Now that America has lurched to the left by electing a president with the most “openly radical” background of “any significant American political figure,” which is how Rolling Stone described Barack Obama in 2007, the little nation of Israel appears to be placing its faith in a future prime minister coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum—the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu.
Numerous commentators have already weighed in on the likelihood of an oncoming U.S.-Israeli collision with respect to foreign policy. “Persuading Netanyahu to follow a new American president’s fresh leadership in the Middle East will not be easy if for no other reason than that Jerusalem and Washington’s interests simply do not run on parallel tracks,” wrote the Christian Science Monitor last week. Columnist Barry Rubin says that a Netanyahu administration in Israel would certainly make for potential “friction between him and Obama.” Dick Morris and Eileen McGann add that if Netanyahu wins, “he will bring with him a determination to stop Iranian nuclear weapons no matter what and a refusal to concede more territory in the name of the peace process. But Obama will be focusing on pushing Israel in just the opposite direction” (emphasis mine throughout).
