Caroline Glick is not given to exaggeration and hyperbole. That's why this article she recently penned is so striking. She is sounding the alarm about the Obama administration taking off its anti-Israel mask in order to fundamentally transform the relationship with the Jewish state:

Many in the American Jewish community are aghast to discover that President Obama is planning to appoint former Senator Chuck Hagel to serve as Defense Secretary. If you want the skinny on how Hagel has come to be known as one of the few ferociously anti-Israel senators in the past generation, Carl from Jerusalem at Israel Matzav provides it.

Meantime, all I can say is I don't understand how anyone can possibly be surprised. Shortly after word came out that Hagel is the frontrunner for the nomination, I read a quaint little blog post written by a conservative leaning commentator voicing her belief that Obama wouldn't want to risk his relations with Israel's supporters by appointing Hagel. But as Powerline pointed out today, this is the entire point of the nomination. Obama isn't stupid. He picks fights he thinks he can win. He hasn't always been right about those fights. He picked fights with Netanyahu thinking he could win, and he lost some of those.

But he is right to think he can win the Hagel fight. The Republican Senators aren't going to get into a fight with Obama about his DOD appointee, especially given that it's one of their fellow senators, even though many of them hate him. The Democrats are certainly not going to oppose him.

Obama wants to hurt Israel. He does not like Israel. He is appointing anti-Israel advisors and cabinet members not despite their anti-Israel positions, but because of them.

Glick points to the significance of the UN vote giving Palestine non-member status. Previously, both President Reagan and President George H.W. Bush faced a similar situation and threatened to cut off UN funding if they voted the Palestinians in. But Obama's tacit encouragement means the game has changed:

Let there be no doubt, Obama will get Hagel in at Defense. And Hagel will place Israel in his crosshairs.

The only way to foil Obama's ill intentions towards Israel even slightly is to be better at politics than he is. And he's awfully good.

Moreover, one of his strongest advantages is that Israel's supporters seem to have never gotten the memo. So here it is: Obama wants to fundamentally transform the US relationship with Israel.

He isn't playing by the old rules. He doesn't care about the so-called Israel lobby or the Jewish vote. As he sees it, to paraphrase Jim Baker, "F#&k the Jews, they voted for us anyway."

If Obama's intent is to undermine the security of Israel by siding with the Arabs (and the Muslim Brotherhood) he is virtually assuring a war in the near future. Israel still has a lot of friends in Congress, but the president and his anti-Israel cabal can still do a lot of damage.