When the radio announcer quoted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proud national response to the unprecedented criticism directed at him by President Barack Obama on Tuesday [Jan. 15], I was standing at a particularly long red light.

I turned my head to the left, toward one of the large billboards. “A Strong Leader for a Strong Nation,” it said, next to a huge photo of Benjamin Netanyahu. How many additional votes will now be cast for the Likud-Beiteinu? I wondered. How many of the drivers waiting in despair for the light to turn green are hearing this now and telling themselves: “We’re lucky to have a strong prime minister. Only Bibi can put this Obama in his place.”? I recalled that a poll conducted in Israel on the eve of the US presidential elections found that if Obama were to immigrate to Israel, he would find it hard to even be elected as mayor of Petah Tikva [a town near Tel Aviv].  

It’s not at all certain that Obama and his political advisers are pleased with Jeffrey Goldberg’s column on the Bloomberg network. I would not be surprised if they send Dan Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel, to one of the Israeli TV networks in the coming days to say that “never have ties between the two countries been so wonderful.” But if Obama’s private conversations, as quoted by the American journalist, are accurate, then never has such sharp criticism been leveled at an Israeli prime minister (“a political coward” and “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are,” to name some).

And this made me think, as the car slowly crawled toward the lights, what will happen on the day Obama has his fill of us, on the day he tells Netanyahu: “You’re on your own, manage by yourselves.” We’re not just talking about a mental exercise: A series of messages from the United States indicate that Obama is tired of squabbling with Netanyahu. The American president has “given in” to our strong leader and is nearing a difficult decision — a decision more dangerous than anything else: to accept Netanyahu’s reprimand with humility, to completely stop intervening in Israel’s affairs and to tell the Israeli public something like, “You wanted a strong leader? Well, you got one. Let him extricate you from the UN Security Council and the Council of Europe. Just don’t bother me. I have enough trouble of my own.”