It’s a matter of trust. And the Israelis don’t have it when it comes to President Obama. In the most recent Jerusalem Post poll, the number of Israelis who see Obama as pro-Israeli is just 4 percent. That’s not a typo; it was down two points since June. Fully 51 per cent say Obama is more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli. ~Richard Wolffe

I confess that I find these numbers mystifying. If Bush had an 88% “pro-Israeli” rating, and his administration was partly responsible for Hamas’ acquisition of elected power in Gaza, one could conclude that public perception of an American President’s “pro-Israel” leanings has absolutely nothing to do with the susbstance of the policies he pursues. How could it have been “pro-Israeli” to encourage Olmert to wage his failed, counterproductive war in Lebanon? Yet this is what Bush did. To be fair, Obama supported the same failed, counterproductive war, just as he supported the operation in Gaza, and despite some slightly tougher rhetoric his stance on settlements is not really any different. How can Israeli opinion change so dramatically when the two men are virtually indistinguishable in their predictable, guaranteed support for Israel and most of its current policies?

I would have thought that one would need to be under the influence of mind-altering drugs to see Obama as “pro-Palestinian.” The idea that he is “pro-Palestinian” is so painfully, absurdly wrong that I don’t know quite what to make of it. I suppose it is possible that systematic misinformation could lead to such results, but even this would require a gullibility and willful blindness on the part of the general population that it seems unlikely. Wolffe remarked at one point that “it’s hard to be a mediator when one side feels you are overwhelmingly one-sided,” which is quite amusing when you consider that Wolffe is referring to the Israeli side believing that the U.S. under Obama is “overwhelmingly one-sided” in favor of the Palestinians. This is as close to the opposite of current political reality as one can get. How can anyone contend with public opinion so completely unmoored from reality?