UNHEALTHY RESOLUTION

Jerusalem Post editorial 27.05.15

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Unhealthy-resolution-404201

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Little attention was paid in Israel to the latest UN anti-Israel extravaganza. Presumably we’ve grown inured to the hatred spouted at the Jewish state.

While the Arab Spring’s carnage boggles the civilized mind, the World Health Organization, the UN’s public health agency, has identified the true transgressor – Israel.

WHO’s annual assembly last week condemned Israel for “violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan.”

This is a travesty in every conceivable aspect. While the bloodbath in the region continues unabated, the international forum has found nothing else worth focusing upon but Israel. Only Israel was singled out by the WHO assembly.

This comes despite the fact that Israeli medics and hospitals provide indisputably altruistic treatment to spiraling numbers of civilians and enemy combatants from Syria, fleeing that country’s killing fields. The most cutting- edge medical care is given critically wounded victims who reach the Golan border.

But most disheartening of all is the fact that this disgraceful resolution was adopted in Geneva by a whopping majority of 104 to 4, with 6 abstentions and 65 no-shows. Israel, unjustly accused and unjustly convicted in another UN kangaroo court, was condemned even by European delegations, which purport to occupy the high moral ground – although they ought to know all about blood libel.

Gallingly, the Syrian government – which has been mass-murdering its own citizens – submitted a document that urged WHO to “intervene immediately and take effective measures to end inhuman Israeli practices that target the health of Syrian citizens.”

The Israeli “occupation authorities” were accused of “continuing to experiment on Syrian and Arab prisoners with medicines and drugs and to inject them with pathogenic viruses.” This charge aroused no revulsion apparently among the participants. Not one representative of any country of the European Union was outraged, protested, or walked out of the deliberations.

This could be perceived as farcical, were it not in fact tragic.

The Palestinian Authority, Israel’s purported peace partner, blasted Israel for supposed sins against Gazans and West Bank Arabs, cynically omitting mention of the fact that Israeli hospitals are where the seriously ill Palestinians choose to head to when in need, including PA higher-ups. Gaza’s Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh sent his granddaughter here and Mahmoud Abbas’s wife was recently operated on in an Israeli hospital.

We Israelis serially impress ourselves and pat ourselves on the back for our good deeds – and these are prodigious indeed, even under challenging circumstances.

Our knee-jerk reaction is to dispatch our rescue and medical crews to any disaster site anywhere in the world. We helped during Turkey’s last major earthquake, although all we received in return was invective and hostility. We sent our medics to Haiti after its earthquake, only to be berated in medieval libel-style for organ-theft. We aided the Nepalese victims of the latest Himalayan earthquake, only again to be maligned for a variety of supposed nefarious ulterior motives.

There seemingly is nothing the Jewish state can do to convince its defamers of its true nature, no more than individual Jews could before Israel’s independence.

This is hardly the first bizarre anti-Israel resolution to be produced by UN forums for whom Israel remains an unparalleled atrocious ogre. But this resolution stands out for its utterly outlandish misrepresentation and boundless wickedness. It must be judged the most abhorrent since the UN equated Zionism with racism in 1975 (an equivalence the UN itself later rued and retracted).

Time and again the most brutal dictators dispatch to the UN their mouthpieces, who in deadpan fashion declaim the obligatory human rights catchphrases, while promoting Israel’s denunciation for any and every imaginable trumped-up crime against humankind. 

All the while, representatives of self-righteous democracies smugly vote for the vilification of a fellow democracy, as if thereby vindicating their own virtue. Foreign ministries – which demand existential risks of Israel – don’t raise a semi-quizzical eyebrow, but go with the Israel- bashing flow and countenance the new Judeophobic zeitgeist.

Their stock pretext is that this isn’t anti-Semitism, but a legitimate critique of Israeli policies. Yet only Israel is thus pilloried. Moreover, Israel is wrongfully and falsely damned in a grotesque spectacle of hate.

UK MONEY IS 'STILL GOING TO CONVICTED PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS'

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by Anil Dawar, May 22, 2015

TAXPAYERS' cash given to help rebuild Palestine is being used to "reward and incentivise" terrorists, it has been claimed.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has taken around £130million in foreign aid from the Department for International Development over the past five years.

The public cash is being used to help it fund its estimated £84million annual wage bill for convicted terrorists locked up in Israel, according to campaigners.

Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) claims that Britain may have been "intentionally misled" by the PA which last year claimed to have stopped the controversial payments but was later discovered to be 

channelling the cash through another political group.

MPs today called for the Government to suspend all aid to the PA until payments to convicted terrorists cease.

In a joint statement, Tory MPs Guto Bebb, James Morris and Andrew Percy said: "British taxpayers will be appalled to discover that the Palestinian Authority is handing their hard-earned money to convicted Palestinian terrorists.

"The PA should be strongly condemned for deceiving well-intentioned donor countries into thinking that it had ended this shocking practice.

"The British Government must seriously reconsider its provision of aid to the PA's general budget until it ceases this abhorrent practice of financially rewarding and incentivising terrorism."

The PA's practice of paying huge salaries to jailed terrorists was exposed by PMW in 2011.

The money is reserved for those "resisting the occupation" of lands Palestinians regard as theirs but which are part of the Israeli state.

Around 5,500 Palestinian terrorists could be drawing salaries and bonuses.

Among those now eligible are Abdullah Barghouti, Hassan Salameh and Jamal Abu Al-Hijja who are serving 122 life sentences between them for planning suicide bombings.

The number of those being paid could rise to 200,000 when the families of suicide bombers and the wounded are added.

Some of the longest serving prisoners will be getting up to £2,000 a month plus bonuses for their wives and children.

PMW said grants on release can be as much as £50,000, which dwarfs the £300 average monthly wage in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority has said the money is not salaries but welfare payments.

Itamar Marcus, director of PMW, this week presented a report on the issue to the British, Dutch and German parliaments.

He told MPs at Westminster that Palestinian political leaders last year ordered the payments be halted after an outcry from Western donors which give around £640million a year to help rebuild the state.

Although President Mahmoud Abbas publicly ordered the Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs to halt the payments, he then passed on the duty to the specially created Commission of Prisoners' Affairs run by the Palestine Liberation Organisation, meaning the money is still being paid out.

Mr Marcus said: "The PA's creation of a PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs to fulfil the same services previously supplied by the PA Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs, was done solely to satisfy Western donors' demands that the PA cease paying salaries to terrorist prisoners.

"The existence of the PLO Commission has not changed the PA practice of paying salaries to terrorists.

"The PA continues to reward and pay salaries to terrorists in prison in spite of European and US demands that donor money to the PA not be used to reward terrorists."

Last night, a DFID spokesman said: "UK aid to the Palestinian Authority is used for the sole purpose of paying the salaries of civil servants, who are responsible for providing health, education and other essential services."

ISRAEL’S HUMANITY IN NEPAL

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By GIORA WEISER  16^th May 2015

‘Grant me the physical and mental strength to be forever prepared to help the poor and the rich, the good and the bad, my love and my enemy, and may I always see the human in the infirm,” instructs the Jewish Physician’s Prayer, attributed to the great sage Maimonides.

Instinctively, when I heard that there had been a series of massive earthquakes in Nepal just over two weeks ago, I knew that I would soon receive the call. Just as we did two years ago after Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines and after the massive earthquakes in Haiti three years prior to that, Israel would not hesitate to outstretch its arm to those in need. Even when natural disasters ravage nations like Turkey and Iran, as Jews and Israelis we are morally commanded to offer our assistance.

I joined hundreds of other Israelis, who each left their worried families without a moment’s hesitation to board the plane to Nepal, where we would set up a field hospital in Kathmandu.

The scenes in Nepal were horrific.

Scores of badly injured people lay untreated in hospitals and medical facilities, the local doctors completely overwhelmed by their numbers. We worked around the clock to treat as many as we could. As well as treating people who made it to the Israeli field hospital, we were treating many Nepalese who were flown in by our search and rescue team.

One girl was brought to us by the Israeli rescue team from a small village five days after the earthquakes.

She was found unconscious alone in a wooded area and no one knew who she was or how she got there. At first she was in a life-threatening condition – she had suffered a major brain hemorrhage and had to undergo emergency surgery. However, on the last day of our mission, we witnessed her get out of bed and try to stand up.

Nevertheless, the devastation and trauma were such that there were very few silver linings during the mission.

A further example summed this up.

Another girl was brought to our hospital with relatively minor injuries and after a short while we wanted to release her. However, she had no relatives or family that we could find. She had no idea what happened to her father and mother and it was heart wrenching to see that even when we successfully treated our patients there would be mental, emotional and psychological scars and anguish for many years to come. Whole families and communities were ripped apart and devastated.

It is on occasions like these when one’s humanity is sorely tested. Every day at work in the pediatric emergency room at Shaare Tzedek Hospital I see trauma and injuries, but not on the scale that we witnessed in Nepal.

The experience affects all of us who were there and remains long after we return to our families and loved ones.

Nevertheless, I know I speak for every one of my colleagues when I say that we would willingly return without question if we are asked.

It is our job as physicians and healers to help the sick, the ill and the infirm.

However, as Jews, it our duty and moral imperative.

I saw and read the inflammatory reports and statements leveled against Israel for sending medical delegations to Nepal, especially the inhumane questioning of Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW). There we were, covered in blood, drenched in sweat, and sometimes tears, and exhausted, both mentally and physically after ending another 12-hour shift during which we saved multiple lives and mended broken bodies as best we could.

It is ironic that Roth can pontificate from the safety of a nice warm home thousands of miles away from the grief and devastation on his computer or smartphone about a nation he constantly maligns as non-caring and heartless.

Here in the depths of despair, when the Nepalese cried out for assistance, Israel sent its sons and daughters to their aid. This is how someone who is serious about human rights acts.

Less than a year ago I joined my Nachal Brigade as they entered Gaza to end the rocket barrages on our population centers. There too my task was to heal the sick and treat the wounded.

It mattered little whether it was my fellow soldier or a Gazan youth that required attention.

Regardless of headline-grabbing reports and anonymous sources pounced on by the international media like those from Breaking the Silence, we who serve in war and in peace know the truth.

We don’t seek acclaim or thanks, our sense of collective solidarity even with strangers across the world impels us to assist, to treat and heal.

This is Israel, Mr. Roth.

Perhaps if you came out and saw us from behind your computer screens you would understand what motivates us and what binds us to one of our founding doctrines of Tikkun Olam, fixing the world.

I am deeply proud to be part of a nation which does not hesitate for a moment to assist those in need wherever they may be.

Being part of the Jewish state is not just about self-governance, freedom and liberation for our people, it is also an opportunity for us as Jews to connect collectively with our ethical and moral foundations as a people which, among other things, instruct us to “always see the human in the infirm,” as Maimonides wrote around a millennium ago.

The writer is a doctor in the Pediatric Emergency Department at Shaare Tzedek Hospital in Jerusalem and was part of the Israeli medical delegation and field hospital in Nepal.

PUBLICATION OF ISRAELI SOLDIERS' ACCOUNTS CLOUDED BY POLITICAL AGENDA

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Gerald Steinberg, 9-5-2015

Breaking the Silence failed to to provide basic details necessary for corroborating its claims.

On May 4, 2015, Breaking the Silence, a small Israeli non-governmental organisation, published anonymous allegations from Israel Defence Forces soldiers who are said to have fought in Gaza during summer 2014, purporting to "close the yawning gaps between what the IDF and government spokespersons told the public about the combat scenarios, and the reality described by the soldiers …" While there are many problems with the claims, many journalists, including from Australia, repeated the accusation of a few disgruntled Israelis, without any verification. This, despite the failure of this organisation to provide basic details necessary for corroborating claims made in this publication.

Naming sources is a basic prerequisite for making legal claims, allowing accounts to be verified and witnesses to be questioned. Dates must be provided and locations cited to understand the broader context in which events were alleged to have taken place. Without this information, we are left with a radical political agenda that exploits the language of international law.

In the 200-plus pages of "testimony", mostly from low-ranking soldiers, the names and the units in which they served are left unidentified. Similarly absent are dates of the alleged events, making verification by competent authorities impossible. In the very difficult war between Israelis soldiers and Hamas-led terror cells in Gaza firing missiles from houses, mosques, schools (as recently documented in a rare UN report), and hospitals, context is indispensable.

The lack of details prevents any understanding of these alleged incidents. There is no way to verify the accuracy of the testimonies nor is it possible to view these events in the broader context of the extreme difficulty of defending Israeli citizens from thousands of Palestinian rocket and terror attacks – each one a war crime.

Breaking the Silence's "methodology" to obtain the "testimonies" is also highly problematic. Many of the statements include very leading questions asked by interviewers, often constructed so as to elicit answers that falsely magnify the appearance of wrongdoing. In contrast, the absence of questions that would provide greater context, clarification or justification for certain actions, is striking. 

Moreover, much of the framing of these "testimonies" enhances their politicised nature such as the use of misleading titling. In one instance, a soldier's statement carried the sensationalist header: "I really, really wanted to shoot her in the knees," but the text, for those who read it, describes the young Israeli's fear that an approaching woman was sent by Hamas and could potentially be carrying explosives that would kill him and his friends. IDF soldiers in Gaza have been targeted by suicide bombers, including women, making the fear of such an attack credible.

The deceiving headline also hides the essential fact that the soldiers fired near her feet, scaring her off and successfully resolving the situation in a non-lethal manner.

By not publishing key information, the organisation is expecting readers – in Israel, but primarily abroad, including Australia, to blindly trust it and to suspect no agenda other than the documentation of valid complaints by soldiers. However, as shown by NGO Monitor's systematic research, there are also important financial dimensions. Breaking the Silence receives substantial funding from radical Europeans, who link their donations to the number of statements that are collected. The Dutch church organisation ICCO demanded at least 90 incriminating interviews, while Oxfam (which claims to promote a humanitarian agenda) linked funding directly with the provision of "as many interviews as possible" regarding "immoral activities". These arrangements highlight the clear financial interest in presenting as many negative testimonies as possible.

Indeed, the failure to examine the motivations and history of the donors to this tiny group is of major importance. These funders are involved in anti-Israel activities from Ireland, Britain and the Netherlands and have actively supported, funded and partnered with organisations promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targeting the Jewish state. The funders are clearly interested in portraying the actions of IDF soldiers as criminal and callous, thereby hoping to pave the way for prosecutions targeting Israel at the International Criminal Court. This is an extension of the long Arab-Israeli wars by other means.

Of course no army is perfect, and some soldiers may have legitimate complaints. But as in any democratic society, this must be done through legal and administrative processes, and not by garnering headlines in the foreign media. Given the obsession with Israel, the deep hostility, and the large sums that are available, particularly to NGOs that join in this form of modern warfare, consumers of such publications, including journalists and government officials, should exercise caution and a healthy degree of skepticism.

UK TAXPAYERS FUND 'PRO-TERRORIST' PLAY

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by Nick Craven for The Mail on Sunday 3^rd  May 2015

For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/pso2kte

£15,000 of public money given to show based on the words of Hamas killers.

·       •Arts Council England is funding a UK tour of their play, called 'The Siege'

·       •Tells of 2002 stand-off when Israeli troops cornered gunmen in Church of the    Nativity, Bethlehem

·       •Play is based on accounts of Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militants

·       •Jewish leaders fear taxpayers might be funding play promoting ‘terrorism as legitimate’

British taxpayers are to fund a play sympathising with Palestinian terrorist groups who have murdered civilians and carried out suicide bombings on crowded commuter buses.

Arts Council England is handing over £15,000 to producers of a unashamedly one-sided drama based on accounts from the gunmen and bombers of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade.

The money will fund a UK tour of their play The Siege, telling of a 2002 stand-off when Israeli troops cornered militants in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, worshipped as Christ’s birthplace.

Arts Council England is handing over £15,000 to producers of a unashamedly one-sided drama based on accounts from the gunmen and bombers of Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ BrigadeThe production has already received cash from the British Council and the EU for performances in the Palestinian territories, and the new handout will fund a ten-city UK tour starting in Manchester on May 13.

Jewish leaders last night raised ‘extreme concern’ that the British taxpayer might be funding a play promoting ‘terrorism as legitimate’

In publicity for the play, Hamas and Al Aqsa Brigade terrorists are merely referred to as ‘fighters’ with no acknowledgement of their cold-blooded murder of civilians.

The siege lasted 39 days and only ended when 13 of the ring-leaders were allowed safe passage and deported to various European countries. It is from these men’s accounts that the play’s script has been woven together.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry insists that all the men have blood on their hands, but two in particular have admitted as much.

Their leader, Ibrahim Abayat, exiled to Zaragoza in Spain, told the New York Times that he and his men shot and killed a female Israeli settler near Jerusalem in 2002. The Israelis say he was also involved in countless other atrocities.

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The money will fund a UK tour of their play The Siege, telling of a 2002 stand-off when Israeli troops cornered militants in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem (pictured), worshipped as Christ’s birthplace.

Another of the exiles, Jihad Jaara – who went to Ireland – also told journalists that he kidnapped and murdered 71-year-old Avi Boaz, a Jewish US citizen living in Israel.

Among the other atrocities linked to some of the 13 is a suicide bombing in a Jerusalem suburb in March 2002 which killed 11 Israelis.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews said: ‘We would be extremely concerned if British taxpayers were funding a play that promoted terrorism as positive and legitimate.’

The play’s British co-director, Zoe Lafferty, left no doubt where her sympathies lay, saying Palestinians pick up arms ‘not because they’re crazy religious fanatics [but] to defend their families’.

We're extremely concerned she said last night: ‘This production is pro-human rights, pro-justice and pro-equality. Our work is trying to talk about the truth of what’s happening on the ground and counter the propaganda that’s constantly being directed at the Palestinians.’

Asked if the play was pro-terrorists, she said: ‘That’s just insulting and comes from a very biased misunderstanding of what we’re doing. To have to engage in whether Hamas and the Al Aqsa Brigade are terrorists is the wrong question to ask.’

Arts Council England confirmed the grant but said it was ‘not our role to censor the artists’ message.’

The British Council confirmed they had given £14,000 for the West Bank tour, adding: ‘We also support projects in Israel.’ The EU did not reply to a request for comment.

THE PALESTINIANS SHOULD EXTEND A FRIENDLY HAND TO ISRAEL

By Mehdi Majid Abdallah April 23, 2015

For the full article go to: http://tinyurl.com/lmcsh9y                                                              

In his column on the liberal website Elaph.com, Kurdish-Iraqi writer Mehdi Majid 'Abdallah called on the Palestinians and the Arabs in general to renounce the terrorism of Hamas and to extend a friendly hand to Israel. He wrote that, since its founding, Israel has been facing terrorism labeled as "resistance," and that today it is defending itself against Hamas, which is firing rockets on its civilian population. He added that Hamas, rather than Israel, was responsible for the death of innocent Palestinians, whereas Israel extended medical treatment to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

"Ever since its founding in the late 1940s, the young state of Israel has been facing constant terror labeled as 'resistance.' I do not mean to say that all Palestinians are terrorists, for some of them love life and prefer the culture of peace and to live in peace and security alongside Israel. I do not know if Hamas, when it fires its rockets randomly into Israeli cities, thinks of the fact that they will hit women and children who have done nothing wrong other than choose to live in the land that was stolen from them thousands of years ago and has now been restored to them. [Today] they wish to build this land, but Palestinian terrorism constantly sabotages their livelihood, their development [efforts] and their prosperity. Whether we like it or not, the land on which the Palestinians live belongs to the Jews, and there is historic and religious evidence of this, both Islamic and non-Islamic. I shall not present it here, but the reader is welcome to search the Internet and find plenty of proof for what I say.

"Today the Palestinians have begun to understand that Hamas is a serious liability and a terrorist movement. That is why we saw no significant Palestinian opposition to the international and Arab decisions to designate Hamas a terror organization. The glamour of so-called 'resistance' faded after the deeds of its leaders and perpetrators were exposed, and [now] they no longer convince any intelligent person.

"Hamas leader Isma'il Haniya is always calling to boycott Israel, eliminate it and destroy it, and is always urging the Palestinians not to maintain any ties with it, in any domain. He has even sent thousands of young Palestinians to die [for this cause]. But when his sister, his daughter and some other members of his family fell ill, one after the other, we immediately saw him send them to the best hospitals in Tel Aviv, where they received treatment before being sent back to Gaza unharmed. Why [were they sent back unharmed]? If Israel was [really] a murderer of Palestinian women and children, as the Arab media falsely maintains, it would have regarded Haniya's relatives as choice prey. If Israel [really] wanted to exterminate the Palestinians, as the Arabs and Muslims falsely maintain, why didn't it have Haniya's sister and daughter killed or raped?

"Instead of [taking] the funds that are given to the Palestinian people and investing them in the poor and the needy, Hamas and other Gazan movements rush [to invest them in] the building of secret tunnels and passages for purposes of terror...

"According to a UN report, in 2008 Israel, which the Palestinians claim murders innocent children, took in 144,838 Palestinians for purposes of medical treatment. In 2009 this figure grew by 20%, reaching 172, 863, in 2010 it reached 175,151, in 2011 it grew by 13%, reaching 197,713, and in 2012 it reached 210,469. I wonder if any Arab country would do the same for Israelis?

"The Palestinian women and children who are killed in the Israeli army's defensive war against Hamas are not killed deliberately. They are collateral damage, for any war has innocent victims. Israel knows this well, as evidenced by the fact that, after every defensive military operation, it apologizes for the [death of] innocent victims and compensates their families morally and financially. Were it not for the reckless actions of Hamas, which constantly fires rockets into extensive parts of Israel [where] peaceful [people live], there would have been no innocent victims, because Israel's actions are directed against the terrorists.

"It is time that the Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians, who are deceived and drugged by false and baseless slogans, wake up and extend a friendly hand to Israel, so that peace and security can prevail and everyone can live in peace. Every decent Palestine should oppose Hamas and its terrorism against Israel. If the Palestinians want to avoid being harmed by Israeli fire, they should prevent Hamas from using their homes, mosques and schools [as bases from which] to launch its terrorist rockets at Israel."  
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ISRAEL ALONE

  

Bret Stephens in this WSJ article, April 20, 2015,  is suggesting that Israel be more independent! 

Recent conversations with senior Israeli officials are shot through with a sense of incredulity. They can’t understand what’s become of U.S. foreign policy.

They don’t know how to square Barack Obama’s promises with his policies. They fail to grasp how a president who pledged to work toward the abolition of nuclear weapons is pushing an accord with Tehran that guarantees their proliferation. They are astonished by the nonchalance with which the administration acquiesces in Iran’s regional power plays, or in al Qaeda’s gains in Yemen, or in the Assad regime’s continued use of chemical weapons, or in the battlefield successes of ISIS, or in Russia’s decision to sell advanced missiles to Tehran. They wonder why the president has so much solicitude for Ali Khamenei’s political needs, and so little for Benjamin Netanyahu’s.

In a word, the Israelis haven’t yet figured out that what America is isn’t what America was. They need to start thinking about what comes next.

The most tempting approach is to wait Mr. Obama out and hope for better days with his successor. Israel and the U.S. have gone through bad patches before—under Ford in the 1970s, Reagan in the early ’80s, Bush in the early ’90s, Clinton in the late ’90s. The partnership always survived the officeholders.

So why should it be different this time? Seventy percent of Americans see Israel in a favorable light, according to a February Gallup poll. The presidential candidates from both parties all profess unswerving friendship with the Jewish state, and the Republican candidates actually believe it. Mr. Obama’s foreign policy is broadly unpopular and likely to become more so as the fiascoes continue to roll in.

Yet it’s different this time. For two reasons, mainly.

First, the administration’s Mideast abdications are creating a set of irreversible realities for which there are no ready U.S. answers. Maybe there were things an American president could have done to help rescue Libya in 2011, Syria in 2013, and Yemen last year. That was before it was too late. But what exactly can any president do about the chaos unfolding now?

Shakespeare wrote that there was a tide in the affairs of men “which taken at the flood, leads men on to fortune.” Barack Obama always missed the flood.

Now the president is marching us past the point of no return on a nuclear Iran and thence a nuclear Middle East. When that happens, how many Americans will be eager to have their president intervene in somebody else’s nuclear duel? Americans may love Israel, but partly that’s because not a single U.S. soldier has ever died fighting on its behalf.

In other words, Mr. Obama is bequeathing not just a more dangerous Middle East but also one the next president will want to touch only with a barge pole. That leaves Israel alone to deal as best as it can with a broadening array of threats: thousands more missiles for Hezbollah, paid for by sanctions relief for Tehran; ISIS on the Golan Heights; an Iran safe, thanks to Russian missiles, from any conceivable Israeli strike.

The second reason follows from the first. Previous quarrels between Washington and Jerusalem were mainly about differing Mideast perceptions. Now the main issue is how the U.S. perceives itself.

Beginning with Franklin Roosevelt, every U.S. president took the view that strength abroad and strength at home were mutually reinforcing; that global security made us more prosperous, and that prosperity made us more secure.

Then along came Mr. Obama with his mantra of “nation building at home” and his notion that an activist foreign policy is a threat to the social democracy he seeks to build. Under his administration, domestic and foreign policy have been treated as a zero-sum game: If you want more of the former, do less of the latter. The result is a world of disorder, and an Israel that, for the first time in its history, must seek its security with an America that, say what it will, has nobody’s back but its own.

How does it do this? By recalling what it was able to do for the first 19 years of its existence, another period when the U.S. was an ambivalent and often suspicious friend and Israel was more upstart state than start-up nation.

That was an Israel that was prepared to take strategic gambles because it knew it couldn’t afford to wait on events. It did not consider “international legitimacy” to be a prerequisite for action because it also knew how little such legitimacy was worth. It understood the value of territory and terrain, not least because it had so little of it. It built its deterrent power by constantly taking the military initiative, not constructing defensive wonder-weapons such as Iron Dome. It didn’t mind acting as a foreign policy freelancer, and sometimes even a rogue, as circumstances demanded. “Plucky little Israel” earned the world’s respect and didn’t care, much less beg, for its moral approval.

Perhaps the next American president will rescue Israel from having to learn again what it once knew. Israelis would be wise not to count on it.