Only the outposts interest them

He made too many commitments and too many promises he would not be able to keep, certainly not at the level of expectations after his election. He did not understand that at a time of global crisis in particular, you have to cut down on messianic visions for solving the world's problems.

It was to be expected, but it's a shame reality proved him wrong - and so soon. After all, there was a desire for Barack Obama to be a super-president. There was a hope - because the entire world would benefit - that he would deal with some of the world's major dangers with determination and wisdom, that he would relieve us of the existential worry about Iran's race to create nuclear weapons and the possibility that Islamic terror groups would get their hands on nuclear arms. They're close to doing this in Pakistan. There was also the dream that he, the humanist, would end the genocide in Darfur and the massacres in other parts of the world.

But what happened? Darfur can wait. Our outposts interest him more, as does removing the roadblocks. They are not pleasant, but what are they compared to the atrocities in vast parts of Africa and Asia? But they are more important than his other humanitarian concerns.

It's not merely a humanitarian problem. The outposts, according to the Americans' political beliefs, are obstacles to peace. Not the North Koreans' insult to America with its nuclear and missile experiments, or even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disdain for Obama's words of rapprochment. And also not the falling apart of nuclear Pakistan, with all that implies for Asia and the Middle East. Only the outposts.

It seems we are dealing with a president who makes fateful decisions without studying the material as he should, especially that of international relations. Obama started off on an ambitious ideological path, full of goodwill, but also had plenty of preconceived views. An idealistic president who tries to change the laws of nature in a situation soaked in evil plots, like those of Iran, North Korea and the Taliban, can have his head handed to him. And when it is an American president we are referring to, that head could be the head of the entire world.

This disproportionate American insistence on an utterly insignificant issue should worry peace-loving people throughout the world. In return for dismantling outposts - National Security Adviser James Jones reveals his knowledge and worldview - they will take care of Iran. After all, not more than 300 people live in all the outposts combined, some of them not even permanently. Anyone who equates them with Iran's nuclearization betrays an extreme lack of sense of proportion. How can one rely on him for matters that are a thousand times more serious?

Benjamin Netanyahu's words to the Likud Knesset faction removed all doubts about the Americans' judgment. This, the prime minister told his colleagues, is what the president and his advisers think about the outposts. And so as not to harm the efforts being made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, "it is necessary to respond to the American demand to remove the outposts." He spoke, and the defense minister quickly carried it out. "A country that wishes to go on living," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said about the illegal construction, "has to affirm its authority over its citizens."

So Barak is a hero when it comes to some 150 "buildings" in outposts that hardly have any permanent construction. But he's a cabinet member, and was in previous governments whose ministers were not such big heroes when it came to more than 100,000 illegal but permanent buildings in the Arab and Bedouin community. On this issue, Barak must be made to face the truth, if the Jewish state wishes to survive. With the oversight that made it possible to set up these tens of thousands of buildings, and the hostile control of land reserves in the Galilee and the Negev, the country has made clear just how much it wishes to go on living.

When Naomi and Ruth returned from Moab to Bethlehem in Judea, Ruth was a central link to the future kingdom. In our times, the State of Israel - the heir of the Kingdom of David, Ruth's descendant - has given Bethlehem, the cradle of Israeli dominion, to foreigners trying to expel us from our land. At least four of the outposts the government is planning to uproot can be found near Bethlehem. The reason, at least according to Barak: We are a country that wishes to go on living.