The President of the United States is generally regarded as the most powerful man in the world, and so people pay close attention to what he says and does. When it comes to the State of Israel and Jews, President Obama’s words and actions have always reeked of disdain. This is a fact not lost on anti-Semites. During Obama’s presidency anti-Semites have become more vocal, aggressive and murderous, to the point where their views -- often occulted as “anti-Zionism” -- have largely become the worldwide accepted norm. While Obama is not entirely to blame for this phenomenon, his role in the rise of anti-Semitic attitudes, actions and ideas cannot be gainsaid by any thoughtful objective observer.

Acts and incidents of open anti-Semitism have grown at a frightening pace worldwide, yet led by Obama, most of the media and political class focus their attention on supposed “Islamophobia”. When Islamic terrorists attack Jews and Christians, which they do with increasing frequency and viciousness, these actions don’t provoke concern for the victims, but rather consternation over encouraging anti-Muslim sentiments. It is anti-Semitism (and an increasing hostility to Christians) that is on the rise. Yet to listen to President Obama, ever mindful of the most minor slight against Islam, one would never know. 

Worldwide anti-Semitic activity, sometimes parades under the banner of anti-Zionism, but for the most part it is just plain anti-Jewish prejudice. Anti-Semites are rapidly coming out of hiding because the international environment is conducive to them, and the elected leader of the world’s foremost nation is enabling their actions, if not tacitly encouraging them. 

Beyond Islamist apologetics, Obama does this in many ways.  He is not shy demonstrating both his dislike and disrespect of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And while this is usually dismissed by Obama’s defenders as a matter of political orientation, it’s pretty odd that out of nearly two hundred nations on earth, Obama’s least favorite foreign leader, and effective nemesis, is the leader of the Jewish one.

Obama applies double standards to Israel that his own State Department maintains is evidence of anti-Semitic sentiment. Israeli military actions against the murderous Hamas regime in Gaza have been conducted with a scrupulous care unknown in the annals of modern war, a fact acknowledged by the American military. Yet Obama’s White House consistently criticizes Israel for inflicting civilian casualties, and at one point in the most recent Gaza fighting cut off arms supplies to the Jewish state. This is not a standard Obama applies to any other nation (witness the lack of concern over heavy Saudi Arabian bombings in Yemen) to include the American military (which also despite extensive efforts to avoid civilian losses also occasionally unintentionally causes them.)

After Islamist terrorists murdered four Jews at a kosher supermarket in Paris, Obama pointedly refused to acknowledge the victims as Jews in his comments on the terror outrage. He also refused to attend an international gathering by world leaders in Paris in the wake of the attacks there, which would have required him to join Netanyahu in a show of solidarity against Islamist terror. 

Most critically, Obama has relentlessly pushed the United States into a de facto alliance with Iran, and paved the way for that radical theocratic Muslim nation to obtain nuclear weapons, despite the fact that the Iranian regime has repeatedly sworn to destroy Israel.  Obama brushes off these promises as political exaggeration for domestic consumption, though of course theocrat dictators have no need of this. But when Netanyahu’s recent electioneering raised some eyebrows, Obama did not brush it off at all, but took every word at face value, calling it “divisive rhetoric” -- this from a politician who rarely concerns himself with rhetorical restraint.

Again and again, either Obama or his functionaries slight Israel, or soft-pedal the rising anti-Semitic threat to world Jewry, or completely ignore it.

I don’t know for a fact that Obama is an anti-Semite, but his history and actions suggest it, and this is not lost on the rest of the world. It’s strains credulity that a man could spend twenty years in Jeramiah Wright’s pews without harboring or developing anti-Semitic attitudes. Obama’s defenders note that Jews overwhelmingly supported him in recent elections, and still continue to do so, at least by a bare majority. But this is a red herring. Most Jews, solidly Democrat and liberal, would have supported the first serious African-American presidential candidate as long as he was not a raving anti-Semite (which Obama is not.)  Obama said the right things to mollify Jewish doubts and encourage Jewish delusions, though he probably privately distains this foolish Jewish support, thus further encouraging his own prejudices. 

As Obama approaches his last year in office his “tells” show on many matters, his view of Jews among them. And as the saying goes, it takes one to know one.  Anti-Semites think they know Obama and act accordingly.   

For a long time the world’s anti-Semites hid their agendas under the rubric of “justified criticism of Israel”, or more boldly “anti-Zionism”, or more boldly still “Zionism is racism”, with the feckless United Nations lending a veneer of respectability to the notion. But at least the United States used its veto to prevent this prejudice from becoming international law. Now Obama and his minions are making it increasingly clear, through threats and taunts directed at Israel, that this American policy will change. 

Leaving aside Israel, which continues to be unjustly hammered in world forums (most recently by FIFA over the soccer World Cup) acts of “pure” anti-Semitism are hard to keep up with. In Europe, Jews are being gunned down, and regularly attacked on the streets, so much so that they are emigrating or giving up their faith. It is not just young Muslims either. In Sweden a Centre Party minister wondered aloud why Jews had so much power. Leaders are more open in their sentiments elsewhere. In Argentina a Jewish prosecutor investigating the 1994 Iranian bombing of the Buenos Aries Jewish Center was likely murdered, and Argentine President Cristina Kirchner (who Obama describes as a “great friend” is blaming a Jewish conspiracy.)  Another one of Obama’s best friends, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, presides over a virtual anti-Semitic carnival. A new Jewish conspiracy film Mastermind takes its title from one of Erdogan’s speeches, no surprise in a nation where anti-Semitism is by far the most common prejudice espoused by the government monitored Turkish media. This trend is not only foreign. In America, especially in among Obama’s leftist supporters in academia, anti-Semitism is running rampant, with Jewish college students the primary victims.

Of course, Obama is only a part of the problem. But he is an important part of this rising anti-Semitic tide. So long as the perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts, at home and abroad, believe that they are on the right side of history, and that the man who leads the most powerful country in the world is in their corner, they will be encouraged. It appears the President is okay with that.