Both President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came away from their fracas in Washington last month with wounds that are not soon to heal. For Obama, paradoxically, the lasting fallout will not come primarily from American Jews. They are divided. Significant numbers of them disparage Netanyahu and agree with the president.
Americans for Peace Now, the U.S. branch of a leftist Israeli group, issued a statement expressing "deep disappointment" with Netanyahu's hard-line address to a joint session of Congress. It said he had been expected to offer a "formula for a breakthrough" in negotiations with the Palestinians but instead had laid down preconditions that infuriated them.
No, Obama roused evangelical Christians. Millions of them are lock-step supporters of Israel. They are mobilizing even now, running television and newspaper ads, holding news conferences. David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, one of several similar groups, told me he believed millions of these Christians would hold on to their anger until election day next year.
"Israel is an increasingly important issue for them," he said. His group has 600,000 members among an estimated 50 million Americans who are believed to be sympathetic to its cause. In the past two weeks, more than 60,000 of them sent e-mails of support to Netanyahu's office.