As the Purim wine begins to wear off I find myself musing about conspiracy theories which I’m not normally very keen on. But then again those following the news know that these aren’t normal times. Will you indulge me?

Barack Obama is attempting to achieve a seemingly impossible task which we will describe shortly. The Orchestrator of world events has set up a moral dilemma for the mortal “leader of the free world” that is so exquisite in its timing and in the starkness of the choice it presents that one has to work mighty hard to refuse to see it as His doing. 

Consider: Mr. Obama is now engaged in the fight of his life for a second term something he wants more than anything in the world. The problem is that due to both his past associations and sympathies with the Palestinians as well as his very recent record on Israel Iran and the Middle East as a whole he is viewed by many American Jews with deep suspicion. 

But he can’t afford for that to continue — literally. Not only do Jews make up a not insignificant percentage of voters in critically important swing states like Florida Pennsylvania and Ohio in an extremely tight race (do the words “hanging chad” or “Florida recount” ring a bell?) but even more crucially they represent a wildly disproportionate share of his biggest donors and fundraisers. Just the other week at a Washington DC “Afternoon with Jewish Leaders and President Barack Obama ” some 25 supporters paid close to $36 000 each for a total haul of $825 000. Not bad for an afternoon’s work but Obama is looking to match or top his billion-dollar 2008 run and indications are that the going is tough thus far.

At this point I’d say “Enter the Orchestrator” — if not for the fact that of course He’s been here all along arranging things on the cosmic chessboard so as to bring us to this point. 

A country named Iran which has promised to wipe Israel off the map and looks forward to a “world without America” is speeding its way toward obtaining nuclear weapons. Of course even without actually using these bombs its mere possession of them will wreak unimaginable havoc: setting off a regional nuclear arms race giving it the means to extort the West economically and politically enabling it to nuclearize its terrorist and terrorist-state proxies around the world. 

The destabilization of the world military economic and political situation following an attack on Iran would surely throw Mr. Obama’s reelection prospects into grave doubt. And to further sharpen the unfolding dilemma no one other than the Iranians themselves know just how close they are to producing these terrifying weapons. Indeed ostensibly smart people like the US Joint Chiefs of Staff claim not to be sure whether Iran actually has decided to manufacture them at all. Ah yes just enough uncertainty to allow for the flourishing of self-delusion — a critical component of any test of one’s character and moral fiber. 

None of the facts I’ve recited so far should come as a surprise; they’re the stuff of the daily news reports. What isn’t much focused on is the stunning centrality — yet again — of the Jews here and in Israel as the fate of the world hangs in the balance how the minuscule percentage of the world’s population living in Israel is at the center of the Iran drama and the even tinier community of American Jews is at the heart of Barack Obama’s role in that drama. 

I’ve got to imagine that many perceptive followers of current events see this centrality but are understandably loath to speak of it. Those less favorably inclined toward Israel likely fear that this would smack of classic anti-Semitic imagery of Jews as the root of all the world’s misery and they don’t want to be seen as anti-Semites whether or not that is what they indeed are. Those in the pro-Israel camp are likely concerned that focusing on the Jews’ role in all this only gives the unabashed anti-Semites of the world precisely the narrative they’re looking for. 

And then for some — Jews in particular — there is the fact that thinking too much about the uncanny persistence of the Jewish presence at the epicenter of world events can be detrimental to one’s spiritual health — if one fancies oneself an unbeliever that is. And so out of sight out of mind it is lest one’s unbelief be shaken. 

But readers of this page share a worldview in which the Jews are indeed rather central to the world’s fate always in spiritual terms and sometimes manifested in temporal terms too. And so this is one of the few places where we can safely speak of this centrality without having to worry about sounding like we’re avid fans of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

All the facts we’ve described above have converged to present Barack Obama with the weightiest moral challenge imaginable: simply put he must choose between his entire political — and thus personal — future on the one hand and the continued existence of Israel’s Jews on the other. Of course America’s Jews are facing a mirror image of their president’s quandary: to stand shoulder to shoulder with their brethren in Israel or allow them to be offered up on the altar of progressive politics as the price to be paid for a last chance to “radically transform America.” 

My daughter reminds me that during Purim I made the point that while Hashem alone determines how world events actually unfold nevertheless He does afford us the opportunity to make moral choices about how we would act if we were running the show. And in this instance the civilized world’s response to the Iranian threat to its entire future comes down to one thing: the middos for better or worse of one man named Barack Obama. Forget the trillion-dollar military budgets and million-man armies never mind the scientific and political establishments: what will determine his response albeit not the actual outcome is the interplay of humility versus arrogance of the pursuit of power and prestige versus the value of human life and his commitment to its protection. 

Yet incredibly Mr. Obama’s response thus far has been to attempt to “thread the needle” to sidestep the entire dilemma by having it all: deferring any confrontation of the gathering Iranian storm until after the election while still keeping the loyalty of the Jews who are so pivotal in his pursuit of reelection. Achieving this seemingly impossible combination of the irreconcilable requires operating simultaneously on two fronts. Charles Krauthammer describes well the first prong:

So what is Obama’s real objective? “We’re trying to make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel” an administration official told the Washington Post…. Revealing and shocking. The world’s greatest exporter of terror … the self-declared enemy that invented “Death to America Day” is approaching nuclear capability — and the focus of US policy is to prevent a democratic ally threatened with annihilation from preempting the threat?

Indeed it is. The new open-ended negotiations with Iran fit well with this strategy of tying Israel down. As does Obama’s “I have Israel’s back” reassurance designed to persuade Israel and its supporters to pull back and outsource to Obama what for Israel are life-and-death decisions.

Yet 48 hours later Obama [says] this phrase is just a historical reference to supporting such allies as Britain and Japan — contradicting the intended impression he’d given AIPAC that he was offering special protection to an ally under threat of physical annihilation.

Yet beyond these obvious contradictions … lies a transcendent logic: … Obama wants to get past November 6 without any untoward action that might threaten his reelection.

As for the second objective that of keeping the Jews in line the strategy is multifaceted. There is of course the Obama double talk Krauthammer describes the ringing declarations of Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself and America’s resolve that Iran cannot go nuclear that fade into thin air replaced by open-ended commitments to diplomacy that buys Iran precious time and sanctions that the US admits haven’t slowed Iran’s progress.

And then there are the things the president’s loyalists are doing to make sure the Jews don’t wander off the reservation and here’s where my conspiratorial musings come in. When the Jerusalem Post in an article titled “Israeli Reform Rabbis Beg Obama to Free Pollard” reports that “once [this] issue … was primarily promoted by right-wing and Orthodox Jews … [b]ut lately Reform rabbis in America and now in Israel have adopted the case as a human rights issue at the top of their agenda ” one wonders about the newfound outpouring of concern. Reform’s immediate past president Eric Yoffie meets with Obama and emphasizes that “while Pollard’s release is important to the Jewish community as a whole “it is especially important to the Reform Jewish community.” What could he possibly mean by that?

I get a similar strange feeling when reading about the Democratic effort now underway to peg the Republicans as waging a “war on women.” To be sure this is part of a concerted strategy to change the topic from the Obama administration’s recent trampling of freedom of religious conscience about which we’ve written here. But I also wonder given the worldwide coverage of recent events in Beit Shemesh and elsewhere in Israel whether this isn’t also a play to link in American Jews’ minds the Republican opposition with those dastardly woman-hating chareidim.

Stranger things have happened.