Barack Obama has not taken long to disappoint. With a vacuum of world leadership over the tragedy in Gaza and a nauseating deference being displayed by the outgoing administration to Israel, the time was perfect for Obama to start the change in American politics he had so long and robustly advertised. The Israeli government, determined to take the pulse of the new administration, was listening intently to the transitional offices in Chicago for word or prayer. They might as well not have bothered.

Obama has been as silent as a Trappist monk on the issue and has used his chief of staff David Axelrod to signal where he stands when he blamed rocket attacks from Hamas for the offensive in an interview on the CBS channel - a courteous nod to the Israelis. Indeed, the man who promised to make politics accessible again has diligently joined the ranks of Washington politicians who have chosen to reinvent reality in Palestine for reasons utterly incomprehensible to the ordinary person.

It is true that the fog of war makes taking sides on foreign conflicts a business fraught with risk. Outright massacre tends to be a clearer affair, especially when it is being covered minute by minute with television cameras. The Israeli bombardment of Gaza represents a particularly vicious form of asymmetric warfare designed to terrorize a population that is patently incapable of defending itself. The miserable argument trotted out by the likes of David Aaronovitch of the Times that Israel is defending itself is rather like saying that after the IRA had detonated nail bombs in Birmingham and London, Britain should have responded by bombing Belfast to the ground. Or indeed, pummelling Dublin for ‘tolerating,’ the terrorists, or America for financing them. Responsible states recognise the need for proportionality in any conflict, moreover that the killing of civilians and the demolition of civilian infrastructure should only undertaken if there are absolutely imperative military considerations. Since 2000 sixteen Israelis have been killed by rocket attacks from Gaza before the bombardment – there were not. In Lebanon and now in Gaza Israel has shown itself incapable of acting responsibly.

It is particularly sad to witness Obama’s lack of moral courage because he looks likely to join the gradually lengthening list of American presidents who have been no friend to Israel. It goes without saying that the decision to ‘change realities,’ in Gaza was a disastrous one, possibly encouraged by the corrupt and discredited Fatah, undoubtedly an attempt by Kadima to see off Netanyahu in the upcoming Israeli elections, but with the clear results of sabotaging a possible understanding with Hamas and greatly strengthening Iran’s hand in the middle east, just when Arab populations and regimes were beginning to view it as their greatest threat, not Israel. Nor is it the case that the so-called ‘Jewish lobby’ in the United States, in fact a curious mixture of neo-conservatives, Christian evangelicals and self-interested lobbyists remotely represent the Israeli people or indeed their government. Obama has shown a lack of moral fibre and political nous that is entirely typical of his predecessor on this issue. But we can hardly be surprised. His foreign policy positions are almost identical, although that is the subject of another article. Amid the absurd obsequies the European media has shown to Obama, those of us who suspected there was little more to the rhetoric of change than that commodity American elections specialise in, rhetoric, are beginning to get that sinking feeling.

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