Niccolò Machiavelli Just listen randomly to the lyrics of rap songs, and you’ll graphically understand that the age of Miss Manners—which started in this country when nineteenth-century Americans read etiquette books in imitation of their English Victorian betters—is long past. Yet there seems to be an attempt to revive the Court of Good Manners in at least one current arena: U.S.-Israeli relations. I have in mind of course the hail of criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for violating diplomatic protocol by agreeing to speak before a joint session of the U.S. Congress on the Iranian nuclear threat in response to an invitation from House Speaker Boehner who did not clear the invitation with the White House or coordinate with Congressional Democrats. Actually, for Americans and Israelis to be in a brouhaha about bad manners is a bit odd, given the existence of books titled “The Ugly American” and “The Ugly Israeli” that attest that neither country is viewed is an international mannerly paragon. In international relations, the cult of good manners goes back to the Renaissance when Baldassare Castiglioni’s “The Courtier” appeared teaching budding European nobles everything from table manners, to polite conversation, to courtly dancing, to habits of personal hygiene. President Obama, who recently lectured the National Prayer Breakfast on the historical sins of the Crusades and the Inquisition as a cautionary lesson for us “not to get on our high horse” about contemporary Islamist terrorism, may also be considering sending Netanyahu a copy of “The Courtier” as an object lesson in how not to insult another statesman. This is fine-and-good, except the real arbiter of how statesmen treat each is not Castiglione but Machiavelli’s “The Prince” which teaches that the secret is—not how to use the knife and fork—but how to stick in the stiletto. Arguably, Netanyahu is currently being skewered not for a faux pas of etiquette, but for being an incorrigible Zionist who won’t accept the emerging international consensus to accept the Islamic Republic of Iran—whose wish list includes “to wipe Israel from the map”—as a threshold nuclear weapons power.