48 years ago, I played tight end on the school football team. In the third quarter of our last game, a nail biter that would determine the state championship, we were one touchdown ahead of the only other undefeated team in our conference, when I wrenched my knee and limped back to the huddle.  

While in our stance before the hike, the trash talk from the other team was all about targeting my injured knee in order to get me out of the game. That very play, all three defensive men in my zone went after my knee…the defensive end, the tackle and the outside linebacker. My teammates, seeing what was happening, issued their own trash talk to the other team to leave me alone, and then proceeded to gang up on the perpetrators. With the protection of my teammates, my knee was no longer singled out for destruction and we went on to win that game and the state championship.

13 years before that game, two years after WWII and shortly after the nations of the world had decided to form a new Jewish state in Palestine called Israel, a group of Arab men, all representatives of their respective country governments, sat in a room in Cairo and dedicated each of their countries to the destruction of the new Jewish state in Palestine. To that end they ordered arms and supplies for their armies and put an Iraqi general in charge of all five armies. His role was to use the armies in a coordinated effort to push the Jews into the sea and in so doing destroy Israel.

At the same time, an arab religious leader in Jerusalem was organizing the arabs in and around Palestine in his own effort to rid the land of the jews. His goal was the same, push the jews into the sea, in other words, the total wiping out of the jews in order to prevent the new jewish state from ever gaining a foothold on the land. His name was Haj Amin Husseini and he was the mufti of Jerusalem. All of Palestine’s Arab men were under his command and willing to die for him.

Both of these organizations were of the opinion that there was only one solution to the Israel situation—the state of Israel must not be allowed to begin, or once begun, not be allowed to survive—and they would use every means at their disposal to see that Israel was destroyed.

Fast forward 62 years to 2009,  the Arabs presently in power in the Mideast feel exactly the same as they did 62 years ago on the eve of the birth of Israel—that Israel has no right to be a state. They simply refuse to accept Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the land of Palestine. According to the scholar, Fouad Ajami, there is no change in the Arab attitudes towards Israel. This is a fact that Obama and his team seem to overlook, or turn a blind eye to. 

During his campaign, Obama stated his desire to sit down with the Mideast leaders and negotiate. And now, during his first 8 months, it seems that he is willing to do more than that—he seems to be messing with the commitments previous administrations have made to Israel. His constant meddling on the subject of building more settlements and his hard line on that issue, and his public position of wanting to negotiate with the Arabs,  has put Israel in a worse position than ever before, and has emboldened the Arabs. The way Arab leaders see it is that America has taken their side, or at least, if that is not an accurate assessment, has stopped standing blindly behind whatever Israel wants to do.

This change has made the situation for Israel very tenuous. If anything, it has made the tinderbox that is Israel/Arab relationships very near the firing point.

My message to Obama and his team is simple—stop all the meddling with the various logistical aspects of the peace process and make a simple statement to the world. Just like my teammates did for me, tell the Arabs—“Mess with Israel and you mess with the United States.”

It is human nature to attack the weak spot of your enemy. Arabs know this, and they see that Israel is now weaker than at any time before. One of the reasons that Israel has prospered and become one of the most successful, prosperous democratic countries in the world is that they have a teammate that was willing to threaten the enemy. If we now appear to not be the strong arm teammate we once were, Arabs will not hesitate to take advantage of the change and attack.