Thomas Friedman, who has come under fire in recent weeks for endorsing classic antisemitic motifs of Jewish financial control of Congress, has repeated the charge again in a column claiming that President Barack Obama is "Israel's best friend."

"[M]oney in politics has never been more important for running campaigns," Friedman writes, "and the Israel lobby — both its Jewish and evangelical Christian wings — has never been more influential, because of its ability to direct campaign contributions to supportive candidates."

Friedman provided no evidence of his claim that pro-Israel groups play a decisive role in campaign finance or in determining winners and losers in elections. His reference to evangelical Christian support is a fig leaf for the underlying, classic antisemitic motif, which Friedman--though Jewish himself--has deployed in desperation as he attempts to defend Obama's indefensible record.

Taking heart from Obama's recent speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and from a recent Obama interview with the sympathetic Jeffrey Goldberg, Friedman declared that Obama's apparent willingness to leave military force as an option for stopping a nuclear Iran made him "the most pro-Israel president in history," or at least "one of the most."

Friedman did not mention Obama's immediate walk-back of his commitment to Israel's defense, when the president told Jake Tapper that his speech to AIPAC "was not a military doctrine that we were laying out for any particular military action." Nor did Friedman mention Obama's long appeasement of the Iranian regime--or the numerous damaging confrontations instigated by the Obama administration against Israel on the subject of Iran, the Palestinians, and even internal Israel religious politics.