Barry Rubin comments on Obama's new buddy-buddy meeting with Netanyahu, where he said the Israelis were suspicious of him because of his middle name Hussein:
By denying there were ever some problems and underplaying the reality of what I'll call for brevity's sake the "bad guys", Obama shows an ability to rewrite history in his own mind and forget what has happened. This may signal that in six months he will forget all of Israel's cooperation and concessions, which is precisely what happened last time, between October 2009 and March 2010....
Equally, the problem is not that he's reached out to Muslims but both the way he has done it and the fact that he has done a lot of reaching out to radical Muslims. A number of U.S. presidents have maintained strong relationships with post-Camp David Egypt, with Jordan, with Saudi Arabia and other countries (take Bill Clinton as an example) yet never stirred hostility or distrust from Israel.
Obama has reached out a lot to Muslims in the Iranian and Syrian government, with specific gestures toward Hizballah and Hamas, among others. He has made speeches in Cairo and elsewhere that have negative implications for Israel's security and the U.S.-Israel relationship. Apologists may do verbal gymnastics on the text but this isn't going to fool Israelis.
And by making himself the victim and implying that any misunderstanding is Israel's fault, there's a hint of continued animosity toward Israel. Would he say, for example, that Iran doesn't like him because it views him as an apostate, or that European Christians might not like him for his background? Or, how's this one, he might suggest that Muslims don't like him because he has White House aides named Emanuel (whose middle name is Israel, he reminds us) and Axelrod. How likely is that?...
Does Obama really think we don't know what happened on Netanyahu's previous visit? Here, Obama could merely have said that it wasn't an official state visit at his invitation, which is a real--if perhaps not full--explanation of the cold treatment Netanyahu received. But to pretend that all was buddy-buddy, thats chilling, as if the president has some difficult in distinguishing between reality and fantasy or--perhaps more accurately--doubts his audience's ability to tell them apart.
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