News from Jerusalem

Any honest observer can see that Obama's May 19 speech is a radical departure from 60 years of bipartisan support for Israel and that nation's right to secure, defensible borders. A return to pre-1967 borders would put Israel in an untenable position at a time when Egypt is likely to repudiate its peace treaty, Hamas is still lobbing deadly rockets into Israel from Gaza, and Iran is making daily threats to "wipe Israel off the map" with a nuclear bomb.

Does Obama know any history? Does he remember that Israel did not start the 1967 war that led to its conquest of the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Gaza? When he suggests returning all of that territory to its Arab neighbors, is he offering Israel an iron-clad guarantee of American assistance when Israel is attacked again from those same territories?

Obama's radical negation of past American policies is shown not only in his speech but by his actions as well. Obama could have conditioned new American aid to Egypt on that nation not abandoning its peace treaty with Israel. But he did not. Obama could have asked Hamas and the Palestine Liberation Organization to formally abandon its official goal of annihilating Israel. But he did not. Thus, Obama's ignorance of history is matched only by his arrogance in asking for one-sided concessions.

But should we be surprised by this radically new policy toward Israel? Not really. Obama has now made explicit what has long been implicit in his foreign policy, not only in the Middle East, but at the U.N. and elsewhere. Obama is disdainful of America's traditional allies but generous and forgiving toward our enemies.

I do not think this anti-Israel tilt is rooted in anti-Semitism, but it is based on something similar. Obama has a deep animosity toward Western civilization as such, and since Israel is the West's outpost in the Middle East, its interests must yield to the region's new Islamist agenda.

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