Israel: Of all the ironies of the Obama presidency, the strangest is now unfolding: The election to purge American racism somehow lowered the bar for anti-Semitism.

The 89-year-old Helen Thomas had been roosting in the front row of the White House press briefing room for decades. Yet her ugly feelings that Jews should get the hell out of Palestine and return "home" to Poland or Germany or America — or wherever it is the Jews belong — took this long to bubble up out of the cauldron of her gut in proximity to a camera.

The now ex-doyenne of the White House Press Corps was long known as no friend of the Jewish state, but somehow the intentional chill that the Obama administration has engineered in U.S.-Israeli relations has reduced the caution regarding attacking the state of Israel, and undoubtedly helped set her off.

It's almost like people sensing that the brawny big brother, America, has grown tired of going to the trouble of escorting his persecuted little brother, Israel, through the neighborhood. And all that long-suppressed resentment is beginning to burst out now that the protector is not on hand.

"Israel is finally getting its comeuppance" seems to be the perception of many of the critics of the Middle East's only democracy, save for U.S.-liberated Iraq.

In wondering how someone in public life, who was in her 20s when the Nazis were slaughtering millions of Jews in Germany and Poland, could act like the caricature of a bigot from an earlier era, it's impossible not to consider the disintegration over the past 16 months of our relationship with our staunchest Mideast ally.

The latest slight was the temporary withdrawal of an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to the White House after Israeli forces killed nine aboard a Turkish-backed flotilla trying to break an Israeli blockade of Gaza last week.

It turns out, according to reports, that the administration's rejection of Israeli intelligence reports and consequent refusal to provide advanced weapons led to Netanyahu refusing to authorize the use of tear gas and other anti-riot measures. After Israeli commandos were soon outmatched by Turkish personnel, live fire was ordered by the Israeli naval commander.

The White House demand that Israel "exercise extreme caution and restraint," as a diplomat told WorldTribune.com, apparently ended up costing lives. Would this "Freedom Flotilla" have even attempted to break an Israeli blockade if Israel still had our strong backing? And would Iran be threatening to use its Revolutionary Guards to help smash the blockade with a naval escort?

Would the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency be placing Israel's nuclear weapons power status on its governing board's agenda this month for the first time in nearly two decades if the American-Israeli relationship wasn't deteriorating?

Would the likes of bush-league diplomatic players such as Turkey and Brazil be coming out of the woodwork with a deal to threaten even the tepid sanctions against an Islamofascist regime in Iran that will soon be able to launch a nuclear warhead against Israel?

A good case could be made that little or none of this would be happening if the U.S. had not let it be known, in various ways, that it wasn't going to be supporting Israel the way it used to.

With photos circulating of the president hugging Helen Thomas in the press room, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs scrambled to condemn her remarks as "offensive and reprehensible." And then the president followed with a personal condemnation.

But distancing itself from Thomas' bigotry doesn't allow the president to escape blame. Like former President Jimmy Carter, who used the flotilla incident to accuse Israel of "besieging Gaza" and claim that because of Israel, "the people of Gaza remain isolated and deprived of their basic human rights," this administration believes Israel should be blamed for defending itself from terrorism.

In fact, the Jewish state, surrounded by bloodthirsty enemies, should be lauded for its restraint over the decades, not subject to further persecution.