That's the question Bret Stephens asks in a recent Wall Street Journal column.
Should Israelis and pro-Israel Americans take President Obama at his word when he says—as he did at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in Washington, D.C., on Sunday—"I have Israel's back"?
In answering "No", Stephens draws on chapter 5 of Peter Beinart's soon-to-be published book, "The Crisis of Zionism," in which Beinart cites how Mr. Obama came to his views about Israel - "a coterie of far-left chicago Jews who 'bred in Obama a specific, and subversive, vision of American Jewish identity and of the Jewish state."
Stephens concludes:
Is he [President Obama] being truthful when he represents himself as a mainstream friend of Israel—or is he just holding his tongue and biding his time? On the evidence of Mr. Beinart's sympathetic book, Mr. Obama's speech at Aipac was one long exercise in political cynicism.
Read the whole thing. and learn more about Obama's Chicago Jewish associations.