Except that it's obvious from this round that Obama did not, in fact, "learn his lesson."

And I have trouble believing it's better for Israel. I do tend to agree that the entire peace process is a farce, and so it's unfortunate for Israel that they have to keep making those "painful concessions" so as not be be seen as the unreasonable party by the "world community." On the other hand, Obama's actions are moving the range of what is regarded as "reasonable concessions" by Israel, assuring that the price of continuing to pass Europe's reasonableness test will be vastly more painful concessions in the future.

In other words, this is an improvement only if one believes Israel is ultimately doomed, and we're only wrangling over how much longer it can survive.

Just two points I think should have been made here.

1) The election of Obama was supposedly a press of the 'reset button' in terms of international relations. President Obama was supposed to be so smart, so wise, so capable of nuance that all our foreign policy woes were going to just disappear and America would enjoy a new era of international cooperation, brotherhood and friendship. Yet, every time Obama makes a statement on foreign policy, there are the giant gaffs and misstatements that Hilary contradicts, or the administration has to walk back after everybody starts screaming. How clumsy and inept can these people be?

2) Haven't we learned that America has to be very careful about what it says in the mid-east? That America has to be very direct and precise when it comes to talking about places like Isreal, Lebanon, Kuwait and Iraq? We've made ambigious statements regarding all these countries and the result has been aggression, invasion and bloodshed.

Obama hasn't hurt his chances one bit. He's in more danger of losing the black vote and the state of Hawaii than he is the Jewish vote. 80% of American Judasim votes hardcare anti-Republican. They see the GOP as the party of Christianity, and there is a lot of anti-Christian sentiment out there, especially among the secular Jewish majority, oddly enough.

For many Jews, Israel is barely on the radar, even less than say, USA-Italy relations specifically are for Italian-Americans (less because American Jews have no historical ties to Israel). For many others, the J-Street types, Israel is a bete noire.

As for the minority conservative Jewish bloc, they were already on the GOP side anyway. Obama can't hurt himself with that group and he has helped himself with the J-Street types.

And for the premillennial dispensationalist evangelicals eager to see Israel rise so that it can meet a fiery doom and usher in a rapturous age of 144,000 lucky winners, they too were already out of Obama's reach and this won't hurt any with them.

No, Obama has made a cynical calculation here, correctly. As long as the vast majority of American Judaism, like black America, remains unthinking reflexive Democrats, this is how they can expect to be treated by the party.

I've heard numerous anti-Israel types deride pro-Israel Christians as being premillennial dispensationalist evangelicals eager to see Israel rise so that it can meet a fiery doom," but I've never actually met someone holding this view. Conservatives tend to like Israel because it's a small democratic country constantly defending itself against its larger autocratic neighbors.

I guess Patrick J just knows more conservative evangelicals than I do.

We'll see, Donna. No Democrat ever went broke overestimating the complacency of Jewish or black supporters or their sympathizers for being taking for granted. We'll see if this one time is different. I take it BTW that as a "Christian supporter of Israel" you weren't remotely close to being likely to vote for Obama even before this, so this changes nothing, as was my point?

Four months?! How about four days? Obama's AIPAC speech was an almost immediate retreat when he declared that what we thought we heard was not what he said, and in any event it was not what he meant either.

Bebe is schooling Obama to cheers in Congress. The American people know who the bad guys are in the middle east, and a great many Americans have died at the hands of the same people who want to exterminate Jews and their nation.

This won't take four months, and I think the retreat has already started.

Patrick J: Donna's disagreement was with your description of why many Christians support Israel. Not with you analysis of how this would influence the next presidential election.

I'm sorry to say this Dennis, but I don't think that Obama's latest comments on Israel will hurt him...at least not any more than they might have done several years ago.

Obama's view of Israel has not changed and NO ONE who has paid any attention at all to him was surprised by what was done here. We expected Obama to publicly humilliate Bibi. The only blessing was that Bibi had the fortitude to slap him back. Bibi could probably get elected next week as President if he could run as a Republican.

That being said, no significant supporter of Obama is going to desert Obama over Israel. The secular Jews dumped Israel long ago - about three seconds after they discovered that most Evangelicals support Israel. ANYTHING Evangelicals support must be destroyed by secular Jews...as far as they are concerned we are the same as Nazi's and must be opposed at every turn.

Evangelicals almost universally oppose Obama and because of that one fact alone, maybe the single most supportive ethnic group in America Obama has are secular Jews (even more than blacks - some of who virulantly oppose Obama for a whole host of reasons left and right).

Nope, I'm sorry to say that Obama lost nothing here. He smartly calculated that this was all good and in the end he will unfortunately turn out to be right.