Jewish Obama Disappointment Syndrome

This past spring, motivated by current events and President Barack Obama's unexpected declaration that Israel should return to its 1967 borders "with swaps," I flew to Washington D.C to hear the President, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and many other leaders address the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Israel is a constantly threatened beacon of freedom and democracy in a terrible neighborhood called the Middle East.

Jews have been in that neighborhood for many thousands of years. The claim to the land is not just biblical, it is historical and factual. The 1967 border lines are indefensible and would divide and ruin Jerusalem, Israel's capital city. A city divided cannot stand. I want the Jewish State to survive and thrive. Israel's ongoing existence is consistent with the fundamental values of America.

Never was that more apparent than when I arrived in Washington the night before the AIPAC conference, and took a midnight run to some of DC's best monuments. Our 16th president was waiting there at midnight to inspire me. Right above Mr. Lincoln, the inscription reads, "In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever."

Which side would that tall thin man from Illinois be on in the modern Middle East? The Western Wall of the destroyed Second Temple in Jerusalem was not regained by the Jewish State till 1967. I re-read the Gettysburg Address on the southern wall of the Lincoln Memorial and the Second Inaugural on the northern wall. I thought about Egypt and its enslavement of the Jews. I thought about the Islamic Republic of Iran and its surrogates.

Abraham Lincoln was looking this night toward a waning ¾ moon hovering slightly to the south over Virginia. The Washington Monument obscured the view of the Capitol. But there beneath the moon, was the beckoning Thomas Jefferson Memorial. On the way, I ran into Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his little Scottish terrier, Fala.

What gems of American history! These presidents all had monumental moments. Honest Abe fought a civil war made necessary by ideological bigotry that elevated one skin color of humans over another. FDR took on bigoted intolerant ideologies across the oceans. Thomas Jefferson anticipated almost everything regarding the human condition. Freedom and liberty is what Jefferson's America was always supposed to be about.

Jihad and Sharia Law are antithetical to freedom and liberty. Why can't President Obama say that? Instead, our American leader unexpectedly pronounced this spring that our tiny democratic ally, Israel, needs to get smaller and move closer to its radical Islamist antagonists.

It was at the AIPAC conference in 2008 that candidate Obama told the assembled thousands that he would do everything he could to stop the Islamic Republic of Iran from going nuclear. Most AIPAC attendees, like me, are Jewish. Lots of Jews liked what they heard in 2008 from the tall and thin Illinois Senator. Jews also took notice of the Jewish insiders with Team Obama, such as David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and David Plouffe. It is now 2011 and many Jews are reevaluating.

I call it ODS – Obama Disappointment Syndrome. I suffer from it. After agonizing quite a bit both publicly and privately, I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. Let me say preemptively that I might have messed up. As I tell Dan Caplis, my radio partner, "you may have been right about Barack Obama, but I was right about Mel Gibson."

I thought (hoped) Barack Obama was ideally situated to speak truth to the Arab and Muslim world about freedom and tolerance. I am tired of waiting for this President to denounce Islamic intolerance of infidels and unbelievers. He has done just the opposite.

The so called Arab Spring followed the Green Revolution that got brutally suppressed in Iran. Remember the Tehran murder of Neda. America and President Obama did nothing to take the side of the freedom craving people in Iran. The Arab Spring might have flowered into something better if Barack Obama spoke up forcefully and repeatedly for freedom of speech, press, assembly and religion. Instead, Barack Obama (leading from behind?) has decided we can work with the Muslim Brotherhood.

We have a United States Director of Intelligence named James Clapper who said the Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular." Please clap off sir. How naïve and stupid can an intelligence director be? Sharia Law is absolutely antithetical to American values. Jihad is our mortal enemy. Sharia and jihad motivated the 9/11 assassins, Colorado's own Najibula Zazi, U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan, and countless others. We cannot wish that away.

Hamas is the Gaza version of the Muslim Brotherhood. We know who these people are and what side they were on when the Nazis were the free world's adversaries. Fatah, the slightly more moderate Palestinians, decided this Arab Spring to get back in bed with Hamas, and this President provided immediate rewards for that behavior. Israel should withdraw to 1967 borders – with swaps. Mitt Romney got it right. This was a lay down under the moving bus demand by our President to Israel.

Will political defections by American Jews matter? Barack Obama will likely still win the majority of the Jewish vote, but he will not receive the level of support he had in the past. Perhaps in battleground states like Ohio and Florida, and dare I say, Colorado, Jewish defections will prove to be the decisive factor in making Barack Obama a one term President. Stay tuned.

Craig Alan Silverman, is co-host of 630 KHOW's Caplis & Silverman Show, and is a partner in the Denver law firm of Silverman & Olivas, P.C. Silverman served as Chief Deputy DA at the Denver District Attorney's Office where he worked from 1980 to 1996.