Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. See, for example, Dan Senor, “Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote,” The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904353504576568710341742174.html. 2. For example, Natasha Mozgovaya, “Obama campaign does not shy from his record on Israel,” Ha'aretz, September 5, 2011, http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/focus-u-s-a/obama-campaign-does-not-shy-from-his-record-on-israel-1.382720. 3. The Obama administration has repeatedly supported Israel at the United Nations—most notably when it sided with Israel over the Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of committing war crimes in its 2008-2009 Gaza War, when it vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's settlement building in the Occupied Territories, and when it condemned and threatened to veto the Palestinian Authority's application for UN membership. 4. See for example, James D. Besser, “Strategic Ties And Obama's Kishkes,” The Jewish Week, November 30, 2010, http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/international/strategic_ties_and_obamas_kishkes. 5. On Obama's “Jewish problem” in the 2012 election, see John Heilemann, “The Tsuris,” New York Magazine, September 18, 2011, http://nymag.com/news/politics/israel-2011-9/; and Laura Meckler, “Jewish Donors Warn Obama on Israel,” The Wall Street Journal, May 19, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703509104576331661918527154.html. 6. Charles Levinson, “U.S., Israel Build Military Cooperation,” The Wall Street Journal, August 14, 2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703321004575427272550050504.html. 7. Aaron David Miller, “Bibi and Barack,” Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/02/opinion/la-oe-miller-bibi-barack-20120102. 8. President Obama inadvertently indicated his personal dislike of Prime Minister Netanyahu when a private conversation between him and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a G-20 summit in November 2011 was picked up on a microphone and overheard by reporters. See “Sarkozy calls Netanyahu ‘liar’ in remarks to Obama,” The Financial Times, November 8, 2011, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3af99210-0a2d-11e1-85ca-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1hIcXZaCs. 9. “Remarks by the President at the AIPAC Policy Conference 2011,” The White House, May 22, 2011, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/22/remarks-president-aipac-policy-conference-2011. 10. Haim Malka, Crossroads: The Future of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2011), p. 56, http://csis.org/files/publication/110908_Malka_CrossroadsUSIsrael_Web.pdf. 11. Haim Malka, Crossroads: The Future of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership, p. XVIII. 12. Quoted in Heilemann, “The Tsuris.” 13. President Obama clearly expressed this view in an interview with Fox News: “Additional settlement building does not contribute to Israel's security. I think it makes it harder for them to make peace with their neighbours…it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous.” Quoted in “Israel defies US on settlements,” The Financial Times, November 18, 2009, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/46b47ff0-d39f-11de-8caf-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1hIcXZaCs. 14. Shai Feldman, “Beyond September: Lessons from Failed Mideast Diplomacy,” Middle East Brief no. 54, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, August 2011, http://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/meb/MEB54.pdf. 15. Malka, Crossroads, p. 66. 16. “Statement of General David H. Petraeus, U.S. Army Commander, U.S. Central Command, before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the posture of U.S. Central Command,” March 16, 2010, http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2010/03%20March/Petraeus%2003-16-10.pdf. 17. Quoted in Jeffrey Goldberg, “Obama on Zionism and Hamas,” The Atlantic, May 12, 2008, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2008/05/obama-on-zionism-and-hamas/8318/. 18. “Remarks by President Obama and President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority in Press Availability,” The White House, May 28, 2009, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-obama-and-president-abbas-palestinian-authority-press-availabilit. 19. The official platform of the Likud Party (the dominant party in Israel's current coalition government), however, still opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state. See http://www.knesset.gov.il/elections/knesset15/elikud_m.htm. 20. See “Full text of Netanyahu's foreign policy speech at Bar Ilan,” Ha'aretz, June 14, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/news/full-text-of-netanyahu-s-foreign-policy-speech-at-bar-ilan-1.277922. 21. Moreover, the kind of truncated Palestinian state that Netanyahu envisages is one with limited sovereignty and probably covering only the Gaza Strip and about 50–60 percent of the West Bank—a far cry from what Palestinians are seeking. 22. Most Israeli Jews share this view. In a survey taken in September 2011, 54 percent of Israeli Jews believed that it was not in Israel's interest for a Palestinian state to be immediately established. “The Peace Index: September 2011,” The Israel Democracy Institute, http://www.peaceindex.org/indexMonthEng.aspx?num=232&monthname=September. 23. For an expression of this, see Thom Shanker, “Defense Chief Says Israel Must Mend Arab Ties,” The New York Times, December 2, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/world/middleeast/panetta-says-israel-must-mend-ties-with-arab-neighbors.html. 24. In a 2006 speech, before he became prime minister for the second time, Netanyahu drew a direct analogy between Iran and Nazi Germany, repeatedly declaring: “It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.” He also claimed that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.” See Peter Hirschberg, “Netanyahu: It's 1938 and Iran is Germany; Ahmadinejad is preparing another Holocaust,” Ha'aretz, November 14, 2006, http://www.haaretz.com/news/netanyahu-it-s-1938-and-iran-is-germany-ahmadinejad-is-preparing-another-holocaust-1.205137. More recently, speaking at a ceremony held at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum and memorial, in January 2011, Netanyahu stated: “we, the Jewish people, cannot ignore the lessons learned from the Holocaust as they apply to the present day. New oppressors deny the Holocaust as they call for our destruction. Iran and its pawns, Hezbollah and Hamas, call for the annihilation of the Jewish State and openly act to that end…Iran is even arming itself with nuclear weapons to realize that goal, and until now the world has not stopped it. The threat to our existence, to our future, is not theoretical.” See “PM Netanyahu's Address at the National Ceremony Opening the Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day at Yad Vashem,” January 5, 2011, http://www.pmo.gov.il/PMOEng/Communication/PMSpeaks/speechshoa010511.htm. 25. In a survey taken in February 2007, 82 percent of Israeli Jews said that a nuclear-armed Iran would constitute an existential danger to Israel. See “The Peace Index: February 2007,” The Israel Democracy Institute, http://www.peaceindex.org/indexMonthEng.aspx?num=5&monthname=February. There is, however, some disagreement within the Israeli political and security establishment over whether a nuclear-armed Iran would actually pose an existential threat to Israel. For instance, Tamir Pardo, the head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, has recently suggested otherwise. See Barak Ravid, “Mossad chief: Nuclear Iran not necessarily existential threat to Israel,” Ha'aretz, December 29, 2011, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/mossad-chief-nuclear-iran-not-necessarily-existential-threat-to-israel-1.404227; see also Dalia Dassa Kay, “Do Israelis Really Want to Bomb Iran?” Foreign Policy.com, January 11, 2012, http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/12/do_israelis_really_want_to_bomb_iran. 26. In a survey taken in March 2009, 54 percent of the Israeli public wanted Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear sites if the international community failed to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons. See http://truman.huji.ac.il/poll-view.asp?id=257. More recently, in a November 2011 poll, 41 percent of Israelis supported an immediate strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, and 39 percent opposed it. See “Haaretz poll: Israelis evenly split over attacking Iran,” Ha'aretz, November 3, 2011, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/haaretz-poll-israelis-evenly-split-over-attacking-iran-1.393378. 27. James Reynolds, “Israel's fears of a nuclear Iran,” January 20, 2012, BBC News, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16655995. 28. See, for example, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel, “Israel and U.S. at odds over timetables and red lines for Iran,” Ha'aretz, January 15, 2012, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-and-u-s-at-odds-over-timetables-and-red-lines-for-iran-1.407346. 29. The United States and Israel are widely suspected to be engaged already, individually or jointly, in a covert military and intelligence campaign to sabotage and disrupt Iran's nuclear program. On America's “secret war” against Iran, see David E. Sanger, “America's Deadly Dynamics With Iran,” The New York Times, November 5, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/sunday-review/the-secret-war-with-iran.html?pagewanted=all; Eli Lake, “Operation Sabotage,” The New Republic, July 14, 2010, http://www.tnr.com/article/world/75952/operation-sabotage; and Seymour Hersh, “Preparing the Battlefield,” The New Yorker, July 7, 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh. On Israel's see, Ronen Bergman, The Secret War with Iran (Free Press, 2011). 30. Jonathan Steele, “Israel asked US for green light to bomb nuclear sites in Iran,” The Guardian, September 25, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/25/iran.israelandthepalestinians1. The fact that the Bush administration did not supply Israel with “bunker-busting” bombs, which Israel could have used to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, also suggests that it opposed an Israeli military strike. See Thom Shanker, “U.S. Quietly Supplies Israel With Bunker-Busting Bombs,” The New York Times, September 23, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/world/us-quietly-supplies-israel-with-bunker-busting-bombs.html. 31. For a detailed analysis of Israel's view of the Arab Spring, see Daniel Byman, “Israel's Pessimistic View of the Arab Spring,” The Washington Quarterly 34, no. 3 (Summer 2011), http://twq.com/11summer/docs/11summer_Byman.pdf. 32. When asked in a November 2011 survey how the changes in the Arab world will affect Israel, 68.5 percent of Israeli Jews said that Israel's strategic situation was worse as a result of events in the Arab world. See “The Peace Index: November 2011,” The Israel Democracy Institute, http://www.peaceindex.org/indexMonthEng.aspx?num=237&monthname=November. 33. Some in Israel have even blamed President Obama for Mubarak's downfall, hyperbolically claiming that Obama “lost Egypt.” See Amy Teibel, “Barack Obama's Egypt Response Slammed in Israel,” Associated Press, February 3, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/03/egypt-protests-barack-oba_n_817992.html. More recently, Israel's National Security Council criticized the Obama administration's attitude toward the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as “naïve,” and expressed the hope that Obama would take a “harder stance.” See Shlomo Cesana, “National Security Council: Obama naive on Muslim Brotherhood,” Israel Hayom, January 3, 2012, http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=2481. 34. See Shanker, “Defense Chief Says Israel Must Mend Arab Ties”; and Thomas L. Friedman, “The Arab Awakening and Israel,” The New York Times, November 29, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/opinion/israel-and-the-arab-awakening.html. Additional informationNotes on contributorsDov WaxmanDov Waxman is an associate professor of political science at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is the author of The Pursuit of Peace and the Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending / Defining the Nation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and co-author of Israel's Palestinians: The Conflict Within (Cambridge University Press, 2011)