Though the 29 December Philip Gordon NYT article attempts objectivity, it is incorrect in its sweeping assumptions that "the world" sides with Obama on key points, even on the wisdom of the Iran deal, as well as the assumed condemnation of "the world" of the "settlements" and the U.S. moving its embassy to Jerusalem.

Hey: The New York Times has deposited so much silt onto both Trump's win and the alleged negatives of Israel and our alliance with her that it could rival China for establishing new geopolitical islands in the withersphere.  It could set up cannon and missile emplacements on the cold new real estate of vitriol versus the good guys.

Gordon gets wrong, though he ought not, after 15 years have passed and the correction has been made (umpteen plus five times) that Ariel Sharon's accompanied trek to our holiest site (they always mention the Islamic name for the Temple Mount, though it is way down at third, and from my travels, really, it is fourth, or lower) "began the intifada," when the stubbly Arafat, he of the never clean face, admitted that the intifada was planned long before General Sharon walked on the Mount.

The article also extrapolates forward from what was and what is to an unknowable future in regard to how the world will react to any Trumpian initiatives with Israel and Iran.  As the election result showed, the pundits are often wholly out of step with ground reality.  The media, New York Times emphatically among the claque, are also first among the obtuse prime runners in the wrong direction – even should they recalculate midstream, when it is evident they got it 100% off, and "apologize" uselessly after such feeble efforts to pretend to be objective news sources.

Trump may sway the world opinion back to a pro-American stance (how novel! how refreshingly bracing).  Outgoing President Obama has done the opposite in eight fraught years, where friendship with the U.S. meant zero guarantee of reciprocal obligations and where enemy states were accorded endless cordialities, compared to the back-of-the-boot froideur given friends and allies.  If that is the case, and Trump wins hearts overseas and the better regard of heads of state above and below the meridians, then his changes and efforts may reap rewards and a rebalancing of the sordid status quo under this galactic aloof outgoer.

Should the rebalancing occur, the old order of presumed condemnation and automatic knee-jerk iciness toward Israel may melt.

Further, if current opinion poll swells surge toward leaving the U.N. and instituting a new world body without the entrenched Arab lobby auto-hate, then the neutral nations and those being bullied now by the bigger boys of the corruptocratic U.N. now would be freer to yield their support to Israel.

Besides, Trump is a funner guy and has been rich for his entire life, so cozying up to Donald has bigger dividends personally than trying to pierce the tectonic arrogant cool of the departing chief executive.  Donald has planes and boats at his disposal outside job perquisites.  And he's just more...personable, with a bonded bevy of interesting familial backups.

In fact, given Israel's undisputed magnanimity in helping nations in catastrophe or crisis – in health urgencies or in earthquakes and hurricanes, war residue, and the like – there is every reason to expect these nations finally to vote their recoveries, often largely due to the kindness of U.S. and Israeli help and sustenance.  Unlike the Arab states, who coolly turn their djellabiyas away from their brothers, Israel is often first in field hospital and ample emergency resupply to nations far bigger and richer.

And apart from the frosty assessments of the N.Y. Times article, one has heard too many times from the cold shoulder side that Obama has been kinder to Israel than any prior administrations.  On what evidence?  The kitchen-door reception of Prime Minister Netanyahu on his debut visit to the new president?  The so-called $38-billion "foreign aid" to Israel package?  That is a ten-year deal.  That is also, at $3.8 billion per year, not that much more, over the years, than has been accorded Israel by prior presidents – especially allowing for cost creep and inflation, which work on an international as well as local and national levels.

The talking heads forget or deliberately omit mention that those monies are for projects and military/munitions development in the United States.  That money goes toward not inconsiderable military and civilian company hiring and R&D.  The money is ploughed annually back into our GDP, and it strengthens our workforce's hold on vital strategic, socioeconomic, and municipal industry.  It isn't, like "gifts" of foreign aid to Slovenia or limping African dictatorships, gone with the wind the moment it is bequeathed to the hungry silk-lined pockets of those countries addicted to enriching their elites while ignoring their peoples.

Thus, back to the Philip Gordon piece: the tetchy crits leveled at Trump in a roundabout way by praising the lackadaisical "achievements" and foreign policy choices of the departing 44 are not all that valid.  The glass is more than 50% empty, Mr. Gordon, where Obama and the dinosaur media are concerned.

The pendulum has begun to swing back, finally, from its far-far-left berth in the grandpa clock.  Mr. Netanyahu may indeed begin to breathe without that CPAP of agita he's had to wear since 2009 and the child-king began his awkward and seemingly failed pronouncements and meddling.  P.M. Bibi, and our Israel, may not at all miss the scrawny guy with an outsized ego unmatched by any achievements, a still cloudy past, and a golf-filled future.