Watch Israeli analyst, Yossi Klein Halevi, and David Suissa debate whether Obama is good for Zionism - with better audio - on Joo-Tube

The American-born, centrist Israeli thinker and writer, Yossi Klein Halevi, (who is published in The New Republic) returned to the U.S. to explain to Americans how Pres. Obama's behavior and policies towards Israel are intentionally undermining the friendship between the countries. Worse, he describes how detrimental, he feels, the Obama Administration's contemptuous treatment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bullies all Zionists. This transmits a signal to the world that "it's now open-season" against the Jewish State.

An obvious example of that, Mr. Halevi says, is Britain's expelling the head of the Mossad desk in the Israeli Embassy in London. The message to the jihadists, he believes, is to encourage Iran (through its proxies Hizbollah or Hamas) to open a limited front of attacks against Israel, with the expectation that Obama will step-in and prevent Israel from comprehensively eliminating the threat, while publicly diminishing Israel's public image by portraying him as having to restrain their aggression.



In our video of Mr. Halevi's speech in Los Angeles from April 22nd, Halevi explains many of his views on the relationship and the situation, including how Obama's ambition to force creating a Palestinian State with a hostile Palestinian population would be an existential threat to Israel. If Obama doesn't stop Iran from going nuclear, there will be no possibility of peace in the Middle East, as Jihad forces (Hamas) in the mid-east will be united around Iran against Israel.

"Obama will be judged by Israel by how he handles the nuclear issue with Iran. And from what we've seen so far, with one deadline after another, we in Israel frankly have zero confidence in the backbone of this Administration." "We are seeing potentially a tragedy of historic proportions."

Mr. Halevi deconstructs what he sees as Washington's misguided priorities of achieving stability in the Middle-East. Halevi spoke at Nessah Israel Synagogue in L.A. at an 22 April event organized by 30 Years After (and co-sponsored by the Jewish Journal, and OLAM Magazine). Here is Part II of the event - the interactive question and answer period.



Olam's editor, David Suissa, postulates on Obama's motives with Halevi during the question and answer session in this video - characterized in Mr. Suissa's Op/Ed in the Jewish Journal of L.A.:

"For about an hour, Halevi had us riveted with his anatomy of a deteriorating relationship. At the end, the big question lingered: Why would Obama act this way toward a great ally? If it’s not anti-Semitism or tough love, is there a larger narrative that speaks to the soul of the man — a narrative that might explain why he bows to America’s foes and mistreats America’s friends?
 
Here’s one possibility: Maybe Obama sees his calling as bigger than America, and he wants to be President of Humanity.

"His speeches and remarks are filled with references to himself in a ratio that surpasses anything yet seen in the history of the American presidency,” writes professor James Ceaser in a recent piece in The Weekly Standard titled “The Roots of Obama Worship.”

“He awakened at some point in the campaign to the realization that he was no longer running merely for president of the United States. He was being selected to the much grander ‘office’ of leader of a new world community.”

Most seriously, Ceaser worries that “the conflicting demands of the Religion of Humanity and the presidency of the United States have become most apparent in the administration’s approach to dealing with the threat of Islamic terrorism.

Supporters of the Religion of Humanity [therefore] believe they have good reasons to deny or minimize the danger of terrorism in order to save the world from the even greater danger of the triumph of the retrograde forces. This is the dogmatic basis of political correctness and Obama and his team have gone to considerable lengths by their policies and by their use of language to hide reality. But reality has a way of asserting itself, and it is becoming clearer by the day that being the leader of Humanity is incompatible with being the president of the United States.”

It’s hard to say how much truth there is in Ceaser’s analysis, but it does add to the debate of understanding Obama’s behavior toward Israel. At least it gives us something more noble than the hysterical “Obama’s an anti-Semite” accusations that I see in my inbox every day.

And let’s face it, there is something noble about having a heart for all of humanity.  The problem for Israel, of course, is that most of humanity already hates Israel, and if you’re Obama and you want to woo all of humanity, well, I can see how tiny Israel would be a major irritant."