Will Obama Punish Israel for Re-electing Netanyahu?

Politico reports on the Obama administration’s reaction to yesterday’s election results in Israel. The Obama administration is fuming, as you might expect. Still, this is deeply ironic: Israel has re-elected a leader who is pro-American, who shares our values, who is popular with the American people–more popular, in fact, than our own president–and our administration is outraged. This is the upside-down Age of Obama. To be pro-American is now bad, apparently.

So how might Obama retaliate against Israel for re-electing a pro-American government?

In the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decisive re-election, the Obama administration is revisiting longtime assumptions about America’s role as a shield for Israel against international pressure.

Angered by Netanyahu’s hard-line platform towards the Palestinians, top Obama officials would not rule out the possibility of a change in American posture at the United Nations, where the U.S. has historically fended off resolutions hostile to Israel.

Nice country you have here. Shame if something were to happen to it.

It’s interesting, though: what, exactly, are Netanyahu’s “hard-line” policies? Allowing the construction of houses for Jews in East Jerusalem? The horror! Not ceding control over historic Israel, Judea and Samaria, to fanatics devoted to killing all Jews and Christians in the Middle East? Given what is now going on in the region, just a few miles away, does anyone seriously think this is a bad idea?

On Monday, Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., said he expected Netanyahu to “retract” a campaign statement he made ruling out the possibility of a Palestinian state during his tenure as prime minister. But the senior Obama official said that the administration believes the prime minister meant what he said because Netanyahu made multiple comments during the closing days of his campaign as he appealed to conservative voters.

At no time in history has there ever been a “Palestine.” Should there be one now? Does it makes sense for Israel to resist the foundation of a terrorist Islamic state in Judea and Samaria, the heart of Biblical Israel? One might think so.

The administration’s critique goes on and on, as you will see if you follow the link. The bottom line is that we now have, in the United States, an administration that is friendly to the Islamic extremists in Iran who consider us to be the “Great Satan,” who hang homosexuals from cranes, who torture and kill those who want democracy, who have ICBMs and eagerly seek nuclear weapons with which to attack us and our allies. All of that is fine with the Obama administration, apparently. But the administration is bitterly hostile to the only actual democracy in the Middle East–the one place in the region where women in burkas can vote.

Does this make any sense? Seemingly not. But over the next year and a half, watch for Barack Obama to try to punish Israel for electing Benjamin Netanyahu, contrary to his wishes. In the Age of Obama, logic takes a back seat to ego.

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