This weekend, Obama got a drubbing as a result of a recent White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu where the two men were never photographed together. Both Netanyahu and David Axelrod have said that it wasn't a snub and there's no bad blood between the U.S. and Israel, but that hasn't stopped conservatives from beating the drum of persecution.

Obama Hates Jews

• ...Or At Least He's Pretending To  At The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol argues that Obama "aspires to be a leader of humanity, not merely a president of a single country. And there’s no better way to be a leader of humanity than to show disapproval of the Jewish state." Whatever his real feelings toward Jews may be, Kristol holds that Obama must find it expedient to show "anger at the stiff-necked Jewish state. It puts him in sync with the rest of the world."

• No, He Actually Really Does  So contends Big Journalism's Pamela Geller, who says that Obama "was wet-nursed on Jew-hatred" during his early life in Indonesia, and has since gone out of his way to appease the world's Muslims. To Geller's mind, this suggests a grim future. "The only difference between American Jews of the 2000s and the European Jews of the 1930s is Israel ... And look what Barack Obama is doing to the Jewish homeland." Taking this line of reasoning to its extremity, Geller asks, "Will the American diaspora repeat the same ghastly mistake again, while Shoah victims still walk the earth?"

• Hard to Say Either Way  Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds shies away from making any definite calls. "Why has Barack Obama treated Netanyahu so rudely? ... Possibly Obama just hates Israel and hates Jews. That’s plausible — certainly nothing in his actions suggests otherwise, really." But another possibility, Reynolds goes on to say, is that Obama expects conflict to erupt between Iran and Israel soon, and "wants to put distance between the United States and Israel in advance of that happening."

This Is Ridiculous

• Patently Untrue  Think Progress's Matt Yglesias mildly opines that "a great many of Obama’s actions throughout the years—most notably his many social and professional relationships with Jewish people—suggest that he is not motivated by hatred of Jews." What's more, Yglesias observes that given the number of Jews with prominent jobs in the administration, "the Obama White House looks more like an anti-semite’s conspiracy theory about Jews running the government than like an actual anti-semitic conspiracy."

• His Credentials Check Out  The New Yorker's David Remnick presents a laundry list of Jewish men and women who have been instrumental in Obama's political career, including one Ira Silverstein: "Obama acted as Silverstein’s shabbos goy, turning on lights and pushing elevator buttons for him on Saturdays." Remnick recounts that during the campaign, one of Obama's politcal advisors joked to The Chicago Jewish News, "I think when this is all over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president."

• P.S. Reynolds Is Crazy  Salon's Glenn Greenwald singles out Reynolds for propagating "bizarre conspiracy theories." Yglesias adds that "Reynolds is extremely out of touch with reality." Clark Stooksbury at The American Conservative concludes that "Reynolds is apparently insane, which is to say that he is a rightwinger in the age of Obama."

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