Israel is in real trouble. Not because of Obama's parting shot at the Jewish state and its prime minister. No, the real trouble for Israel, says the New York Times, comes from the fact that Donald Trump is about to become president. It seems that Trump's ascension to our highest office and his anticipated pro-Israel policy "could easily stir new antipathies among the Sunni Arab states Mr. Netanyahu has been courting most," according to the paper's Middle East reporter—reporter, not opinion writer—Peter Baker. Not too difficult to find "a former State Department official", now at the Brookings Institution's Center for Middle East Policy to support the view of the problems created for Israel by replacement of one the most anti-Israel president with one likely to be its best friend.
Tamara Colman Wittes told reporter Baker, "It doesn't take a lot to imagine an American move that could provoke violence on the ground … that would create a broader Arab-Israeli crisis." Why, it's possible to imagine that if Trump proves a friend of Israel, Hamas will begin shooting thousands of rockets into Israel from its Gaza stronghold. You remember Gaza—the area that Israel voluntarily turned over to the Arabs in pursuit of a two-state solution.
There's worse. And the Washington Post beat the New York Times to the story. It seems that the support Israel is receiving from American Evangelicals is causing serious problems for the co-religionists in Bethlehem. Under the headline, "Evangelicals side with Israel. That's hurting Palestinian Christians," the paper of choice of the Washington establishment informs pro-Israel Evangelicals that Bethlehem is the "most heavily Christian city in Palestine." Alas, according to Philippe Nassif, executive director of In Defense of Christians, American Protestants believe, as the Post puts it, "that support for Israel security policies is an inherent Christian duty - while ignoring that those policies have also made life difficult for Christians in Palestine…". A life made even more difficult because conservative Christians tend to believe that the difficulties faced by Palestinian Christians "is exclusively the result of Islamic extremism." Now if only ISIL would come to their relief from the oppressive Evangelical-supported Israeli security forces...
Perhaps Trump is right to ignore these organs of the liberal establishment and stick to Twitter.