Is the Obama administration anti-Israel?

A real friend of Israel, like George W. Bush, would repeatedly compare the Iranian President to Hitler

President Barack Obama just can’t conceal his deep hatred of Israel.

I mean, when he went on Fox News on St. Patrick’s Day and was offered a chance to say nice things about Israel, all he could offer up was: “Israel is one of our closest allies and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that’s not going to go away.”

Seriously?

Israel is just one of our closest allies? All we have with Israel and its people is a special bond? I mean, could the #ObamaHate be any more blatant? A true friend of Israel would have said something like, “Israel is our super cool bestest-best-best BFF and everything Israel does is just awesome, except for when it’s TOTALLY awesome.” George W. Bush said stuff like that all the time and probably high-fived people when he did.

That’s not even the bitterest Hatorade the president poured on Israel during the Fox interview. Obama also said he planned to pursue new “aggressive sanctions” against Iran in an effort to halt its nuclear program. If Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, Obama said, “You could potentially see a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East. We haven’t taken any options off the table.”

I mean, Obama’s contempt for Israel’s strategic interests is palpable.

“Ooh, I’m gonna ratchet up the already harsh economic sanctions against Israel’s strongest enemy, broadly hint at my willingness to start a war as an expression of solidarity against the only country Israel sees as an existential threat, and never even acknowledge that the nuclear arms race in the Middle East was started four decades ago – by Israel.” Meow, meow, meow! What a hater!

A real friend of Israel, like George W. Bush, would repeatedly compare Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler in off-the-record conversations that magically find their way into the press. Never mind that Hitler actually ran Germany and Ahmadinejad does not run Iran. And never mind that Germany under Hitler was a leading industrial power with the world’s most powerful military while Iran’s most sophisticated manufacturing plants produce rugs and salted pistachios, and during my lifetime fought a war using child soldiers armed with symbolic keys to heaven around their necks. The fact is, if you love a country, you are morally obliged to express your love for that country by comparing its enemies to Hitler as often as possible. Just ask the Tea Party protesters.

If that doesn’t convince you of Obama’s seething Jew-hate, consider this: Of the $5.3 billion Obama proposed for foreign military aid, only $2.8 billion was designated for Israel and a piddling $1.3 billion was set aside for Egypt, the nation we’ve been bribing annually since the Carter administration in exchange for its willingness to maintain peace with Israel.

Do you think I’m beating this point to death? Well, I’m not. No amount of kvetching seems capable of killing off the absurd meme out there about Obama being anti-Israel.

No president of the past 50 years can reasonably be called anything but an unstinting ally of Israel. The closest a U.S. president has been to being a meaningful critic of Israel was in 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressured Israel, the U.K. and France to call off their military takeover of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Suez Canal. And even that might not have happened if not for the near simultaneous Soviet re-invasion of Hungary. Eisenhower knew he’d have a harder time rallying the world against Soviet imperialism when two of his closest allies, France and the U.K., orchestrated a takeover of much of sovereign Egypt. Despite that, Eisenhower still sent a lot of financial aid Israel’s way.

Indeed, there have been plenty of harsh words exchanged between the U.S. and Israel about Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. But the fact is, the U.S. doesn’t really oppose the settlements. It opposes the timing of the settlements (announced during Vice President Biden’s visit). In reality, a large segment of Israel’s population was just as critical of Israel over this incident as anyone in the U.S. Are they anti-Israel Israelis?