Obama, while moaning on hypocritically about a “peace process” that has become nothing more than a shibboleth, is actually setting the Middle East on fire.

Religion, everywhere and always, is a pile of tinder. Nowhere is it as easily ignited as in the so-called Holy Land. Directly as a result of Obama’s aggression towards Israel, riots have broken out in Jerusalem which may escalate into another intifada.

If that’s what he meant to do, which is more than possible, it is the single success of his short and disastrous presidency.

Melanie Phillips writes in the Spectator:

The escalating Arab rioting today in Jerusalem and the West Bank is undoubtedly being stoked up by the fact that the Obama administration has turned so viciously against Israel. Doubtless as a result the Arabs now smell victory within their grasp and may now unleash another wave of violence against Israelis.

Every single one of their recent ‘grievances’ is not just fabricated but stands history and justice on their heads. The ostensible cause of today’s rioting, the re-opening yesterday of the ancient Hurva synagogue in the heart of the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, is a typical example of this fanatical moral and historical inversion. The Hurva has been under reconstruction for years. The Palestinian campaign of incitement over it carries the message that Jews cannot build places of worship in their own city. And before anyone says any of Jerusalem is ‘occupied Palestinian territory’, it is not and never was ‘Palestinian’. In every single attempt to resolve the Middle East impasse, Jerusalem was always regarded as a special case on its own; and from the mid 19th century onwards it has had uninterruptedly a Jewish majority.

The Hurva synagogue has been rebuilt, moreover, because it was twice destroyed by Muslims…

A meticulous rebuilding and renovation effort was begun several years ago. It culminated on March 15, 2010 in the official reopening of the Hurva as an exact replica of the 19th-century synagogue …

And once again it is the target of Muslim attempts to exterminate the Jewish presence in Jerusalem. Yet Obama, who accuses Israel of frustrating the ‘peace process’ by building in east Jerusalem by agreement with his own administration, is silent over this inflammatory and disgusting Palestinian attack on a Jewish place of worship. It would seem that for Obama ‘peace’ means the surrender of Israel to Arab violence.

As former New York mayor Ed Koch has said, the pressure the US is now bringing to bear upon Israel is unforgiveable. It is an astonishing demonstration of cynicism and malicious intent. Noah Pollak says that Obama is trying to get rid of Netanyahu by pushing him into a corner. But much worse still, Obama’s deliberate decision to escalate what was at most a tactless but minor diplomatic blunder by Israel makes America an accessory to the violence that is now taking place and may get worse. …

Middle America, those millions of mainly Christian souls who are Israel’s staunchest supporters in the world, should be made aware of what their President is doing – turning the United States into a betrayer of democracy, human rights and the Jewish people to become no less than an accessory to terror.