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if you can’t share excitement, you can at least study it.

Media of ours and friends of mine are hailing the “success” of Obama’s visit  to Israel as if it were as joyous as the liberation of Paris, as game-changing  as the nuclear bomb and as important as the unconditional surrender of the bad  guys in World War II. Me? I thought it was pretty cool.

Barack Obama until just the other day was the most anti-Israel president in  America’s history. His idolaters wail, “What a leader we’ve got! He was  anti-Israel, then suddenly he changes and, wow, look how hopes for the  Middle East are spiraling upward!”

This is what’s so numbing about the Obama phenomenon. When Romney loses to  Obama, the with-it crowd likes to remind Republicans, “Times change.  Demographics change.” When Obama twice wins the Jewish vote, after  proving his anti-Israel DNA, nobody talks of “change.” Change is robbed of the  credit. All credit then goes to “this charismatic young genius who knows how to  carry his base and everybody else’s base, too!”

Try pointing out that younger American Jews are also vulnerable to a  magnetism different from that of their more Holocaust-and-jihad-aware elders; point out that younger generations shed loyalty like snakes shed skin,  and you’re suddenly a racist denying Obama his due.

I wish I didn’t have to keep returning to Egypt’s “Museum of Victory”  example, but an ungenerous world offers no alternative. Between Cairo Airport  and the Nile Hilton, there’s a “Victory Museum” dedicated to the Egyptian defeat  in the 1973 Yom Kippur War – on the level! President Franklin D.  Roosevelt once told New York’s Jewish Rep. Sol Bloom, “I am tired of hearing the  whining of Jews.”

You don’t have to be Martin Luther King to have a dream, and you don’t have  to be Franklin Roosevelt to be tired of something. I get tired of Obama’s  defeats being energetically presented as victories, and I dream of a change!

Does it ever occur to anyone that Obama shifted his Israeli stance because he  was beaten? Obama not only failed to cause Netanyahu’s defeat at the Israeli  elections, his ratings are sinking and, except for his back-pocket dwellers, the  whole world sees his policy is a failure in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen  and Iran. Only those Sunni-dominated countries that need a strong American ally  and have no choice but to pretend America is still credible, namely Jordan and  Saudi Arabia, still strike up the band when Obama’s plane lands.

Israel, not Obama, was the big winner last week. Remember now the stage  magician who said, “Notice that at no point do my fingers leave my hands! Has  Israel given up one square inch of new territory? Has Israel stopped or  dismantled one Israeli house or even garage in the disputed-but-not-disputable  Israeli territories. Is any such move as the above even expectable? The only  “Obama victory” was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s airport “apology” to  Turkish leader Recep Erdogan for killing nine Turks enroute to attack Israel by  breaking the blockade of arms to Hamas in Gaza. If Israel apologized to every  enemy enroute to attack her, she’d be in the same kind of perpetual apology as  the Tibetans are in perpetual prayer. If this act made Obama great, then Israel  must be greater than we think. Netanyahu’s apology was an act of “rakhmones” –  something between pity and charity – so Obama didn’t have to leave  empty-hearted.

There are 12 Jewish senators, all Democrats. Chuck Hagel’s anti-Jewish and  anti-Israel record would glare through even the darkest desert night. But all 12  of those senators voted for Hagel. That’s what Israelis are smiling at.

A European Jew was once hectoring an American Jew on all the great  achievements of European Jews. “Are you aware we had synagogues in our major  European cities before Columbus discovered America? All our great Jewish  scholars were European. All our great Jewish liturgical collections are in  Europe. What do you American Jews have better than we European Jews?” asked the  <snip>y European.

“Christians,” answered the American Jew simply. “We American Jews have the  greatest Christians that Jews have ever been fortunate enough to live  among.”

And which senators arose in the effort to smite anti-Semite Chuck  Hagel? They didn’t have names like Blumenthal, Schumer and Lautenberg. They had  names like Graham, Ayotte and McCain.

If you see Chuck Hagel, congratulate him. Tell him how much he’s done for the  Jewish people just by not being one.