^{Right-wing hawks highlight the liabilities of friendship with Israel} 

Netanyahu met privately with President Obama this week at the White House, both hoping to walk away with concessions and a cooling of what some say is largest rift in Israel / US relations in some 30 years. In short, the Israeli Prime Minister agreed to “withhold” from further announcements that may stifle peace talks, but did not budge on the settlements and said they would go ahead as normal. This week's outcome marks the second time the Obama administration has pressed Netanyahu on Jewish settlements outside the country's pre-1967 borders, only to come away with diddly squat.

To the untrained outsider, it would seem Israel is the winner in all of this. However, there are some unintended consequence that may come back to bite Israel when they least expect it. Israel’s right-wing, hawkish attitude toward Obama is beginning to put off his supporters within the Democratic Party. A poll released by the Arab American Institute says that support for Israel has droped 13 percentage points among Democrats, and that unfavorable views shot up 17 points.[2]    
It used to be only small pockets of anti-Semitic hate groups that spoke of the subversive Israeli lobby, but now questions about Israel’s influence on the US government are coming from former friendly quarters. The Washington Post recently printed an article that pondered over the effectiveness of a withdrawal of US aid[3]. The increase of anti-Israeli sentiment is palpable amongst Israelis. As one Jewish blogger called it a “wave of anti-Israeli hatred that has engulfed the globe."