Only my closest friends are aware of the hasty steps I was contemplating if Barack Hussein Obama had been denied a second term. That would have been really much too much for me; there's a limit. Do I have strength of stone and flesh of brass?
That's just what we would've needed, for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to win not just here, but there - when winning there is more important. The three-stranded rope - Sheldon Adelson, Mitt Romney and Netanyahu - would have been a wound around our necks and choked us. Now, at least, we can breathe.
I got up in the morning and trembled as I turned on the television to find MSNBC announcing that New Hampshire's four measly electors had been captured by the president. That was the swallow that portended good tidings. I opened the window, hoping the same swallow would fly through here. It did - I saw it with my own eyes.
Not that we were so satisfied with Obama's first term, which was strewn with frustrations and disappointments. The road to heaven, apparently, must detour past hell. But what did they expect from a president who inherited a disaster, and against whom all the crazies, both domestic and foreign, ganged up - this one with actual terror and that one with ideological violence?
Our government was a party to this opposition front, which even tried to steal Obama's identity from him, questioning who his real father was, who was the loose woman who bore him, where this little Muslim was really born, and if his diplomas from Harvard were genuine. Is it any surprise that during the first debate he looked tired? He was being emotionally worn down by all the scoundrels.
Now that he’s won, I feel obligated, on my own behalf − on behalf of all of us − to apologize to him. Don’t be mad at us, dear friend. When we could see on your face that your Israeli guest was not exactly to your taste, we didn’t take it personally, really. Here, too, there are more than a few people like yourself, who have a hard time tolerating our leader. They, too, believe that he’s hard to believe, or believe in.
And yet despite Netanyahu and his gang, you demonstrated your friendship to us. No American president before you had ever showered us with so much that was good and necessary. In an aggravating demonstration of ingratitude, you were depicted here as an enemy. Israel is the only country in the world who preferred your rival over you. Because in Israel they don’t know how to say thank you, because Israel is never satisfied − you give it a supportive finger in a hostile environment, and it always wants the whole hand. It’s a lousy national characteristic, which obligates us to apologize.
From now, you need no longer fear “the Jewish vote,” or worry about contributions you won’t receive if you don’t toe the line. I have no idea how you will act in a second term, and whether you’ll remember what was done to you by the Las Vegas casino king. But my impression is that you don’t hold grudges. A big man forgives the little foxes, and a man who seeks to do good will triumph over the bad guys.
But forgiveness doesn’t mean obsequiousness. You must continue what you tried to do at the beginning of your term. Then you didn’t succeed, but now we’re telling you: Finish it. For our sake, finish it.
When you wind up your tenure at the White House in four more years, we are liable to be finishing up our term here as the safe house for the Jewish people, and for all the state’s citizens. A binational state is lurking at our doorway, and if we don’t banish it soon, it will become the reality of our life and death.
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