It is comforting to believe Obama is motivated not by hostility toward Israel, but by naiveté. After all, if true, it means that as his attempts to appease the Arabs, Iran, and the Taliban are rebuffed, he will change course.

Unfortunately, two recent developments lend credence to the view that in courting the likes of Mullah Omar, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Assad and Khaled Mashal, Obama is not motivated by naiveté but by a conviction that the U.S. should abandon Israel. The first was the administration's Valentine's Day announcement that it was sending a delegation to Geneva to participate in the planning sessions preceding the UN's Durban review conference set to be convened in Geneva on Yom Hashoah in late April.

The purpose of the Durban II conference is to oversee implementation of the 2001 Durban conference's declaration. The 2001 Durban conference, it will be recalled, was an anti-Israel diplomatic pogrom where the Jewish people's right to self determination was vilified and the final declaration claimed that the Jewish state is illegitimate and racist.

The Bush administration walked out of the Durban conference and refused to participate in the related UN events that followed it. Recognizing that the Durban conference was part and parcel of the war against Israel the U.S. realized its interests lay elsewhere.

In contrast, by sending a delegation to participate in the planning session last week, the Obama administration signaled its willingness to participate in this war against Israel. During the planning session, American delegates in Geneva chose not to object to a Palestinian draft declaration that defined Israel as a racist state with no right to defend itself and that called for international protection for the Palestinians. U.S. silence enabled the draft to be adopted by unanimous consent.

The second development was the report that Obama intends to appoint former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman to serve as director of the National Intelligence Council, which charged with advising the president on intelligence matters and composing the National Intelligence Estimate.

Freeman is an outspoken opponent of Israel. He has stated repeatedly that the source of Islamic and Arab hostility toward the U.S. and violence against Americans -- including the September 11 attacks -- is the American alliance with Israel. Were the U.S. to abandon Israel - which he believes is solely to blame for the Arab world's rejection of its right to exist and for Iran's stated intention to destroy it -- then the U.S. would have no further difficulties with the Arabs or Iran.

Obama's support for Freeman, like his support for Samantha Power and Susan Rice, who largely share Freeman's view, make clear that contrary to what Obama's supporters believe, hostility toward the American alliance with Israel has played and will continue to pay a central role in determining Obama's strategies vis-à-vis the Arab and Islamic worlds. If, as Freeman has argued, the only reason the Arabs and Muslims hate the U.S. is its support for Israel, then the U.S. should be able to end the war simply by abandoning Israel and reaching out to the Arabs. Taken collectively and individually, all of Obama's policies toward the Arab and Islamic world and toward Israel comport with this basic notion.

This, of course, is distressing. But to forge a strategy to contend with the Obama administration, it is important to first understand what motivates the White House. Only by recognizing the ideological origins of Obama's policies can Israel and its allies in the U.S. have any hope of contending with them successfully.