We published this article on November 11, 2011 under the title FYI. We need to change only one word – an “all” to a “most” – for it to be as accurate and pertinent now as it was then. The need to change that one word is, however, a sign of welcome improvement in Israeli-Arab relations: 

We all have opinions on issues about which we are ignorant. They arise from our characters, our prejudices, and our emotions. Fortunately, in our private lives, our opinions seldom matter enough to cause much harm. But when persons in power form policies based on uninformed opinions arising from their deep-seated prejudices, they affect the lives of millions, necessarily for the worse.

And in the arena of politics, the prejudices and uninformed opinions of many individuals can all too easily influence the actions of the powerful.

One of the dangers of democracy is that the vote of the know-nothing counts for exactly the same as the vote of the well-informed, and the know-nothings can swing an election.

It’s the business of the mass media to inform the public. When journalists let their own opinions keep them from telling the truth about an issue or a candidate for office, they empower the ignorant. The media failed in their duty to inform the electorate that Barack Obama was a poorly-educated, inexperienced, far-left ideologue with close ties to terrorists and jihadists. The votes of the uninformed gave him the presidency. The result is a wrecked economy, and the weakening of the United States as a power in the world and so of Western civilization as a whole.

If there is one issue in world politics on which opinions are held most strongly while being least informed it is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Vast numbers of people, almost certainly a majority, believe these falsehoods:

1. The Palestinians had their country taken away from them by the Jews.
2. The Israelis expelled the Palestinians.
3. The Israelis illegally occupy territories that belong to the Palestinians.
4. The Israelis refuse to negotiate for peace with Palestinian leaders.
5. Israeli intransigence impeded a peace process that Palestinian leaders pursued in good faith.

We summarily dismiss points 1 and 2: –

1. There never was, in all history, a State of Palestine.
2. There is no evidence that any Arabs were expelled from the State of Israel. There is evidence that in at least one city – Haifa – they were implored to stay. There is also evidence that the Mufti of Jerusalem and Arab leaders urged them to leave before five Arab armies invaded the newly-declared State of Israel, promising them a victory after which the refugees would return to their homes. And there is absolute certainty that hundreds of thousands of Jews were forcibly expelled – stripped of all they possessed – from the Arab states. 

As for points 3, 4, and 5, we quote from an excellent recent column by Melanie Phillips at the Mail Online. She writes:

One of the most egregious signs of western irrationality and bigotry over the issue of Israel is the way in which its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is routinely scapegoated for causing the breakdown of the so-called peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

This charge is based on the widespread fallacy that the ‘peace process’ has stalled because Israel keeps building more Jewish ‘settlements’ on ‘Palestinian land’. This reasoning is not only totally wrong but utterly perverse on the following grounds:

1) The actual reason for the collapse of the ‘peace process’ is that Mahmoud Abbas repeatedly maintains that he will never accept that Israel is entitled to be a Jewish state, hails Palestinian terrorists as heroes for murdering Israelis and does nothing to end the incitement to murder Jews disseminated in schools, mosques and media under his control. In other words, Abbas is not a legitimate interlocutor in any civilised ‘peace process’ since he remains committed to the eradication of Israel [as are all  most Arab and Muslim leaders – JB]. Yet Netanyahu is blamed for the impasse.

2) It is only Israel that has made concessions in this ‘peace process’ [giving up vast areas of land conquered in defensive wars in exchange for peace that was never granted]. The Palestinians not only failed to deliver what was expected of them under the Road Map [or under any of the signed agreements] but now, with their UN gambit, have unilaterally reneged on their previous treaty obligations. Yet Abbas is given a free pass while Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

3) The claim that the ‘settlements’ are the key to resolving the dispute is ridiculous. First, they take up no more than one or two per cent of West Bank territory. Second, even when Netanyahu froze such new building for ten months as a sign of good will, Abbas still refused to negotiate. Yet this is all ignored, and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

4) The claim that the establishment of a Palestine state would end the dispute is also ridiculous. Such a state was on offer in 1948; Israel offered to give up more than 90 per cent of the West Bank for such a state in 2000; and an even more generous offer was subsequently made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The Palestinian response was in every case war and terror. Yet all this is ignored, and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

5) Whatever land Israel may choose to give up in its own interests, under international law Jews are entitled to settle anywhere in the West Bank. There is no such thing as Palestinian land and never was.The West Bank and Gaza never belonged to any sovereign ruler after the British withdrew from Mandatory Palestine; before that it was part of the Ottoman empire. Israel’s ‘borders’ are in fact merely the cease-fire lines from its victory in 1948 against the Arab armies that tried unsuccessfully to exterminate it at birth. It is therefore more correct to call the West Bank and Gaza disputed territory. Yet this history and law are denied and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

6) The Jews alone have the legal – as well as the moral and historical – right to settle within the West Bank and Gaza, a right given to them by the Great Powers after the First World War on account of the unique historical claim by the Jews to the land then called Palestine. This Jewish right to settle anywhere in that land was entrusted to Britain to deliver under the terms of the Mandate for Palestine – an obligation which it proceeded to break. [Even giving away the greater part of the territory to the Arabs to create the Emirate of Transjordon – now the Kingdom of Jordan – which is therefore an Arab state of Palestine.] Yet this history and law are denied, and Netanyahu is blamed instead for the impasse.

This information is the bare minimum a commenter needs before he is justified in expressing an opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An opinion formed with any less knowledge is worthless and potentially dangerous.

Jacki Pick, host of the Jacki Daily radio show and former Counsel to the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s Constitution Subcommittee, reveals that the Obama administration required the Department of Homeland Security to “scrub terrorist databases”.

And on the subject of protecting the enemy, Daniel Greenfield writes at Front Page:

On September 4, 2001, Robert Mueller took over the FBI …

[He] fought alongside [James] Comey against surveilling terrorists. Materials involving the Muslim Brotherhood were purged. Toward the dawn of the second Obama term, Mueller met with CAIR and other Islamist groups and a green curtain fell over national security.

But the surveillance wasn’t going anywhere. Instead it was being redirected to new targets.

Those targets were not, despite the wave of hysterical conspiracy theories convulsing the media, the Russians. Mueller’s boss was still quite fond of them. Barack Obama did have foreign enemies that he wanted to spy on. And there were plenty of domestic enemies who could be caught up in that trap.

By his second term, the amateur was coming to understand the incredible surveillance powers at his disposal and how they could be used to spy on Americans under the pretext of fighting foreign threats. ….

While the Mueller purge was going on, Obama was pushing talks with Iran. There was one obstacle and it wasn’t Russia. The Russians were eager to play Obama with a fake nuke deal. It was the Israelis who were the problem. And it was the Israelis who were being spied on by Obama’s surveillance regime.

But it wasn’t just the Israelis.

Iran was Obama’s big shot at a foreign policy legacy. As the year dragged on, it was becoming clear that the Arab Spring wouldn’t be anything he would want to be remembered for. By the time Benghazi went from a humanitarian rescue operation to one of the worst disasters of the term, it was clearly over.

Obama was worried that the Israelis would launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear program. And the surveillance and media leaks were meant to dissuade the Israelis from scuttling his legacy. But he was also worried about Netanyahu’s ability to persuade American Jews and members of Congress to oppose his nuclear sellout. And that was where the surveillance leapfrogged from foreign to domestic.

The NSA intercepted communications between Israelis and Americans, including members of Congress, and then passed the material along to the White House. Despite worries by some officials that “that the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress”, the White House “believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign”.

The precedent was even more troubling than it seemed.

Obama Inc. had defined its position in an unresolved political debate between the White House and Congress as the national interest. And had winkingly authorized surveillance on Congress to protect this policy in a domestic political debate. That precedent would then be used to spy on members of the Trump transition team and to force out Trump’s national security adviser.

National security had become indistinguishable from the agenda of the administration. And that agenda, like the rest of Obama’s unilateral policies, was enshrined as permanent. Instead of President Trump gaining the same powers, his opposition to that agenda was treated as a national security threat.

And once Obama was out of office, Comey and other Obama appointees would protect that agenda.

We still don’t know the full scope of Spygate. But media reports have suggested that Obama officials targeted countries opposed to the Iran sellout, most prominently Israel and the UAE, and then eavesdropped on meetings between them and between figures on the Trump team.

Obama had begun his initial spying as a way of gaining inside information on Netanyahu’s campaign against the Iran deal. But the close election and its aftermath significantly escalated what had been a mere Watergate into an active effort to not only spy, but pursue criminal charges against the political opposition. The surveillance state had inevitably moved on to the next stage, the police state with its informants, dossiers, pre-dawn raids, state’s witnesses, entrapments and still more surveillance.

And the police state requires cops. Someone had to do the dirty work for Susan Rice.

Comey, Mueller and the other cops had likely been complicit in the administration’s abuses. Somewhere along the way, they had become the guys watching over the Watergate burglars. Spying on the political opposition is, short of spying for the enemy, the most serious crime that such men can commit.

Why then was it committed?

Yes, WHY?

To understand that, we have to go back to 9/11. Those days may seem distant now, but the attacks offered a crossroads. One road led to a war against our enemies. The other to minimizing the conflict.

President George W. Bush tried to fight that war, but he was undermined by men like Mueller and Comey. Their view of the war was the same as that of their future boss, not their current one, certainly not the view as the man currently sitting in the White House whom they have tried to destroy.

Every lie has some truth in it. Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty, his frequent claims of allegiance to American ideals, are true, as he sees it, if not as he tells it. Men like Comey and Mueller believed that the real threat came not from Islamic terrorists, but from our overreaction to them. They believed that Bush was a threat. And Trump was the worst threat imaginable who had to be stopped by any means.

But WHY?

Daniel Greenfield has an answer which he explains:

What Comey and Mueller are loyal to is the established way of doing things. And they conflate that with our national ideals, as establishment thugs usually do. Neither of them are unique. Washington D.C. is filled with men and women who are registered Republicans, who believe in lowering taxes, who frown at the extremities of identity politics, but whose true faith is in the natural order of government.

Mueller and Comey represent a class. And Obama and Clinton were easily able to corrupt and seduce that class into abandoning its duties and oaths, into serving as its deep state against domestic foes.

It is a plausible answer. But we do not and cannot really know why some people – a large number of intellectuals – feel more anger about a reaction to terrorist criminality than to the crimes themselves. We do not and cannot know why highly educated Westerners – children of the Enlightenment – admire, and even desire to protect, the deeply immoral religion of Islam.

We agree with what follows:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? It’s the old question of who watches the watchmen that no society has found a good answer to. And the answer is inevitably that the watchers, watch themselves and everyone else. What began as national security measures against Islamic terrorism was twisted by Obama and his deep state allies into the surveillance of the very people fighting Islamic terrorism.

Spygate was the warped afterbirth of our failure to meaningfully confront Islamic terrorism. Instead, the political allies of the terrorists and the failed watchmen who allowed them to strike so many times, got together to shoot the messengers warning about the terror threat. The problem had never been the lack of power, but the lack of will and the lack of integrity in an establishment unwilling to do its job.

After 9/11, extraordinary national security powers were brought into being to fight Islamic terror. Instead those powers were used to suppress those who told the truth about Islamic terrorism.

Wanna see Democrats and media hacks weep? Hand them this list!

So writes Joan Swirsky at Canada Free press. We want to see Democrats and media hacks weep, and we also want to see conservatives and libertarians, nationists and populists, Republicans and all our friends and allies smile.

Here is the list:

If these accomplishments are not familiar, that’s because 99 percent of the media – the jerks – are a de facto arm of the Democratic National Committee and the far-left fringe, and are so terminally distressed by the fact that Mr. Trump won the presidency that they obstinately refuse to report what by any objective standards is the news. This is because:

• They’ve been pushing leftist values for well over a half century and are unable to admit that their anti-Trump, pro-Hillary message was an utter and complete failure.
• They are part and parcel of the vast, contaminated, rancid, crooked, pay-for-play, corrupt swamp that candidate Trump promised to drain, and President Trump is now draining.
• The man they mock – for his syntax and phrasing, style of governing, unpredictability, and so-called contradictions – has both confounded and trumped them at every turn.

This is why they remain fixated on the fairy tale of a Trump-Russian connection. They have nothing else – as in nothing!

LIGHTNING

After Pres. Trump’s first month in office,

• 235,000 jobs were added to our economy in February, 100,000 more than expected;
• 40 percent fewer illegal immigrants crossed our border;
• $3 trillion was added to the stock market;
• Judge Gorsuch, a constitutionalist worthy of Justice Scalia’s seat, was nominated to the Supreme Court.

In his first 100 days:

• appointments of Vice President Mike Pence, pro-life conservative;
• Justice Neil Gorsuch, an originalist committed to the Constitution;
• Attorney General Jeff Sessions, staunch conservative committed to the rule of law;
• Defense Secretary James Mattis, a warrior committed to restoring America’s military;
• Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a former general committed to border security;
• Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a former CEO who understands how the real world works;
• Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson, a brain surgeon from a humble background;
• Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, a doctor who understands health care;
• Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, an advocate of school choice and educational reform;
• Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former governor of Texas and expert on the energy industry;
• Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, former CEO who understands the business world;
• EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a conservative committed to reining in big government;
• U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, a fearless advocate for American values;
• U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, a true friend of Israel;
• White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, a conservative warrior against crony capitalism and the left;
• National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, an accomplished military commander;
• and White House Counterterrorism Adviser Sebastian Gorka, committed to defeating radical Islam.

President Trump;

• restored the U.S. alliance with Israel and welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House;
• restored U.S. leadership in the world;
• enforced red lines against the use of chemical weapons in Syria;
• dropped the Mother of All Bombs (MOAB) on ISIS, sending a clear message to Iran and North Korea;
• secured the Chinese cooperation in pressuring North Korea and the release of Aya Hijazi, American charity worker held in Egypt since 2014;
• imposed a five-year ban on lobbying the government by former White House officials and a lifetime ban on lobbying for foreign governments by former White House officials;
• repeatedly called out the liberal media for “fake news”;
• repealed Obama mandate that forced states to fund Planned Parenthood;
• signed executive order reinstating Reagan policy against taxpayer funding of overseas abortions;
• stopped U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which promotes abortions;
• signed the following Executive Orders
  1. to mandate a comprehensive plan to defeat ISIS,
  2. to begin construction of the border wall and hire additional 5,000 border agents,
  3. to order the Justice Department to cut funding to sanctuary cities,
  4. to institute a temporary federal hiring freeze,
  5. to institute a travel ban on individuals from a select number of countries embroiled in terrorist atrocities;
  6. to withdraw from the Transpacific Partnership trade deal,
  7. to mandate that two regulations will be repealed for every new one issued,
  8. to institute a comprehensive approach to illegal immigration and crime; et al.

THUNDER

Further,

• Pres. Trump issued orders to seek increased penalties for crimes against police;
• to promote energy independence; to put American companies and workers first;
• to review federal regulations in education; to investigate national security impact of foreign steel imports;
• to require an audit of executive branch agencies;
• to order every agency to create a regulatory reform task force;
• to roll back Obama environmental infringements on private property.

In addition,

• Pres. Trump issued orders to prevent future taxpayer-funded bailouts; to reverse Obama restrictions on offshore energy development;
• for a major review of national monument designations on federal lands;
• to establish a new office to reform the Veterans Administration bureaucracy;
• to address concerns of Rural America;
• to establish a White House Initiative on historically Black Colleges and Universities;
• to create a commission on drug addiction and the opioid crisis;
• to combat transnational criminal organizations and international trafficking; to repeal the following:

1. Obama’s transgender public school bathroom mandate,
2. Obama’s “Stream Protection Rule” that has hurt the coal industry,
3. Obama’s Social Security Administration’s gun ban,
4. Obama’s Labor “blacklisting” rule with $500 million in regulatory costs,
5. Obama’s Interior rule that restricted state and local authority in land use decisions,
6. Obama’s unfunded education mandate that created new standards for teachers,
7. Obama’s education rule that undermined state and local control,
8. Obama’s regulation that prevented drug testing for unemployment compensation,
9. Obama’s rule that banned some hunting in Alaska,
10. Obama’s regulation that created vastly more paperwork and reporting of worker injuries,
11. Obama’s regulations on Internet Service Providers,
12. Obama’s rule that allowed states to force workers into government-run savings plans, and the Dodd-Frank regulations that disadvantaged domestic companies.

Going further,

• Pres. Trump Imposed sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile violations and human rights violations;
• Ordered review of the Iranian nuclear deal;
• Produced a budget that cut $54 billion from bloated federal bureaucracies, that would eliminate 50 programs and more than 3,000 federal jobs, and that boosted spending for defense, homeland security and veterans; produced a tax-reform plan that simplifies the tax code and reduces taxes for businesses and families;
• Approved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline; shut down illegal immigrant advocacy program at Department of Justice;
• Established Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office;
• Reduced illegal immigration at the border by 61 percent;
• Called for “major investigation” of voter fraud led by Vice President Mike Pence;
• Called for repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which limits free speech of pastors and churches;
• Called for 50 percent cut in funding to the United Nations; supported English as official language by dropping Spanish version of the White House website;
• Purged “climate change” alarmism from White House website;
• Returned bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office;
• Succeeded in getting NATO nations to boost defense spending by $10 billion;
• Halted $180 billion in Obama regulations;
• Signed legislation expanding private healthcare options for veterans;
• Relaxed Rules of Engagement in the fight against ISIS;
• Imposed sanctions on Venezuelan vice president for international drug trafficking.

UP, UP & AWAY

At this early point,

• Consumer confidence is the highest in 17 years;
• Small business confidence highest in 11 years;
• Stock market is up 10 percent since inauguration, up 15 percent since election;
• Exxon Mobil announced $20 billion-45,000 job expansion in U.S.;
• Charter Communications announced $25 billion expansion, creating 20,000 jobs in U.S.;
• Accenture announced $1.4 billion expansion, creating 15,000 jobs in U.S.;
• Intel announced $7 billion expansion, creating 10,000 jobs in the U.S.
• Pres. Trump ordered renegotiation of North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico;
• Named former Congressman Scott Garrett, an outspoken critic of the Export-Import Bank to the bank’s Board of Directors
• Today, U.S. unemployment is at its lowest level since 1988!

The U.S. debt decreased by $100 billion during Pres. Trump’s first hundred days; the U.S. Manufacturing Index soared to a 33-year high! In the first month alone, he added 298,000 jobs; housing sales are off the charts right now … in 2011, the average time a house was on the market was 84 days, now, it’s just 45 days; illegal immigration is down 67% since the Inauguration; NATO announced Allied spending is up $10 billion.

This Mt. Everest of accomplishments belongs to a man who is straight out of central casting. Every day, he looks like a million dollars and is stunningly successful in his dealings with everyone from heads of state to manual laborers to ardent fans to entrenched skeptics. Every day, he brings both ebullience and laser-like focus to a job he clearly relishes, displays admirable courage in making hard choices, and is zooming along at warp speed to Make America Great Again!

All this while never hesitating to take on the sacred cows of the leftist jerks among us – political correctness and global warming rank high – and to illuminate the public about the widespread scourge of the fake news and fake polls that those same leftist jerks tried but failed to foist upon us in the November election.

It was easy for the media when all they had to do was pretend that 94-million unemployed citizens, a weakened military, alienated allies, a genocidal Iran deal, and unprecedented escalation of Muslim Brotherhood operatives implanted in the highest reaches of our government, and an increase in the national debt by $9 trillion to almost $20 trillion, were nothing to worry about – all while they asked the guy in the Oval Office what his favorite ice-cream flavor was!

Now there’s a grown-up in charge and the children among us (Democrats, leftists, progressives, whatever they’re calling themselves these days) are as ineffectual – indeed, impotent – as they were when Donald J. Trump announced for the presidency in June of 2015.

Important omissions:

President Trump also fired dangerous James Comey from his directorship of the FBI.

He gained the co-operation of China – at least to some extent, though how far remains to be seen – in dealing with hostile North Korea.

His tax proposals will reduce the burden of taxation – and at the same time increase revenue.

His proposed health legislation, while not ideal, at least hastens the end of Obamacare.

While we fully appreciate the quantity and quality of these achievements, and the speed with which they have been executed, there are others we are hoping to see in due course (perhaps in some cases over-optimistically). Chief among them are (in no special order):

The disarming of  North Korea.

The cancellation of the Obama “deal” with Iran and the destruction of Iran’s  nuclear facilities.

The permanent crushing of ISIS.

An effective restraint on Muslim immigration.

Effective resistance to the Islamic jihad, putting a stop to both its stealthy and its terrorist tactics.

The completed Wall on the southern border of the United States.

The US embassy in Israel moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The defunding of the UN – ideally to the end that it withers and dies.

The defunding of sanctuary cities.

The defunding of so-called universities that have become madrassas to indoctrinate leftist ideology.

A refusal to sign any international agreement demanding action to “change the climate” of the earth, since it is impossible as well as unnecessary, and the pointless effort is a colossal waste of money.

*

Update:

Two more needed achievements we hope to be able to celebrate:

The investigation, conviction, and incarceration of both Obama and Hillary (among others) for their various crimes including treason.

The Muslim Brotherhood declared a terrorist group.

.

[Hat tip for these additions to our highly valuable commenter liz)

There’s talk in the ether that Obama has decided to allow Iran yet another year to ‘unclench its fist’ and stop enriching uranium for nuclear bombs. If so, this will be – what? the sixth or seventh extension of time that Obama has given the grim mullahs and the poisonous Ahmadinejad. The answer is always the same ‘No!’  Before Obama came along, Europe had persisted for about eight years with hinting to the Iranians that they should really try to play nice. ‘If you don’t stop’, they warned, ‘we’ll have to ask you again!’ Ignoring that withering threat, and scorning Obama’s ‘deadlines’ which they were confident would always be extended, the Iranians advanced steadily and vigorously towards becoming a nuclear-armed power.

It is also being said (less believably, we think) that Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed to wait yet again, but only for another six months before he will use force to stop Iran getting the bomb.

Meanwhile certain Arab states which quietly hoped that either the US or Israel, or preferably both together, would act against Iran, may be running out of hope and patience. Now something dramatic seems to be developing.

Here is a mixture of fact and surmise from DEBKAfile:

The powerful Iranian speaker of parliament, Ali Larijani, arrived [last Sunday, December 20] in Cairo and was received at once by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak for a conversation lasting two hours.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that the Iranian visitor carried with him a wide-ranging proposal to ease the strained relations between Tehran and the moderate Arab governments.

Without wasting a moment, the next day, the Egyptian president flew to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Arab emirates to discuss the momentous turn of events.

The octogenarian Mubarak travels very infrequently these days because of his failing health except in extraordinary circumstances. He was galvanized this time by the message Larijani brought from Tehran containing the offer of “a new Iranian approach to resolving outstanding issues.” Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already offered to open an embassy in Cairo for the first time since ties were broken off after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

Aware that any breakthrough with the Arab governments was contingent on allaying their fears of its nuclear drive, Iran’s offer of a new beginning is reported by our sources as including a form of Iranian-Arab nuclear cooperation. Its immediate objective is to close ranks with the Arab nations in order to outmaneuver the US-Israeli campaign against its nuclear drive, thereby derailing the US president Barack Obama’s plans for … sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The expeditiousness of Mubarak response to Tehran’s overture and the promptness of his Gulf consultations indicated that the bloc of Arab nations, which he and Saudi king Abdullah lead, has given up on effective action by America or Israel, including force, for throwing Iran off its current nuclear course.

Within the region today, coexistence with Iran looks like a safer bet.

If this burgeoning realignment of Middle East partnerships goes forward, the region’s strategic balance will be pulled out of shape, Washington’s influence heavily downgraded and Israel isolated.

And Obama’s pacifist policy towards Iran will have increased the probability of war.