Being a third generation American Ashkenazi I look at the Near-East with American eyes, but with a certain sensitivity arising from my own ethnicity. President Obama and his minions are hell bent on trying to address the Israeli/Palestinian problem, and attempting to show the Arab world America's even-handiness, but ignoring the realpolitik of the region, they have opened Pandora's box relative to Israeli angst.
Israel is probably the fourth or fifth largest nuclear power in the world today, with the only democracy in the area and a very large hawkish Russian population. It doesn't take much of an imagination, with the Ashkenazi's 2,000 year experience in Europe, that this small country feeling it is being ganged up on, winds up with an extreme far right party with its hands on the nuclear buttons.
