WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Bibi Is Back: The Consequences for U.S.-Israeli Relations.

Bibi’s win is another in a long string of Middle East failures by President Obama and will add to the belief by both our friends and our enemies in the region that the costs of being Obama’s friend can outweigh the costs of his enmity. Egypt’s President Mubarak thought he was Obama’s friend; so did his successor President Morsi. The Syrian moderate rebels expected their friend in the White House to back them. The Zionist Union thought that promising to work more closely with Obama was the ticket to an electoral win in Israel. Meanwhile, as Bibi can now testify, those who defy this White House don’t seem to pay much of a price: just ask Syria’s Assad or, for that matter, his patrons in Iran. ISIS has more visibility and power in the Middle East than al-Qaeda ever did, while the Sunni Arab tribes of Iraq who saved America’s bacon during the surge and who counted on American influence to protect their interests in postwar Iraq are being overrun by Shi’a militias. . . .

If Bibi’s election message is that the peace process as we have known it needs fundamental change and reshaping, he is right. But if his intention is to kill it, or even to proclaim a moratorium during which Israel will create so many new facts on the ground that the concept of a Palestinian state no longer looks viable, then U.S.-Israeli relations will continue to cool.

Yeah, I’m not sure anything Bibi could do would make Obama happy, except maybe die. And I don’t think the Palestinians have done anything to deserve their own state.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “I’ve been watching Obama’s growing hostility for years now. The Jewish analogy I have used for him is Pharaoh. If you recall in Exodus, the Jew-hating ruler was so bent on destroying the Jews, he ignored all of Mose’s warnings and destroyed himself and his country instead. The term for that is hubris. Self-defeating arrogance that puts yourself above Hashem. In my estimation, Obama has only experienced three plagues so far, with four lying in wait. He’s cursing the wind now and it won’t be long before he completely loses control. It should be quite a sight.”