A Turn for the Worse for Israel

By Richard N. Weltz

Israel's outlook took a turn for the worse in January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as this country's 44th president -- a situation made sharply ironic given the fact that some 74% of America's Jewish voters helped elect the man.

America, long both a closely friendly ally and a protector of the Jewish State, has drastically changed that role. President Obama has actively sought to make Israel the goat of his touchy-feely outreach to the Middle East, Islam, and Iran -- none of which attempts has worked. He has reneged on agreements made by prior administrations, including rescinding the planned and agreed-to sale of bunker-buster bombs to Israel.

More recently, Obama has bullied, humiliated, and deliberately mistreated Israel's head of government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although it was looking as though things couldn't get much worse, they just did make another turn in that direction.

Obama made some remarks at a press conference Tuesday that, as reported by the New York Times, imply that Israel is somehow to blame for deaths of American troops and that its intransigence in capitulating to Palestinian demands poses a security threat to America.

Mr. Obama said conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up "costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure" - drawing an explicit link between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American --oldiers as they battle Islamic extremism and terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"This shift," said the Times, "increases the likelihood that Mr. Obama, frustrated by the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to terms, will offer his own proposed parameters for an eventual Palestinian state."

The Obama strategy becomes clear: turn world opinion against Israel as the cause of Middle East strife, and then use that as an excuse to force an Obama-designed "solution" on the Jewish State.

The situation is so dire that Ronald Lauder, an outstanding Israel supporter and President of the World Jewish Congress has taken a full-page ad in today's editions of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal in the form of an open letter to Obama pleading with him to desist from his disastrous course.

This time, reasonable Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel can't say they didn't see the handwriting on the wall -- to which they were blind at the 2008 election.