President Obama has taken sides in the conflict between Hamas and Israel. By having the FAA ban flights into Ben Gurion Airport, he has taken sides in the conflict. The result of the ban was that US commercial carriers were canceling all flights to that destination. Israel was effectively isolated in a way that could significantly impact its economy and weaken its status in the rest of the world. This is behavior that is reminiscent of how much of the world treated apartheid South Africa. The act implies an equivalence between Israel and South Africa in the minds of the leadership in the White House.

Political pressure from within the US immediately forced the White House to relent. The FAA lifted the ban. The security situation in Israel has not changed in the slightest since before the ban was announced and now as I type this post. The only thing that has altered the White House calculus is the push-back they are getting in The Senate. Senator Ted Cruz stated the following.

“There are still serious questions as to the decision-making that went in to the ban on flights and whether it was driven by political consideration at the White House or by objective expert opinion at the agency,” the Texas senator said Thursday. Cruz is demanding to know why Israel was singled out, while commercial flights can still pass over Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Ukraine — where a Malaysia Airlines jet was downed, killing all 298 people on board. The FAA prohibited flights over Ukraine’s Crimea in April and has ruled out overflights of the east of the country since last week’s crash. Cruz also wants to see any communication between the FAA, White House and State Department to see if the ban on landings in Tel Aviv was designed to punish Israel or advance cease-fire efforts.

So other than a desire to undermine Israel’s position in their conflict with Hamas, the boycott had no purpose. When this particular trebuchet backfired on Barack Obama, he immediately pulled the ban. It was imposed in a spirit of obnoxiousness and was pulled in a fit of cowardice. It was designed to isolate Israel and increase their vulnerability. Instead, it isolated a nasty anti-Semitic streak that stretches like a bar-sinister across the standards of the modern progressives.

The ban on air travel to Israel was a deliberate political statement designed to show the world where America’s allegiance lay in the current Israel-Hamas conflict. It backfired on the Obama administration badly when much of the rest of America asked them “Who is We?” We can expect the petty and vindictive man we have elected President to harbor a continuing resentment and antipathy for the State of Israel. He will continue to view them as similar to apartheid South Africa and he will continue to see it as his job to hurt them in any manner he possibly can. That is the moral midget the America has elected and reelected to our presidency.