Over a Barrel

President Barack Hussein Obama has Israel by the short hairs in regard to the Iranian nuclear threat. With Iran showing her true face of brutality with the suppression of protesters after Ahmadinejad was assisted by the ruling Mullahs in stealing the elections, Obama is still convinced he can sit down and reason with the Iranian ruling fanatics. Israel, which has always been the seeker of peace since its modern rebirth in 1948 and often has been the sole seeker with all her Arab neighbors determined to drive the Jews into the sea, is being cast by the rest of the world as the obstacle to peace because of the so-called settlement enterprise. Even the US now casts Israel as the troublemaker, insisting the Jewish state must cease construction even in East Jerusalem. The President himself undercut Israel's just over 3000 year claim to her ancient capital, by suggesting the Jewish state's creation was a consequence of the world attempting to atone for the Holocaust rather than the perpetuation of continuous Jewish habitation on the land since Biblical times (interrupted only in Hebron's case by the notorious 1929 Arab massacre of the community's Jews; in East Jerusalem, the Jewish Quarter was only lost in battle with Jordan in 1948 and held by the Hashemites until Jewish liberation in 1967). Yet Obama sees Israel as just so much more colonialism, like many Marxist professors, Obama apprehends the Jewish state as an imposed Western imperialism to assuage Shoah guilt. Obama, who professed Christianity during his Presidential bid, does not seem to have cracked open a Bible to discover what so many evangelicals hold dear, that the Jewish connection to the Holy Land is ancient, ordained by the Lord, and that those who bless Israel will be blessed. The most troubling aspect of Obama's policy for lovers of Zion is the artificial linkage between Israel ceasing all "settlement activity including natural growth" and the US administration's willingness to attempt to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions. I believe America depite protestations to the contrary will countenance Iranian atomic weapons, will restrain Israel from her own defense, and will turn the screws to extort Israeli territorial concessions, promising help on the Iranian threat in exchange, but in the end, not only not using American might to thwart Iran, but actively stopping Israel from doing so. Obama is trying to force Israel into one existential threat before she is allowed to confront another. Unfortunately, Barack Obama is proving to be the kind of seductive pretender the Bible warns about, and he has turned his attention to making construction by Jews as the cause of continued hostility in the Middle East without consideration as to whether there is a Palestinian interlocutor who can deliver peace.