THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TREATS ISRAEL AS THE PROBLEM — NOT OUR BEST ALLY — IN THE MIDDLE EAST: How to pray at this critical time.

December 7, 2011 By in Epicenter

On November 30th, President Obama spoke to Jewish donors to the Democratic National Committee at a $10,000 per plate fund-raising dinner in Manhattan. “Obviously, no ally is more important than the state of Israel,” Mr. Obama said, adding, “This administration — I try not to pat myself too much on the back — but this administration has done more in terms of the security of the state of Israel than any previous administration.” You’ve got to be kidding me. While it’s true that President Obama hasn’t cut off U.S. military aid to the Jewish State, it’s also true that the Obama administration consistently treats Israel as the problem in the Middle East, as the obstacle to peace, as a thorn in our flesh, rather than as our most trusted ally and a beacon of freedom and democracy in a very dangerous and turbulent region. In the last two years, the White House has tried to force Israel to divide Jerusalem, to divide the Land of Israel, to negotiate with Hamas, and stop building Jewish homes in their capital city. And that’s just scratching the surface.

Consider five recent examples of the Obama administration treating Israel as the problem, not as our most important, valued, trusted ally in the Middle East:

  1. On October 4th, we learned that President Obama sent a senior U.S. administration official to Israel to publicly pressure Israel not to even consider launching preemptive military strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, even though Israel views an Iranian nuclear bomb as an existential threat. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported, “U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Israel Monday with a clear message from his boss in Washington: The United States opposes any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.”
  2. On November 8th, President Obama was caught on an open microphone at an economic summit trashing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of our most important ally. In a conversation overheard and recorded by reporters, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Mr. Obama, “I can’t stand him [Netanyahu]. He’s a liar.” Mr. Obama did not defend the top leader of our most important Mideast ally. Rather, he told Sarzoky, “You’re tired of him? What about me? I have to deal with him every day.”
  3. On December 3rd, President Obama’s Defense Secretary Leon Panetta publicly accused Israel of being the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. As Voice of America news reported: “During a forum in Washington late Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Israel needs to start by getting back ‘to the damn table’ and negotiating peace with the Palestinians. He also called on Israel to mend its fraying relationships with traditional partners like Turkey, Egypt and Jordan.”
  4. Also on December 3rd, it was reported that President Obama’s “ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, recently told a conference hosted by the European Jewish Union that Israel is to blame for growing anti-Semitism harbored by people of Muslim faith.” According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Gutman said, “A distinction should be made between traditional anti-Semitism, which should be condemned and Muslim hatred for Jews, which stems from the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.” Gutman “also argued that an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty will significantly diminish Muslim anti-Semitism.”
  5. On December 5th, Defense Secretary Panetta again applied public pressure on Israel not to take decisive actions against Iran to prevent a Second Holocaust. “The United States has pointedly ramped up its public warnings over the last few weeks about the risks of military action against Iran, accompanied by private words of caution to Israel, which sees Tehran’s nuclear push as a direct threat,” reported Reuters. “Panetta said it [an Israeli preemptive strike] risked ‘an escalation’ that could ‘consume the Middle East in confrontation and conflict that we would regret.’ It could also hobble the fragile U.S. and European economies and might do little to actually stop Iran from getting an atomic weapon.”

What makes all this dangerous is that it signals to Israel’s enemies — and our own — that there is daylight between the U.S. and Israel, that President Obama is not a true and trusted friend of Israel. Iranian leaders and others are getting the impression that if they hit Israel, the U.S. might not be there to back Israel up. Radical Islamic jihadists think they smell blood in the water, and they are feverishly arming themselves for a war of annihilation against the Jewish state.

That said, here are five specific ways you can pray despite this offensive White House attitude towards Israel:

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