thanks to Aaronl for the 1 rating. Please review the site rules against ideologically-motivated downrating:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/faq/karma
http://www.tpmcafe.com/node/6288

"That was a conservative message, yes, but not in the caricatured way you imagine."
...................
A message which happens to be right on target. Liberals simply refuse to hold the arabs responsible for their own actions.

Oh, and just for the record, there were a number of terrorist attacks between Oslo and Sharon's Temple Mount visit.

It was not the left that withdrew from Gaza, although they thought it was wise. It was Sharon, who hoped it would take pressure off the West Bank settlements, perhaps. Palestinians also figured that was the point, and weren't all that thrilled to get the booby prize of Gaza if it made the West Bank less likely to ever return to them.

Let's start over--a country is surrounded by people that dispute its legitimacy and feel dispossessed. How to deal with that? Either cut a deal they will accept or kill them all, otherwise expect continued harrassing attacks.

Make your choice.

"Either cut a deal they will accept or kill them all, otherwise expect continued harrassing attacks.

Make your choice."

OK, Mr. Wright, unless the Palestinians and Lebanese agree that Hamas and Hezbollah must be exterminated, we will indeed kill them all.

And neither Bush, nor Obama nor Feingold nor Murtha nor anybody else in D.C. is going to do a fucking thing about it. So let's start by destroying Hamas and Hezbollah, then Israel will be as forthcoming as Begin was with Sadat.

He said that all you have to do is ask the status quo supporters, "So, how is your solution doing?"

There are basically two different reasons to be skeptical of negotiations with the Palestinians:

First, there is the notion that negotiations involving concessions from Israel right now is rewarding Palestinians for being barbarians.  Over the past five years, over countless suicide bombings, assaults on Israelis and various and sundry other terrorist acts, the Palestinians have shown that they are either not interested in peace or, if they are, too weak to rein in those that are not.  Either behavior is disgusting, depraved and unworthy of a civilized response.  Offering concessions in the face of such behavior is simply telling the Palestinians that terrorism works.  This is the lesson that they clearly drew in both Lebanon and Gaza, where attacks on Israel came after Israeli territorial withdrawal.

But you could argue, as many do, that lots of conflicts end by having the two sides talk even after many depraved acts of terror.  If peace is possible, why hold things up because of some notion of rewarding bad behavior.  This argument might hold some water if - and here's the rub - there was actually any chance that negotiations would lead to peace.  But it is hard to see how peace is possible even if absolutely everything went right during the negotiations.  How would the rejectionists in Hamas and elsewhere respond to a treaty with Israel signed by the Mahmoud Abbas?  Who would enforce the obligations of the Palestinians when the people controlling the government ministries responsible for that enforcement are utterly opposed to peace?  How would it work, Mr. Rosenberg?  The answer of course, is that it wouldn't work.  There is no conceivable scenario under which the Palestinians government could deliver peace under a treaty signed with Israel. Not with Hamas in power. Actually, that would be true even if Hamas were not in power.  And evern that assumes a treaty gets signed.  But the stumbling block to such a treaty would not be, as is often supposed, Israeli intransigence over the West Bank settlements. Rather, it would be the Palestinian inability to tell the descendants of the 1948 refugees that they need to abandon their dream of returning to Israel.  And there is no evidence that the Palestinians Authority is capable of such a sales pitch.

So far from being "airtight", the case for negotiations (or, more accurately, the case for pressuring Israel to offer concessions) is full of holes. 

But still, the charge has to be answered, "How's the status quo working out?"  The answer, of course, is not very well.  Israel is the victim of constant terrorism, yet has lost (or squandered, if you like) the international sympathy it is due.  Its international standing is low, and it does not have peace.  I think people on all sides of this issue can agree that this is the case and that it is a lamentable state of affairs.

But just because the situation is bad does not necessarily mean that there is a ready-made solution there for the taking.  Sometimes, the wisdom is in realizing that some problems don't have an immediate solution.  It may be - and I suspect it is the case - that there is nothing Israel or anyone can do that is politically feasible that could solve the problem.  It may be that a certain low-level warfare with occasional flare-ups is Israel's fate for the forseeable future.  Now MJ Rosenberg would say that is simply unacceptable and that it endangers Israel's survival for the problem to remain unsolved.  Perhaps this is true. But that doesn't change the essential fact that there is no immediate solution.  There are lots of ills around the world that are "unacceptable".  But we can't do anything about many of them. As MJ Rosenberg says, Israel is not currently threatened in an existential way by the Palestinians.

It may be that some unknown, unforseeable factor will shift the dynamic of this conflict and make a solution more realistic.  The peace in Ireland is a good example of how this can happen.  It was the maturation of the Irish government, turning it into a viable partner for peace, combined with the global revulsion against terrorism after 9/11 that undermined and isolated the IRA, that enabled a realistic peace process to proceed. We thought that a similar dynamic had happened with the Palestinians in the 1990's with the Oslo process, but it turned out to be a false dawn.  Perhaps, like in Ireland, it requires a former supporter of "armed resistance" to recant that support the way the Irish government did. Maybe if Saudi Arabia or Syria or any of the other Arab countries currently egging on the Palestinians withheld that support then the dynamic would be different. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen.

J. McCutchen

The myriad of arguments against negotiations can be pared to two:

a) negotiations are totally unnecessary, Israel does well without them, thank you very much

b) negotiations are futile, Israel is doomed.

Hail Piotr the Parsimonious!

a) looked better before the Lallapalooza in the Levant

Less secure than what?

Than they would be if they kept the status quo.

Jews ought to have the right to visit.

Yes. But

"I can think of a lot of bad ideas , but I can't think of a worse one".

Dennis Ross.

J. McCutchen

I would like to see liberals be true to their supposed progressive values and start demanding muslims become tolerant of others instead of consistently giving them a free pass.

Meme alert.

Surely the Muslims are ingrates more than anything. After all, they've a surfeit of those "free passes". And don't pretend that the animus isn't returned tenfold.

Such has been Israel's policy since the early 20th century. This is the vaunted "deterrence" which destroyed Lebanon, emboldened Israel's adversaries, and shook its vaunted military to the core.

How well has this worked out thus far?

global revulsion against terrorism after 9/11 that undermined and isolated the IRA, that enabled a realistic peace process to proceed

The Good Friday Agreement was long before 9/11. I can understand that you might find it impossible to keep track of that long process .  I had family living in London when the IRA were regularly bombing British pubs. Which I found terrifying  but which did not cause me to conclude that the Brits should not negotiate with the IRA. Or the Paisleyites , for that matter.

One way to keep the chronology straight is to think of Clinton's impeachment  at which Peter King was almost the only republican to vote no .

Clinton's assignment of George Mitchell to live with the problem for years , was the key to its success not 9/11 .And both his and Clinton's willingness  to continue  talking  to both sides despite the horrible things that both sides continually did.

The impassioned rhetoric that fills this thread  is completely understandable but at the end of the day Palestinians and Jews are just  human beings. . Neither specially good nor specially evil . Just normal . But like Germans , under Hitler, or us under Bush capable  of behaving well or horribly depending on  their leaders .

Prick a jew ( palestinian ) , doth he not bleed ?  

J. McCutchen

Anything the Europeans have in mind will screw over Israel

Depends in the first instance on how you answer two questions:

1) How have Israel's policies worked out?
2) Why is it that of all the nations on the planet only the US "won't screw Israel"?

But they can't have the status quo, its not one of the options on offer. Trying to do so will also lead to a future that is relatively less secure than at present.

BruceMcF,

By contrast, is Israel more secure after hobbling the Fatah administration and helping to get Hamas elected?

Funny.  I thought the election of Hamas was due to the corruption of Fatah.  When did we change the narrative?

I'm well aware of the chronology in Ireland and I did not say that the Good Friday Agreement ended all terrorism. If you recall, the Omagh bombing came in response to the Good Friday Agreement.

But there can be no doubt that after 9/11, support for IRA terrorism dropped dramatically, especially among its American supporters and financiers. It was the crucial final nail in the coffin of the IRA's resistance to a path of peaceful negotiation.

My point stands: for decades the Irish troubles were listed alongside the Arab-Israeli conflict as one of the world's most intractable conflicts. But the dynamic changed and eventually the problem became more manageable. It might happen with the Palestinians, but at this stage it's hard to see how.

Wasn't that easy this summer. Any Israeli government must maintain the good will of the mostly distracted and easily distractable American public, and selecting the "kill them all" option is going to undermine that. Which is a second layer of self-defeating dynamic added to the core self-defeating dynamic of where that strategy drives the region.

I have every right to rate posts "1" when they are unproductive. I am sorry that your post was not a productive contribution to the discussion, but ultimately that is your fault and not mine.

And dare I note - now you're trolling.

flavius,

There’s a certain irony in Isreal’s thus  paying Germsny  the implied compliment of reproducing in the Middle East their concept that in its extreme manifestation gave us Lidice, Oradour , and- later- Nurenburg .

Perhaps we can back it up to Sherman's tactic to "make Georgia howl."

Arthur Dent,

So how's your solution going?

It is an asinine question.  If negotiations hadn't already been tried, then why do you think Hamas is putting up such fierce resistance to abiding by previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements?  And how did those previous agreements for Hamas to reject get there to begin with?

Perhaps we can back it up to Sherman's tactic to "make Georgia howl."

Actually , no. Sherman did not actively seek an excuse to attack civilians , Clausewitz did .His aim was to use civilian casualties to encourage their government to surrender. If ,unfortunately ,those civilians instead greeted the germans with flowers he  agreed they shouldn't be gratuitously attacked . But hoped they'd provide an excuse .

This was a recurring German tactic in every war with recurring lack of success. Immediately after crossing into Belgium in 1914 General von Bulow ordered  placards to be prominently displayed announcing that he had personally ordered the town of Andenne to be burned to the ashes and had 110 persons shot. After which there followed a succession of atrocities still recorded on monuments in small belgian towns..

Naturally this approach stimulated resistance rather than reducing it.  As in WW2 . And was counter productive in other ways. For example on Aug 1 1914 US public opinion was resolutely neutral. On Aug 31 it had become anti German .