Israel’s outlook took a turn for the worse in January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as this country’s 44th president — a situation made sharply ironic given the fact that some 74% of America’s Jewish voters helped elect the man.

America, long both a closely friendly ally and a protector of the Jewish State, has drastically changed that role. President Obama has actively sought to make Israel the goat of his touchy-feely outreach to the Middle East, Islam, and Iran — none of which attempts has worked. He has reneged on agreements made by prior administrations, including rescinding the planned and agreed-to sale of bunker-buster bombs to Israel.

More recently, Obama has bullied, humiliated, and deliberately mistreated Israel’s head of government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although it was looking as though things couldn’t get much worse, they just did make another turn in that direction.

Obama made some remarks at a press conference Tuesday that, as reported by the New York Times, imply that Israel is somehow to blame for deaths of American troops and that its intransigence in capitulating to Palestinian demands poses a security threat to America.

Mr. Obama said conflicts like the one in the Middle East ended up “costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure” – drawing an explicit link between the Israeli-Palestinian strife and the safety of American –oldiers as they battle Islamic extremism and terrorism in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

“This shift,” said the Times, “increases the likelihood that Mr. Obama, frustrated by the inability of the Israelis and the Palestinians to come to terms, will offer his own proposed parameters for an eventual Palestinian state.”