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News during the past month has produced reports concerning President Obama which consistently illustrate that he has a bias against Israel and a leaning towards the Palestinians.

The month opened with comments from Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a military analyst and the author of a book on Middle East politics, saying that Obama apparently "has a chip on his shoulder against Israel". When asked to explain why he felt American-Israeli friendship appears to have been derailed so dramatically, he said, "The answer is two words, President Obama". He described the recent treatment of Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the White House (when he was kept waiting for almost two hours while President Obama had supper with his family) as "disgraceful and shameful". Referring to what he described as "this vendetta on the part of the White House against Israel", he said, "All it does is to encourage the Palestinians and their Arab backers to make even wilder demands that Israel cannot possibly fulfil. This is not a peace process; this is something about a chip on the President's shoulder".

Mr. Peters claimed that this situation arose from President Obama's Cairo speech in which he attempted to appease radical Muslims in the Middle East while giving the cold shoulder to Israel. This "raised Palestinian expectations that Obama would take care of Israel and that the Palestinians would get their revenge". Looking generally at the situation between Israel and the Palestinians, Mr. Peters said, "We need to get a little wide-angle picture and recognise the fundamental issue in play here: Israel wants to live in peace with its neighbours, and its neighbours want Israel destroyed. The President refused to understand that. Its become a credo of the left wing that Israel is always the oppressor and that the Palestinian terrorists are freedom fighters".

Claiming that Obama is "our first anti-Israel President", Mr. Peters pointed out his background - "his mother is extremely left, his university chums are on the left, he spent 20 years with the Rev. Wright - all of their doctrines say that the Palestinians are wonderful and that Israelis are basically Nazis - its bewildering and astonishing".

Mr. Peters concluded his article by saying, "American policy must have a balanced approach that takes into account that Israel, for all its many faults, is the only rule of law, democracy and respecter of human rights in the entire Middle East; they are part of our civilisation".

The end of the month of April saw another report by the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, in which it was claimed that President Obama had "recently assured European leaders that, if the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is not moving by September or October, he will convene an international peace summit". The report observed that the purpose of convening an international peace summit could only be "to impose a peace settlement on the two sides", and suggesting that such a peace settlement "would greatly favour the Arabs by incorporating nearly all their demands".

Palestinian officials have said that they had received assurances that, if Israel did not start complying with US-backed Arab demands soon, "Obama would act to force Jerusalem's hand". The Palestinians are also threatening to unilaterally declare independence by October if Israel does not start meeting their demands. Israeli officials fear that the Obama administration would do little or nothing to block recognition of such a declaration by the United Nations.

On May 1, The Daily Telegraph carried an article headed, Obama plans to impose Mid-East solution. It stated that "President Obama has warned Israel that he will pave the way for an independent Palestinian state if the peace process remains dead-locked until the autumn". The article claimed that "Mr. Obama is eager to gain international recognition for the creation of a Palestinian state". A former Israeli diplomat, close to the Obama administration, said it seemed plausible that officials in Washington were considering taking matters into their own hands, and added, "An international conference involving the European Union, China and Russia is more of a recipe for chaos than a practical political blueprint". An Israeli official commented, "The idea that you can have instant peace like instant coffee is an illusion. If you enforce a time limit and then introduce an imposed solution if they don't succeed after a period, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy you're going to guarantee the talks won't succeed".

Within 24 hours, another report appeared in which President Obama told the Palestinians that Israel is to blame as it is "the obstacle to peace, and that he will approach further peace efforts from that point of view". The Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, confirmed that such a letter had been sent and that in it Obama clarified the UN stance on the peace process and Israel's intransigence on the issue of settlements. Another Palestinian official told reporters that the letter "made the usual commitments to an independent Palestinian state with territorial continuity", and that Obama "promised to start publicly assigning blame to those holding up peace, and to force Israel into indefinitely extending its temporary settlement freeze".

The next report concerning President Obama contained an announcement that he is "working closely with Russia and Egypt on an effort to rid Israel of its supposed nuclear weapons arsenal". The Wall Street Journal reported that "Obama is keen to adopt an Egyptian proposal to declare the Middle East a nuclear-free zone". Being the only country in the Middle East believed to possess nuclear weapons, Israel would be the clear target of such a move. America's former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, warned that Obama was "playing right into the Muslims' hands, and threatening Israel's long-term security". Speaking on Israel's Army Radio, Bolton said, "The president is not happy with Israel's nuclear capabilities. I think he would be delighted if Israel gave up its nuclear weapons".

Although Israel has never confirmed or denied that it has nuclear weapons, those weapons, if they exist, are the "primary deterrent against yet another region-wide Arab attempt to overrun and destroy Israel. Prior to Israel's nuclear programme, its Arab neighbours launched three full-scale wars aimed at annihilating the Jewish state".

In early April, the Wall Street Journal reported that King Abdullah of Jordan "has joined the Arab world's sabre-rattling against Israel and warned that the status of Jerusalem could blow up into another war". He remarked that Jordan's relationship with Israel "was at an all-bottom low. It hasn't been as bad as it is today and as tense as it is today". In the interview he warned three times that "the lack of a new Palestinian state west of the Jordan and failure to settle the status of Jerusalem according to Arab demands could ignite Muslim frustration and anger".

King Abdullah also confided that "Jordan's relationship with Syria is better than it has been in a long time, probably the best its ever been". Commenting on the Iranian threat, King Abdullah said, "If there are those that are saying that Iran is playing mischief, then I say it is being allowed to play mischief. The platform they use is the injustice of the Palestinians and Jerusalem".

During the month of April we noticed a number of articles demonstrating the rise of anti-Semitism across the world. In Bulgaria, where parliamentary elections were taking place, it was stated that the far-right Jobbik party "blamed most of the country's problems on the Jews". One of its members was accused of approving an article for publication that referred to anti-Semitism as "the duty of every Hungarian homeland lover", and of issuing a call to "prepare for armed battle against the Jews".

The Jobbik website admitted to being politically pro-Arab saying, "The Movement for Better Hungary has always been primarily sympathetic to the Palestinian cause . . . as Hungarian nationalists we can sympathise more readily with a people who have had their land taken away from them, in order to form a new country".

Another report by eu.observer.com stated that "the number of anti-Semitic incidents mushroomed in many western EU countries in 2009. Incidents in the UK jumped 69 per cent to 924, while the number of violent attacks tripled. Incidents went up by 75 per cent in France, whilst there were sharp upward trends also in Austria, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries and Spain. Relatively high numbers were also seen in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden". The study also accused politicians from some European countries of "adopting a leitmotif in 2009 that Israeli crimes against Palestinians are comparable to Nazi crimes against Jews in World War II".

In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, a Hebrew University professor said, "We are in an era once again where the Jews are facing genocidal threats as a people. We have not been in that situation for quite a while. And maybe this is the first time since the Holocaust that Jews feel that this is palpable". He also acknowledged the enormous rise in anti-Semitism in Europe in recent years. The report also noted that the enormous jump in one year can be attributed to "the blurring of lines between hatred of Jews as a people and condemnation of Israel as a nation. In other words, anti-Israel sentiment is the new anti-Semitism".

The largest natural gas resource ever found comes from the newly discovered massive field in the Levant Basin Province, offshore from Israel in the Mediterranean. The area is believed to hold 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas, together with at least 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. This find has drawn the attention of every major Western energy company, and it could mean "an enormous boom for Israel and its transformation overnight into a major international energy exporter". Another observer said, "The prospects here are amazing, and I have no doubt that we shall see an economic boom".

On April 9 Russian and EU officials assembled at the opening ceremony marking the start of construction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. According to some observers this will "strengthen Russia's grip on EU gas supply". The shareholders of this project include the Netherlands' Gasuine, Germany's Basf and E.ON. The French firm GDFSuez is due to join the consortium which is "dominated by Russia's Gazprom". The pipeline will run from Vyborg in Russia across the Baltic Sea bed to Greifswold in Germany.

Russia's other pipeline, South Stream, is to pump gas under the Black Sea to Bulgaria, Austria, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Slovenia. These developments will "entrench Russia's central position in EU gas supplies". It is expected to start pumping gas in 2011, eventually supplying enough gas to power 26 million households.

These pipelines follow years of debate among EU capitals, with Poland and the Baltic countries seeing Nord Stream as "a potential tool for political blackmail, enabling Moscow to cut off gas to its former vassals". With Russian gas flowing to practically the whole of Europe, it is easy to see a Russian grip on Europe unfolding.

EU foreign ministers are to hold a summit on May 31, at which they intend to "hand Russia a road map for visa-free travel". Finland's foreign minister said that Germany favours the idea. "There have been very positive movements: Germany has been a swing state".

Britain has been thrown into confusion as a result of the parliamentary election, which resulted in a hung parliament. As we write these notes it has been announced that, after many hours of discussion, the Conservatives, who polled the most votes and obtained the highest number of seats, and the Liberal-Democrats are to form a coalition government. The earlier talks between New Labour and the Liberal-Democrats having ground to a halt, Gordon Brown has tendered his resignation as Prime Minister. Believing that "the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men" we take special note of these developments and await details of their plans for events as they unfold regarding Israel and the nations.