THERE WAS never any chance for peace because the Palestinians have no interest in making peace with Israel. As the West's favorite Palestinian "moderate," Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview with Egypt's Dream TV on October 23, "I've said it before and I'll say it again. I will never recognize the 'Jewishness' of the State [of Israel] or a 'Jewish state.'" That is, Abbas will never make peace with Israel.

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So why do the likes of Sarkozy and Obama hate Netanyahu? Why is he "a liar?" Why don't they pour out their venom on Abbas, who really does lie to them on a regular basis? The answer is because they prefer to blame Israel rather than acknowledge that their positive assessments of the Palestinians are nothing more than fantasy.

And they are not alone. The Western preference for fantasy over reality was given explicit expression by former US president Bill Clinton in September.

SO IS OBAMA really worse than everyone else or is he just the latest in a line of US presidents who have no idea how to run an effective foreign policy? The short answer is that he is far worse than his predecessors.

A US president's maneuver room in foreign affairs is always very small. The foreign policy establishment in the Washington is entrenched and uniformly opposed to bending to the will of elected leaders. The elites in the State Department and the CIA and their cronies in academia and policy circles in Washington are also consistently unmoved by reality, which as a rule exposes their policies as ruinous.

The president has two ways to shift the ship of state. First, he can use his bully pulpit. Second, he can appoint people to key positions in the foreign policy bureaucracy.

Since entering office, Obama has used both these powers to ill effect. He has traveled across the world condemning and apologizing for US world leadership. In so doing he has convinced ally and adversary alike that he is not a credible leader; that no one can depend on US security guarantees during his watch; and that it is possible to attack the US, its allies and interests with impunity.

Obama's call for a nuclear-free world combined with his aggressive stance towards Israel's purported nuclear arsenal, his bid to disarm the US nuclear arsenal, and his ineffective response to North Korea's nuclear brinksmanship and Iran's nuclear project have served to convince nations from the Persian Gulf to South America to the Pacific Rim that they should begin developing nuclear weapons. By calling for nuclear disarmament, he has provoked the greatest wave of nuclear armament in history.

Well congratulations America. The Obama has just lined up the United States with all the third world, repressive, dictatorial countries such as Syria, Libya, Iran, and others that routinely attack Israel and America as well.

Can you imagine that?

Where once the United States was a beacon of democracy, and known for standing up for what was right, in just two years the Obama will have dragged the country down to what is probably the lowest moral point in its history.

The Obama has given notice that he will allow all these third world countries unbridled permission and US support to attack the only true, functioning democracy in the Middle East.

The Obama has said that the defense of a fellow democracy is negotiable and on the chopping block.

Obama said, "As part of the United Nations Security Council, we were very clear in condemning the acts that led to this crisis and have called for a full investigation." What does this mean? Which acts? The acts of provocation and attacks on Israeli soldiers or is he blaming Israel? Who knows? The president of the United States is not supposed to be inscrutable.

Moreover, the president of the United States shouldn't hide behind the UN. What is his policy? Where is the leadership?

And then he repeated something he has done before--claimed that Israelis backed his policy-- which is blatantly untrue as polls show. ""What we also know is that the situation in Gaza is unsustainable. I think increasingly you're seeing debates within Israel, recognizing the problems with the status quo." The truth is that Obama understands nothing about Israel. He should leave the choice of Israel's government to its people and the setting of policies to its government.

Aside from all this, Obama displays no strategic sense. He should make clear that the United States does not want an Iranian client, a revolutionary jihadists Taliban-like regime on the Mediterranean Sea. It should be the goal of U.S. policy to avoid this. Instead he deals with this as a "humanitarian" issue and makes no effort to get across what should be the main point.

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Note that Obama did not mention the conditions for easing the blockade--that Hamas abandon terrorism and accept Israel's existence--nor did he say that anything the Palestinian Authority or Hamas is doing is "unsustainable." Only Western and Israeli policy are said to be unsustainable. In effect, Obama is saying that the policies of Hamas, Iran, Hizballah, and Syria, among others, are infinitely sustainable, especially because of his reluctance to do things to make them unsustainable.

And thus in Middle East terms, he's saying: Your intransigence has won. We couldn't move you so our policy has failed. We must give in.

Israel of course is the US's most threatened ally. And Obama's treatment of Israel has been uniquely shabby--and dangerous. Guided by his ideological worldview which argues that US support for Israel is the root of the Arab and Islamic world's animus towards the US, Obama has advanced a policy of punishing Israel and wooing its worst enemies that has radically changed the Islamic power calculus. By seeking to appease Iran and Syria for their aggressive behavior and by courting an ever more radical Turkish regime, Obama has humiliated Egypt and Jordan that signed peace treaties with Israel. In so doing, he has convinced the Arabs that the only way to retain and expand their power is by attacking Israel.

THIS BRINGS US to Israel's current quandary about how to respond to the international campaign against it. Israel of course can do nothing to change the potency of Jew hatred in the Islamic world. It can also do nothing to change American behavior. For as long as Obama is president, US foreign policy can be expected to remain on its current trajectory. That is, for at least the next two and a half years, the US will continue to play a destabilizing and hostile role in the region.

What this means is that Israel should adopt a strategy that minimizes the international lynch mob's ability to get close to it and maximizes Israel's ability to knock the mob off balance.

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And as to that campaign, it is time for Israel to launch a counter-offensive. Its representatives at the UN should demand an investigation into Turkey's illegal sponsorship of the pro-Hamas flotilla. They should raise such protests at every UN forum and continue to protest until they are thrown out of the meetings and then return, the next day to relaunch their protests.

The reality is simple and stark. Israel is the target of a massive information war that is unprecedented in scale and scope. This war is being waged primarily by a massive consortium of the international Left and the Arab and Islamic worlds. The staggering scale of the forces aligned against Israel is demonstrated by two things.

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And now, in the aftermath of the lethal takeover of the flotilla, Israel's leaders stammer. Rather than demand an apology from the Turkish government for its support for these terrorists, Defense Minister Ehud Barak called his Turkish counterpart to talk over what happened. Rather than demand restitution for the terrorist assault against Israeli troops, Israel has defended its troops' moral training in non-violent crowd control.

These efforts are worse than worthless. They make Israel appear whiny rather than indignant. And more depressingly, they expose a dangerous lack of basic comprehension about what has just occurred and a concomitant inability to prepare for what will most certainly follow.
Israel is the target of a massive information war. For Israel to win this war it needs to counter its enemies' lies with the truth.

The NPT has been subverted by the very forces it was created to prevent from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization ideologically indistinguishable from al Qaida. International law requires all states and non-state actors to take active measures to defeat it.

Israel is the frontline of the free world. Its ability to defend itself and deter its foes is the single most important guarantee of international peace and security in the world. A strong Israel is also the most potent and reliable guarantor of the US's continued ability to project its power in the Middle East.

In years to come — assuming, for the purposes of argument, there are any years to come — scholars will look back at President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit and marvel. For once, the cheap comparisons with 1930s appeasement barely suffice: To be sure, in 1933, the great powers were meeting in Geneva and holding utopian arms-control talks even as Hitler was taking office in Berlin. But it's difficult to imagine Neville Chamberlain in 1938 hosting a conference on the dangers of rearmament, and inviting America, France, Brazil, Liberia, and Thailand . . . but not even mentioning Germany.

Yet that's what Obama just did: He held a nuclear gabfest in 2010, the biggest meeting of world leaders on American soil since the founding of the U.N. 65 years ago — and Iran wasn't on the agenda.

I take it personally: Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wants to murder me, my family and my people. Day in, day out, he announces the imminent demise of the "Zionist regime," by which he means Israel. And day in, day out, his scientists and technicians are advancing toward the atomic weaponry that will enable him to bring this about.

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Obama is, no doubt, well aware of this asymmetric timetable. Which makes his prohibition against an Israeli preemptive strike all the more immoral. He knows that any sanctions he manages to orchestrate will not stop the Iranians. (Indeed, Ahmadinejad last week said sanctions would only fortify Iran's resolve and consolidate its technological prowess.) Obama is effectively denying Israel the right to self-defense when it is not his, or America's, life that is on the line.

The reason why Palestinians insist that all Jews must leave their future state is because they do not recognize the legitimacy of Israel or the Jewish presence anywhere in the land. And Palestinian political culture is so steeped in violence and hatred of Jews and Israel that it is literally impossible to believe that Jews, even if they behaved like Quakers, could live in a Palestinian state.

Moreover, Ya'alon's point about the example of Gaza is telling. Removing every Jew from Gaza didn't satisfy the Palestinians there. Not only did the Palestinians burn the synagogue buildings and the tomato greenhouses left behind by the Israelis for them to use, they immediately began to use that land for launching terrorist missile attacks inside of Israel. So long as the Arabs still view the conflict as zero-sum game in which the goal is to remove or kill every Jew, territorial withdrawals won't bring peace. If the Palestinian vision of peace — even the vision articulated by so-called moderates like Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas — is predicated on ridding the land of Jews rather than embracing coexistence, then there will be no peace.

(Via Israel Matzav)

While Israel has obviously made some serious gaffes since Obama entered office, the real cause for this nadir in Washington-Jerusalem relations is the fact that Barack Obama seems to have little comprehension of the region on which he seeks to impose peace. The president's ignorance of the world in which he is operating is apparent on at least three levels. He seems unaware of how profoundly troubled Israelis are by his indiscriminate use of the word "settlement," he appears to have little comprehension of the history of Palestinian recalcitrance, and he has apparently learned little from decades of American involvement in the Middle East peace process.

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Does Obama really not understand that this conflict has a long and consistent history? The Arabs rejected the UN Partition Plan in 1947, and refused a treaty at the end of Israel's War of Independence in 1949. After their defeat in June 1967, they gathered in Khartoum and declared "no peace, no recognition and no negotiations." Arafat said "no" at Camp David in 2000, and Abbas continues in that tradition. Why the American administration cannot or will not acknowledge that is one of the great wonders of this most recent train wreck.

Note: this comes from a regular commentator on Israel-related happenings who I consider to be very much on the more moderate side.

I consider the Obama administration's recent actions against the Israeli government to be outrageous and a breach of trust. I refer to the denunciations by Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other administration officials The world knows what happened; nevertheless, I will try to put it into context.

By Ed Koch (who in the past had been quote the Obama supporter).

Why has US President Barak Obama decided to foment a crisis in US relations with Israel?

Some commentators have claimed that it is Israel's fault. As they tell it, the news that Israel has not banned Jewish construction in Jerusalem - after repeatedly refusing to ban such construction -- drove Obama into a fit of uncontrolled rage from which he has yet to recover.

While popular, this claim makes no sense.

In orchestrating fierce attacks by Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton against Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama allowed his long-held anti-Likud animosity to blind him to basic political and diplomatic realities about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. As if Mideast diplomacy doesn't face enough hurdles, Obama has made things worse.

An online acquaintance recently posted a link on Facebook to an article Myths And Facts On U.S.-Israel Diplomatic Row. In it, the anonymous author seeks to state for the record what the myths and facts are regarding the recent diplomatic tension between Israel and the US. I responded that I think that it is laughable how this purported "fact check" gets the facts wrong and instead tries to put its own agenda-driven spin on the situation. Here is my take on their facts:

(Claimed) Fact 1: Tensions Started When Israel Announced Construction Of More Settlements In East Jerusalem.

My Response: Israel announced approval for plans to build 1600 apartment buildings in a Jerusalem neighborhood called Ramat Shlomo.

Ramat Shlomo is located in North Jerusalem, not East Jerusalem. See the image to the right. People like to refer to all areas of Jerusalem that are located outside of the 1967 border ("the green line") as East Jerusalem. To do this as a rule is misleading. It implies that Israel is building in the middle of some completely Arab neighborhood, located in the Eastern part of the city (the section that the Palestinians would like to be their eventual capital). As you can see, Ramat Shlomo does not fit that description. It is a religious neighborhood, 100% Jewish that currently has 20,000 residents.

Israel announced that apartment buildings would be built. They did not announce that settlements would be built. Around here (ie: in Israel) and to anyone at all familiar with the region, a settlement is a Jewish town or collection of houses that is located in Judea and Samaria, outside of the 1967 borders, outside of Jerusalem. Think: Bet El, Kochav haShachar, Ariel, Efrat. Neighborhoods of Jerusalem are not normally referred to as settlements. (Even the Peace Now website makes a distinction between Jerusalem and Settlements on their policy pages).

Tensions did not start with Israel's announcement. They started with Biden's and Clinton's (i.e.: Obama's) reactions to Israel's announcement. These Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem (Ramat Shlomo, Ramot, Gilo, Pisgat Zeev, Neve Yaakov, Talpiot Mizrach - almost all of the sections of Jerusalem in purple on the map to the left - population over 200,000) were never on the negotiating table. It is not as if Israel has been promising these areas to the Palestinians and then did something brazen like this. Even the building freeze that Israel voluntarily agreed to (receiving nothing in return) was only for settlements in Judea and Samaria. See Leo Rennert in the American Thinker:

Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood of orthodox Jews in northeastern Jerusalem, is exactly the kind of place that all previous U.S. peace proposals envisaged as remaining under Israeli sovereignty. Construction of Ramat Shlomo began in 1993 (it now is home to 2,200 families with a population of 16,000) -- seven years before Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak offered Arafat their Jerusalem plan for a final peace deal -- with Israel retaining all Jewish neighborhoods, including Ramat Shlomo, while Arab neighborhoods would be folded into a Palestinian state.

This didn't have to be an issue, and Israel's announcement didn't have to cause such a brouhaha. It was not but a few months ago when Hillary praised Netanyahu for making the "unprecedented" of freezing building on Settlements outside of Jerusalem. Based on that, there was no reason for Israel to suspect that building in Ramat Shlomo would touch a nerve - the US knew that Israel would still build in Jerusalem, and had even given Israel praise for this. In this case, Obama was looking for something to cast Israel (and especially Netanyahu) in a bad light. This was the target of opportunity. (Note how the US had nothing negative to say about the Palestinians planning the dedication of a square in Ramallah in memory of a terrorist who murdered 38 Israelis).

For those who don't know much about the area, saying that Israel announced construction of more settlements in East Jerusalem sounds much more inflammatory. I offer the following correction: "Tensions Started When Biden Reacted to Israel's Announcement of Approval for 1,600 New Housing Units in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish Neighborhood in North Jerusalem located outside of the 1967 borders".

(Claimed Fact 2): Israel Prime Minister Himself Says The Expansion Of Settlements In East Jerusalem Will Continue. Negating the supposed myth that "Decision To Expand Settlements Is A Bureaucratic Misunderstanding".

See above note related to the distinction between settlements and Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. And even if you want to claim that anything in Jerusalem outside of the 1967 borders should be called a "Jewish Settlement" in "East Jerusalem", this is not an accurate quote of Netanyahu.

The article claimed that the decision to "expand settlements" approve apartments was a bureaucratic misunderstanding. This is not an accurate statement (why they are quoting Sen. Lieberman is beyond me). The timing of the announcement was a bureaucratic misunderstanding (probably). But the actual content of the decision was in line with Israel's policy for the past 40 years of allowing people to build in Jerusalem. No misunderstanding there.

(Claimed) Fact 3: The Ongoing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Endangers Our National Security

The claim here is that because the Arabs are upset at Israel, and the US is viewed as being allies of Israel, the longer the Israeli-Palestinian conflict goes on, the worse off it will be for America.

Following this logic, the US should invade Israel, destroy its government and turn it over to the Arabs. All of the Arab/Muslim states in the region hate Israel and want to see it destroyed. This is not going to change any time soon. Using this statement as a reason to put pressure on Israel is tantamount to saying that "the existence of Israel Endangers Our National Security". Since the conflict looks like it is going to continue for just that long.

To quote a favorite blog on the subject: "This is why Generals are supposed to stay out of politics. What did Petraeus think the Arabs would say if he asked them the question? They will be satisfied with nothing short of the end of the Jewish state. And why did Petraeus repeat what the Arabs said at face value without trying to analyze it? Sorry, but Israel is not going to roll over and die because the Arabs are unhappy with us."

The interchange quoted between Biden and Netanyahu didn't happen. Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic: "Since I do not have overwhelming faith in the stenographic and interpretive skills of some Israeli reporters, I called the White House to ask if Biden actually said this. It would be quite something, of course, if he did. I spoke with a senior administration official last night who accompanied Biden on his trip to Israel, and he said that Biden did not say tell the Israelis that their actions were endangering American troops."

Update: Not only did Biden never say those things. Neither did Patraeus (!!)

The basic reality that the US is being led by a radical ideologue who clings to his views in the face of overwhelming proof of their falsity is the most fundamental fact that world leaders must reckon with today as they formulate policies to contend with the Obama administration. This is first and foremost the case for Israel.

Since the Netanyahu government took office three months ago, the Obama administration has placed inordinate pressure on Jerusalem in a bid to coerce it into making massive concessions to the Palestinians. These concessions are demanded not for peace, but simply for the sake of placing pressure on Israel. Obama wishes to pressure Israel to show his good intentions to the Arabs and Iran.

TO DATE, Obama's loudest demand has been to officially prohibit all Jewish construction in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Although the demand is intrinsically bigoted, illegal and immoral, and although the consequences of the expulsion of all Jews from Gaza in 2005 show that Israeli land giveaways and ethnic cleansing bring war not peace, the Netanyahu government has opted not to get into an open confrontation with the administration on the issue.

Instead, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his government have sought to treat Obama's offensive as a routine disagreement between otherwise close allies. Rather than defending the principles of Jewish national, legal and human rights and the country's right to security, Netanyahu has sought to reach an accommodation with Obama by reducing the discussion to a conversation about the inevitable natural growth of Jewish communities due to expanding families.

But what Obama's slavish devotion to his radical world view shows is that Netanyahu's decision to seek an accommodation is not simply an exercise in futility, it is a recipe for disaster. Obama and his advisers do not care that Jewish fertility rates are the fastest rising in the world. They do not care that by arguing for a complete halt in "natural" growth, they are effectively adopting a eugenics argument the likes of which no US policy-maker has dared to advance since before the Holocaust. They are looking to fight because they believe that the US is best served by fighting with its allies - particularly with Israel. Any concession Netanyahu makes will just form the basis for the next round of demands.

To recap, take a Holocaust-denying president who has advocated genocide and the elimination of the Jewish state, a government hell-bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, said government's brutal repression of its own people, and the subsequent "re-election" of the aforementioned maniac, and what do you get? A call from Obama to isolate this regime? An urgent campaign to impose harsh sanctions? Immediate support for the destruction of their nuclear sites before it's too late? No. Obama's focus is delivering Israel to the same Islamic audience he stroked in Cairo.

Obama has called settlements "illegitimate." And he has said that Israel "has obligations under the road map," while referring disparagingly to "settlements that, in past agreements, have been categorized as illegal."

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By characterizing its demand that Israel prohibit Jews from building homes in Israel's capital city and its heartland as a legal requirement, the Obama administration portrays Israel as an international outlaw.

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The problem with the Obama administration's characterization of a ban on Jewish building in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria as an Israeli legal obligation is that Israel has never taken upon itself a legal obligation to prohibit such building activities. Israel has never signed an agreement that has characterized any Jewish communities as "illegal."

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More importantly perhaps from the Obama administration's perspective is that the road map itself lacks the force of international law. Although it was adopted by the Security Council, it was not adopted as an internationally binding document under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Consequently, Israel has no international legal obligation to end Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria or Jerusalem.

Obama said in Sderot that he would not tolerate rocket attacks that endangered his own daughters. If Samir Kuntar's beating-death victim had been Malia or Sascha Obama, rather than 4-year-old Einat Haran, and Abbas celebrated the killing, would Obama treat Abbas as a moderate peacemaker and negotiate with him? We all know the answer.

Immediately after being sworn in as president, Obama gave Abbas the unique honor of calling him before any other world leader, yet promises to "hunt down and kill" Osama bin Laden. Why the dramatic double standard? The apparent answer is that terrorists get a free pass-not to mention billions in US taxpayer dollars-when their targets are Jewish. Is there any other explanation?

Leaving aside for the moment the malice towards Israel that is involved, the attitude of the Obama administration towards the Middle East is well-nigh incomprehensible in its suicidal stupidity. It is trying to make Israel play the role of Czechoslovakia in 1938, when Britain under Neville Chamberlain told it that if it didn't submit to the Nazis it would stand alone – with the result that the following year, Hitler invaded Poland. Determined to prove that history repeats itself the second time as tragedy, America is trying to force Israel to destroy its security by accepting the creation of a terrorist Iranistan on its doorstep, under the threat that otherwise the US will not help protect its security by defanging Iran (and how, precisely would it do that?). But in doing so, the Obama administration is jeopardising the security of America itself and the free world, not to mention the Arab states which have good reason to fear Iranian regional hegemony.

The overall Obama policy will be to push Israel to the brink, using financial and military blackmail against the Netanyahu government, while maintaining control over American Jews to prevent any protests or backtalk.

The more Israel will offer, the more the Obama Administration will tighten the screws. No offer will be good enough, and Israel will be blamed for every breakdown in talks and every bit of violence that takes place. The media will portray Israel and particularly Netanyahu as extremist and intransigent. Hamas will be slowly whitewashed in the media, the same way that Arafat's goons were, (assuming that they prove more willing to cooperate in creating a positive media image of themselves than Ahmadinejad is.)

The plan is to destroy Israel, and to do it by pushing Israel to the edge of the cliff and then over the cliff. Israel's enemies will be getting top of the line US military equipment. Israel will not. Israel will be squeezed economically until the Netanyahu government collapses, leaving a weak left wing leader like Livni in charge of Israel, and in charge of acceding to the new Pharaoh's demands.

Meanwhile so-called American Jewish groups will support Obama all the way, some because they were created precisely for that purpose, e.g. J-Street, and others because they have been hijacked, cowed or subverted.

Will the United States sell out its strongest ally in the Middle East to cozy up to its worst enemy? The Washington Times reports today that the Israeli government is increasingly worried that the Obama administration will break a 40-year understanding between Washington and Tel Aviv to keep Israel's clandestine nuclear program a secret.

The core tenets of the Obama Doctrine to date would make a charter member of the Weather Underground cheer:

We're to blame. If there are problems anywhere, they're America's fault. This central conviction of leftist ideology appears to have soaked so thoroughly into our president's consciousness during his lengthy friendships with extremists that it's now second nature to him.

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Islamist terrorism doesn't exist. The term's even been banned from government departments. As Muslim extremists slaughter innocent victims by the thousands, we're assured Islam's a "religion of peace" that contributed profoundly to our country's development. (Huh?)

It's as if 9/11 never happened. The "nonterrorists" drenching the greater Middle East in blood and threatening us as loudly as they can are just victims of our aggression. It's all our fault.

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Israel's the obstacle to Middle East peace. Palestinians are all victims. Hamas consists of struggling community activists. The terrorists are in the Israeli military.

Our nukes threaten world peace and we need to get rid of them. Other states only maintain or seek nuclear arsenals because we worry them. If we can get down to zero nukes, peace will reign on earth.

As the Arabs line up behind Israel, the Obama administration is operating under the delusion that the Iranians will be convinced to give up their nuclear program if Israel destroys its communities in Judea and Samaria.

According to reports published last week in Yediot Aharonot and Haaretz, President Barack Obama's in-house post-Zionist, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, told an American Jewish leader that for Israel to receive the administration's support for preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, it must not only say that it supports establishing a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza, it must begin expelling its citizens from their homes and communities in Judea and Samaria to prove its good faith.

With just months separating Iran from either joining the nuclear club or from being barred entry to the clubhouse, the Obama administration's apparent obsession with Judea and Samaria tells us that unlike Israel and the Arab world, its Middle East policies are based on a willful denial of reality.

Oy, oy and more oy.

But now, as the first leg of the World Apology TourTM has come to its end and Obama must once again endure the tedium of the White House, I thought I'd take up the torch and deliver a few apologies that Obama seems to have forgotten. In the spirit of leftists everywhere, I offer the following:

• I'm sorry, Israel, that our president has seen fit to throw the oldest and most stable democracy in the Middle East under the bus. From his first call as president to Mahmoud Abbas to his funding of millions to Gaza victims, to his New Year's video address to Iran to his reaching out to the Taliban to cut a deal - not to mention his willingness to adopt the Saudi "peace" plan, Barack Obama has made it clear that the fate of a nation the size of New Jersey, surrounded by enemies that want to drive her people into the sea, is no longer a top priority. So much for standing up for the little guy.

In tandem, there was scant paid attention to a disquieting comment by Obama when he spoke effusively about a 2002 Saudi peace initiative for normalization of relations between the Arab world and Israel. The Saudi initiative, which would end Israel as a Jewish state, is now also the official position of the entire Arab League.

In a brief press statement, the White House said "the President reiterated his appreciation for Saudi Arabia's leadership in promoting the Arab peace initiative."

Later, President Obama's Middle East Special Envoy, George Mitchell, said the U.S. intends to "incorporate" the initiative into its Middle East policy

That stops short of an explicit endorsement of the Saudi-Arab plan, but it comes uncomfortably close. Either way, Obama's gushing over the Saudi initiative hardly can be reconciled with his oft-repeated assurances that Israel can count on U.S "unwavering support" of its basic security interests.

From what I have been able to observe so far, one of the main strengths of Barack Hussein Obama is his ambiguity: he does not appear to take many hard , controversial positions, and is thus able to cater to a large number of voters by slightly changing his language based on the group that he is addressing (while avoiding the "mistake" of committing himself to any one position that may upset someone).

One of the big issues where this is in play is Obama's attitude towards Israel. Traditionally, Jews vote Democrat, and because they vote in high percentages and have high numbers in swing states, the Jewish vote is important. For many Jews, the first and only issue in a presidential election is the candidate's attitude towards Israel and the "peace process". Because of his traditionally ambiguous positions, it is not very clear where he stands on many Israel-related issues. After soundly defeated by Hillary in Florida (big Jewish vote), the Obama campaign is on the war-path, trying to define his Israel position in a way that will be pleasing to Jewish voters.

In a recent post on Israel Matzav, blogger "Carl from Jerusalem" provides links to a couple of sources that show how the Obama campaign is trying very hard to win over the Jewish vote, and to a number of other sources that highlight why while Obama can talk the talk, when it comes to Israel, do not count on him to be such a good friend. If you would like to learn more about the subject, I encourage you to check out the link and the cited sources and analysis. For those who want a quick sneak preview:

Ed Lasky, American Thinker: Obama Speaks Before AIPAC

Although the Senator finds Hezb'allah violence against Israel worthy of being condemned he seems to ignore acts of Palestinian terrorism (merely talking of Palestinian "extremists" instead). He criticized Hezb'allah rocket attacks from Lebanon, but not Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza. He notes the destruction of homes by Hezb'allah but not the destruction of lives from Palestinian suicide bombings. He condemns Holocaust denial by Iran but is silent about Palestinian indoctrination of hatred among its children.

The double standard is chilling and disquieting. The remedy of more "jaw-jaw" and the near futility of sanctions (particularly when Iran is protected by strong commercial relations with various nations) are equally unsettling.

Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada: How Barack Obama Learned to Love Israel

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." [Yikes!]

Debbie Schlussel

When Obama first ran for the U.S. Senate, he gave militant responses to the Chicago Jewish News about Israel. Obama denounced Israel's fence--which he called a "wall" and "barrier to peace"--to keep out terrorists and favored working with Yasser Arafat. When members of the Chicago Jewish community circulated his responses, Obama said that the answers were not his positions, but the work of a low-level intern. He submitted new answers. But that was a lie, the insider says. In fact, they were the work of Obama's Policy Director, Audra Wilson. Moreover, Obama told the insider that he blamed the Mideast conflict on the Jews:

Barack told me that he felt that Jewish community was too inflexible, and that was why the situation in the Mideast could not be resolved.

This is the man who says in a new campaign ad that Hillary Clinton will say anything but change nothing. Barack Obama will say anything, but change his answers.

Check out Israel Matzav for more links and analysis.

Although I never thought that I would say it, right now I think that Hillary is the Democratic candidate who is the best for Israel. Obama's shadow positions just scare me. He seems to be saying just enough so that he will not scare away Jewish voters, but once in power, I am afraid that his true colors, and those of his advisers, will come out, to the detriment of the Jewish State.