With the landslide election of republican (and Catholic) Bob Turner in the overwhelmingly democratic (and 40% Jewish) 9th Congressional District, one could imagine that the Jews of this section of Brooklyn and Queens, whether orthodox and reform, asked the following rhetorical question and were horrified by the answer:

If an American president had the explicit goal of destroying the state of Israel how would his policies differ from Barack Obama's?

Many columnists have delineated the Obama administration persistent anti-Israel/pro-Arab harangues including Philip Klein and Nile Gardner but no one has brought out the Obama administration's almost seething Israelophobia better than Dan Senor of  the Wall Street Journal.

We have accusations from Obama about Likud's supposed intransigence and the president's delegitimizing of Israeli settlements at the UN General Assembly while refusing to condemn Palestinian terrorism.

We have Hillary Clinton's degrading dressing down of Netanyahu in a well-publicized, 45-minute phone screed followed up with Obama's official and public humiliation of the Israeli prime minister during a visit to the White House.

After listening to almost three years of Obama's demeaning and dangerous threats to  Israel, the Jews of NY 9 have had enough. 

Clearly, the dreadful jobs picture had a major role in Turner's victory as well.  But here too perhaps a different rhetorical question could be motivating:

If an American president had the explicit goal of destroying the American economy how would his policies differ from Barack Obama's?

Claude can be reached at csandroff@gmail.com