In an essay published Wednesday in the Times of Israel, Times of Israel founding editor David Horovitz stated that President Barack Obama does not understand the concerns of the Israeli people, despite Obama’s claims to the contrary.

Horovitz stated that he endorses “every word” Obama has said about resolving the conflict with the Palestinians, and credited Obama with expressing many positive sentiments about Israel, but argued that the president’s actions and postures have not always matched his rhetoric.

Horovitz faulted the president for presenting a potential nuclear deal with Iran as being in Israel’s best interests, even though Iran’s leadership “almost daily calls for our destruction,” and will use a deal freeing up billions to fund its ongoing war against Israel “via terrorism and via its proxy armies in Lebanon and Gaza.”

But the bulk of the critique dealt with President Obama’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Horovitz began by laying out the history of the past 15 years of Israeli-Palestinian peace making.

Have you really, truly internalized that Israel left southern Lebanon in 2000 and Gaza in 2005, to the applause and reassurance of the international community, only to see the vicious terrorist armies of Hezbollah and Hamas fill the respective vacuums? Have you really, honestly, utterly internalized that Hamas booted out the forces of the relatively moderate Mahmoud Abbas from Gaza in a matter of hours in 2007, and that there is every reason to believe that Hamas would seek to do the same in the West Bank were Israel to do as you wish, and pull out? And Hamas in the West Bank would entirely paralyze this country. A single Hamas rocket that landed a mile from the airport last summer prompted two-thirds of foreign airlines to stop flying to Israel for a day and a half — including all the major US airlines. A single rocket. Hamas rule in the West Bank would close down our entire country.

In all candor, Mr. President, I don’t know which of the security arrangements that your “top military advisers” were formulating could credibly have defended us against the all-too plausible scenario of a West Bank takeover by Hamas. You insisted that you were not expecting Israel to “be naive and assume the best.” But barely a decade ago, we were murdered in our hundreds by a strategic onslaught of suicide bombers dispatched from the cities of the West Bank where we had relinquished day-to-day control. To this day, that relatively moderate Mahmoud Abbas uses his television stations to incite relentlessly against Israel, deriding our millennia of history in this land; his Fatah loyalists use their Facebook pages to encourage terrorism against us. Make no mistake, Mr. President: the PA is carefully fostering a climate of profound hostility to Israel, not one of reconciliation.

This led to a series of rhetorical questions Horovitz addressed to President Obama.

But here’s where, with the greatest respect, you’ve failed us thus far, Mr. President. You got the settlement freeze six years ago, you got the prisoner releases in 2013, but what did you wrest from Abbas? Did he stop the incitement against Israel? Did he moderate his positions on the “right of return”? You fault Netanyahu for his bleak wordview, but did you castigate Abbas for entering a governing partnership which gives Hamas veto power over his ministers? Did you tell him, sorry, that’s not going to work for us? No. You said you’d keep right on dealing with him.

Towards the end, Horovitz pleaded with President Obama:

Chivy, mediate, encourage. But don’t embolden our enemies by publicly placing so disproportionate a level of blame on us for the failure of your peace efforts. Don’t indicate that you might reduce your support for us at the UN. Don’t further bolster the growing Palestinian confidence that the international community will impose Palestinian statehood upon us without the necessity to negotiate modalities that ensure our long-term well-being. Press the Palestinians toward compromise; don’t indulge and endorse their obduracy. Work toward a Palestinian state truly at peace with Israel. Help give us more reasons to do what you want us to do, what you believe it is in our interests to do, which is to favor hope over fear.

[Photo: Mayanot Jerusalem  / YouTube ]