Among American Jews, a degree of buyers’ remorse has been detected recently.
Almost 80 per cent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama as President. Those of us who warned that this man would endanger Israel were scorned.
How could that possibly be, said the secular, liberal American Jews. He’s a Democrat, he’s black and he’s pro-abortion. With this triple-lock of unassailable virtue, how can he be bad for Israel? Now some of them are getting an awful feeling that they may have made the biggest misjudgment of their lives.
As the world watched events unfold in Iran, Obama’s double standard over Israel was illuminated in flashing neon lights. How come he’s saying it is wrong for him to tell the Iranians what to do, people asked themselves, when he is dictating to Israel its policy on settlements?
Why was he so concerned not to antagonise the Iranian regime? Was it because he hopes to reach a Grand Bargain which would allow Iran to develop nuclear capability, provided it promises him ever so nicely it would never turn this into weapons — in exchange for which, Israel would be offered up on a plate?
For the past six months, while Obama has been holding out the hand of friendship to Iran, he has been showing Israel a mailed fist.
Why, people asked themselves, was he singling out Iran’s putative victim for the heavy treatment while soft-soaping Tehran? Why had he torn up the Road Map which requires the Palestinians to dismantle their infrastructure of terror before anything else can happen, telling Israel instead that its stubbornness over the settlements was the main impediment to a Palestinian state?
Why didn’t he acknowledge the blindingly obvious — that the Palestinians’ continuing, explicit refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state was the fatal impediment?
And then there was the Cairo shocker of a speech. Even the American Jews could not ignore this. Obama stated falsely that the Jews’ aspiration for a homeland was rooted in the Holocaust and their tragic history. Airbrushing out both the Jews 3,500-year connection to their ancient homeland and the central place of Jerusalem within the religion, he thus effectively denied that Jews are in Israel as of right.
Sanitising Islam through false claims about its historic achievements and selective and misleading quotation from the Koran, he declared that it was part of his responsibility to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.
Why? Did this mean therefore that he would fight against any condemnation of the theologically based Jew-hatred pouring out of the Islamic world, not least in Egypt where he was making this speech? Did he not have a similar responsibility to fight against the negative stereotypes of Jews or Zionists that are inciting terrorism, war and genocide in the Muslim world?
Through the use of a Koranic reference, he also subtly implied that Jerusalem would become Muslim while stating that it should be home equally to Christians, Muslims and Jews. And he referred to the region as being where Islam was first revealed. This was a revealing word to choose, implying acknowledgement of divine revelation. Revealed is the language of a believer.
None of this proves Obama is really a Muslim. But it does all suggest that America has a pro-Islamist President. Doubtless as a result of his constant sniping at Israel, the percentage of American voters who say they support Israel has plummeted, according to the Israel Project, from 69 per cent last September to 49 per cent this month.
The US and Israel could be heading for the greatest disagreement between the two countries in the history of their relationship, as Middle East expert Robert Satloff recently told Newsweek.
Even now, though, despite the outbreak of buyers’ remorse, most American Jews still don’t realise what they have done — and probably never will.
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist
