Ran Baratz, the man who has been appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his top media adviser, once referred to US Secretary of State John Kerry as someone "whose mental age doesn't exceed 12."
In a column that he wrote for an online media magazine last year, Baratz offered a scathing critique of Kerry's suggestion that the emergence of Islamic radicalism in the Middle East could be traced to the lingering Israel-Palestine conflict.
During remarks at a White House ceremony for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha last year, Kerry implied that the strife resulting from the decades-long dispute between Israel and the Palestinians has harbored an environment prone to fostering extremism. |