Don't do us any favors.

Brunettes are troublemakers. They're worse than the Jews.
Charlie Chaplin

Mitt has taken his show to Israel, showing his solidarity with the Likud government. As a member of the tribe I must confess that it makes me a bit queasy. In the first place the jewish vote that he is supposed to be pandering to is not nearly as powerful as it is imagined. It will resonate much more clearly with his real target audience, the evangelicals here at home. Not to be outpandered, Barack Obama dispatched Leon Panetta over to Israel, to either try to spoil Mitt's party or to secure a few votes of his own, depending on your favored narrative.

There's an old saying, two jews, three opinions. We are not a monolithic block. J Street, Tikkun, Sheldon Adelson, Aipac, Eric Cantor, you got every political color of the hebrew rainbow. They made up less than 2% of the vote in the last election and tend to spread their political contributions around. But when Mitt goes down, and barring a biblically proportioned miracle, he is, who's going to get the blame for supporting him? Three guesses...

Read any article about Israel in Huffington Post or AlterNet these days and check out the comments. The anti semitic and anti Israel vitriol on the left, some of it coming from young enlightened liberal jews themselves, is beyond belief. Couple that with the traditional jew haters on the right and things could get ugly. Mitt Romney certainly isn't going to help matters any. Might even incite a little blowback after the election if Barack decides to ratchet the screws down a little tighter.

It is obvious that our current President is not a fan of Israel. He has stated that he wants to create some daylight between the two nations. I can't castigate him for this because I myself think Bibi is a calculating prick who plays us for fools. I don't believe that Barack has any conceptual problems with their existence, although it is entirely possible, he just never has anything positive to say about them, always looking like he has drank spoiled milk or is changing a dirty diaper when they come up in discussion.

The middle east is still a very dangerous neighborhood. The United States has traditionally stood behind Israel. They have encouraged them repeatedly not to act unilaterally, with the assurance that Uncle Sam will be there when the fan hits the shit. With this president and the wide gulf behind his words and his actions, I have my fingers crossed. He has suggested a return to the 1949 armistice line as a starting point for negotiations, disregarding history and a half century of aggression by Israel's neighbors.

If I was an Israeli, I don't think I would count on Obama. You can see it in his quotes, in his diffident body language. He is bright, calculating, a superb politician, but he is definitely not in any way a mensch.

Time to put Moshe Dayan's sculpture back in the White House. Right next to Winston's.