Jews in Israel, unlike Jews in this country, see Obama as the least sympathetic president to Israel's vulnerability since Jimmy Carter, who in 1980 was the first Democratic presidential candidate since James M. Cox to win less than 45 percent of the Jewish vote. Jews here ignored the implications of Obama having sat through those 20 years of anti-Semitic sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and voted overwhelmingly for the president. Who can tell what poisonous oaks grow from such acorns?
"We are shocked and stunned at the administration's tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem," said Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who usually saves such emphatic language for those who speak anti-Semitic remarks. We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States." Neither can I.
No one benefits from the raised level of rhetoric in this controversy, and Democrats, who have enough headaches ahead over the next few months, least of all. They'll need all the money and votes they can get in November, and Jews constitute a rich vein of resources.
A provocative interpretation of why the administration reacted to the initial insult with an insult of its own was offered by John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, which exerts a strong influence among American Jews. He suggests that the president, rather than Joe Biden, is the man who took the offending Israeli announcement personally.
"It was the president himself who decided the insult required his slapping Israel in the face with a white glove and threatening pistols at dawn," he writes. "This was an emotional response, in other words, in which the president felt free to indulge."
With the damage done, Hillary Clinton, perhaps dispatched by the president to patch things up, softened her own deeply negative signal and paid homage with happy talk about the unshakable bond between the United States and Israel, the shared values, commitment to freedom and more. All true, of course, but from her it sounded mostly of tarnish and brass. Shimon Peres, the president of Israel, put it better: "We cannot afford to unravel the friendship with the United States."