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Into my inbox last week popped an email from Michelle Obama. "Thank you for an amazing week… Can you chip in $5 or more to stand with Barack today?"
For some reason, I have been on the Obama campaign mailing list for the past four years, which is a hoot since, from the get-go, I have warned about Obama's extremist, Black-Power, Israel-hating background and circle, and that he would be a disaster for Israel and the west.
So it has proved. Yet astoundingly there are Jews who believe he has been the most Israel-friendly US president in history.
Which only goes to show the propensity of the liberal mind to outright hallucination when faced with the implosion of its shibboleths. The passion for Israel in the Bible-believing "red states" guarantees a level of support that not even the most virulent White House anti-Zionist could overturn.
But that doesn't mean a president can't undermine Israel by more circuitous means - as Obama has done. He has put Israel at grievous risk by his view of the world, which has neutralised America's power abroad and strengthened its enemies. Although we are told he wants to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, his limp dealings have allowed it to continue inexorably with its nuclear programme (despite reports of sabotage) and extend its power in the region.
He has put Israel at grievous risk by his view of the world
Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refused to issue a "red line" threat of ultimate force on the grounds that "negotiations are the best approach". But as Bibi protested in the row with Obama that boiled over this week, that allows Iran a clear run to the bomb. By the time the US decides Iran has to be forcibly stopped, it will be too late. It will already have the bomb.
Second, the Obama administration has consistently distanced America from Israel and cosied up instead to its Arab and Muslim attackers. Thus it backed the 2010 nuclear non-proliferation summit that singled out Israel for condemnation while excluding Iran from criticism - and has worked behind the scenes to neutralise Israel's nuclear deterrent, its ultimate defence against genocide.
It went ahead with a special operations exercise with 19 Arab and Muslim countries, while excluding Israel from a counter-terrorism conference at Turkey's insistence.
Last July, it invited the UN Commissioner for Human Rights and notorious Israel- critic Navi Pillay to "brief" the Security Council on Israel's supposed crimes - and in the process drew an effective moral equivalence between the behaviour of Israel and Syria.
Obama tried to bounce Israel into withdrawing to its 1949 "Auschwitz borders", pressured it over settlement building, which merely hardened Palestinian rejectionism, and failed to hold Mahmoud Abbas responsible for repeatedly declaring he would never accept Israel as a Jewish state.
Meanwhile, last week's Democratic convention descended into farce when its panicky attempt to restore references deleted from the party's programme to God, and to Jerusalem as Israel's capital, was booed.
Whether they were booing God, Jerusalem or the clearly out-of-order chairman is irrelevant. There was not even a two-thirds majority to put both back into that Obama-centric programme - which still left out the party's previous rejection of Hamas, the Palestinian demand for unlimited immigration to Israel and any return to the 1949 borders.
This is a shocking way to treat an ally. When that ally is facing existential attack, it is unspeakable. Obama is a menace to the security of Israel and the west and an American tragedy. What is astounding is that so many Jews refuse to see this and continue to support both him and his morally bankrupt Democratic Party. That is the Jewish tragedy.
Melanie Phillips is a Daily Mail columnist
