Jen, I wanted to weigh in on the story in Haaretz as well, the one that reports:
During the interview Wednesday, when confronted with the anxiety that some Israelis feel toward him, Obama said that “some of it may just be the fact that my middle name is Hussein, and that creates suspicion.”
“Ironically, I’ve got a Chief of Staff named Rahm Israel Emmanuel. My top political advisor is somebody who is a descendent of Holocaust survivors. My closeness to the Jewish American community was probably what propelled me to the U.S. Senate,” Obama said.
“I think that sometimes, particularly in the Middle East, there’s the feeling of the friend of my enemy must be my enemy, and the truth of the matter is that my outreach to the Muslim community is designed precisely to reduce the antagonism and the dangers posed by a hostile Muslim world to Israel and to the West,” Obama went on to say.
These statements combine some of Obama’s worst traits: arrogance, condescension, and detachment from reality.
Obama regards himself much like a teacher who oversees a classroom of sometimes unruly, sometimes dim-witted children. His magnificence is sometimes hidden from them. And so it is left for America’s philosopher-king to explain — in simply, easy-to-understand words — why things are the way they are.
In this instance, the anxiety Israel feels toward for Obama is not rooted in his unwise policies or his disgraceful past treatment of the Israeli prime minister. No, the cause is Obama’s middle name.
In addition, Israelis are a bit too dull to see the miracles that have resulted from Barack the Great’s outreach to the “Muslim world.”
The truth is that whatever Obama’s outreach to the Muslim community is designed to do, it has — as Jen points out — been a complete failure. Israel’s wariness toward Obama is rooted in his pursuit of an agenda that is as harmful to Israel. But all of this is beyond the realm of comprehension for Obama. For him, it all comes down to his middle name. We have rarely, if ever, seen self-delusion on a scale quite like this.
