Israel is fighting for its life right now. After months of war with Hamas in Gaza, Hamas still holds 100 Israeli hostages dead or alive. Soldiers continue to die daily. And now, Israel faces a far more powerful Iranian proxy in the north: Hezbollah. Over 5,000 rockets, drones and missiles have been launched into Israel from Lebanon since October 8. Now, they are coming more rapidly: Multiple times per day, Israelis are running to shelters, and 100,000 Israelis are displaced indefinitely. The likelihood of a full-scale war with Hezbollah leaves Israelis uneasy about more family members being called up for duty.

As Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, strives to prosecute this war, he is facing battles of his own. International courts are attacking him, threatening him with international arrest warrants. At home, an extremely disruptive Israeli minority take to the streets daily, shutting down highways and calling for Netanyahu’s ouster. And within his fragile government, he struggles to keep unity as political parties to his right threaten to leave the coalition.

Behind the scenes is an enemy that Netanyahu and Israel face who has empowered opposing forces and played a role in all these battles.

That enemy is former United States President Barack Hussein Obama.

Ongoing Enmity

Ever since May 2009, when Netanyahu met with newly elected President Obama, the two men have been at odds.

“[W]hen we moved to the Palestinian issue,” Netanyahu said, “Obama took the gloves off.” Obama blamed Israel for the Arab-Jew conflict, demanded a two-state solution, and insisted that “not one brick” be added to any Israeli settlement. Netanyahu disagreed, telling the president, “I’ll do whatever I need to do to defend my country.”

In his famous Cairo speech a month later, Obama made clear that the two would also disagree over Iran. “No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons,” he said, signaling that America would not stand in the way of Iran getting the bomb.

Iran’s theocracy is fundamentally opposed to American values and interests. Yet in Obama’s policy—under the guise of bringing peace to the region—empowering Iran became a key plank.

The U.S. media, foreign-policy establishment and many politicians senselessly went along. Benjamin Netanyahu became Obama’s main opposition.

Netanyahu publicly exposed what Obama’s intentions—most notably in his 2015 speech to the U.S. Congress. Ultimately, he failed to stop the Iran deal, but he rallied opposition to it and made it a major issue in the United States. Thanks in part to the work of Mr. Netanyahu, Donald Trump, once in office, rolled back the deal and clipped Iran’s wings.

For both Palestinian statehood and the Iranian nuclear deal, Benjamin Netanyahu became Barack Obama’s main obstacle. So his aim of “personally pursuing this outcome with all the patience and dedication that the task requires” necessitated getting rid of Netanyahu.

Bye-bye, Bibi?

Obama’s efforts to dethrone Netanyahu started with public snubs and criticisms. America is Israel’s most important ally. Israeli voters generally want their leaders to get along with Washington. By showing his disapproval, Obama hoped to persuade voters to oust Netanyahu.

They did not, so the attacks intensified.

In 2015, the last Israeli election before he left office, Obama weaponized the U.S. State Department against Netanyahu. It spent around $350,000 funding a campaign group that promoted the anyone-but-Netanyahu agenda. That is a relatively small sum but an important signal that the U.S. government stood behind this group. One of Obama’s top election strategists, Jeremy Byrd, went to Israel to advise the group and supply it with election machinery.

Still, Netanyahu won the 2015 election.

Even after Obama left office, his program of regime change continued. When President Donald Trump took office, he appointed a new ambassador to Israel. Yet Obama’s man, Ambassador Dan Shapiro, didn’t come home. Instead, he stayed where he could continue to build bridges between Obama’s people and anti-Netanyahu groups.

Despite political opposition and repeated elections, Netanyahu clung to power.

When Joe Biden moved into the White House in 2021, his term effectively became Obama’s third term. Finally in March 2021, Netanyahu lost the election and was replaced by a new coalition.

The problem was, this new coalition agreed on only one thing: They wanted Netanyahu out. With that done, they had nothing else in common. A year later, the coalition fell apart, and in December 2022, Netanyahu was back.

Obama’s people had to devise another plan. This time they weaponized the controversy over the Supreme Court of Israel.

This court has given itself the power to overrule laws it dislikes, not based on legal reasoning but because they are “unreasonable.” Netanyahu and supporters have been fighting this abuse of power. Others fear that a crippled court would leave them vulnerable to tyranny. Obama seized the opportunity to widen and exploit this division. He blew the dust off his Arab Spring toolbox and promoted street protests in Israel.

Once again, the State Department gave small but symbolically significant funding to protest groups like the Movement of Quality Government. The same “charitable” organizations that encouraged mass mail-in voting in the 2020 U.S. elections also got involved. The New Israel Fund, backed by George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, was a key player.

Then U.S. Ambassador Thomas Nides threw his support behind the anti-Netanyahu protesters, saying, “I really think that most Israelis do not want America to stay out of their business.” He also warned that America’s support for Israel at the United Nations was based on “democracy” and “shared values”—a veiled threat that if Israel did not comply, America would abandon Israel at the UN.

War

Then came Oct. 7, 2023. The massacre on this day in all likelihood wouldn’t have happened without the billions the Obama and Biden administrations were sending to Iran in sanctions relief to spend on its proxies. It wouldn’t have happened had the U.S. government posed a credible retaliatory threat (such as Trump’s assassination of Iranian “super general” Qassem Suleimani). That’s not to say October 7 was knowingly organized by the Obama-Biden “deep state.” But everything the Biden administration was doing—including the renewal of sanctions relief and the resumption of nuclear negotiations—helped prepare Iran to attack through its Hamas proxy. And the war certainly helped the cause of undermining Netanyahu.

As Israel’s leader, Netanyahu was the one ultimately responsible for the greatest intelligence failure in the nation’s history, which led to the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Polls showed that an overwhelming number of Israelis wanted Netanyahu out.

However, despite pressure from all directions to resign or schedule new elections, Netanyahu has held on. Israelis broadly support keeping him in power temporarily to wage the war against Hamas and other proxies of Iran. Many pundits believed the war would go badly for Netanyahu; the Israel Defense Forces face an entrenched urban enemy. But while it hasn’t gone perfectly, Israel has avoided massive casualties of its own soldiers and civilians.

Now the war poses a dual threat to the Obama agenda: Netanyahu may survive—and Hamas could be crippled.

Hamas is a key tool for Iran. If it is wiped out, it would undermine Obama’s plan to radically transform the Middle East. That is why America attempted to keep Israel out of Rafah, why Biden withheld promised aid to Israel, and why he held Israel back from responding to Iran’s missile attack in April. The Biden administration also tried (and partly failed) to build a pier so outsiders could send “aid” (or weapons) to Hamas without Israeli oversight.

Obama and company have also tried to undermine U.S. support for Israel. Obama-linked financiers have backed student protests in universities across America. The student campus protests “include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker,” reported Politico. “[A] small group of wealthy heavyweights are often playing an outsize role funding” the pro-Hamas movement.

Key supporters of the protests were Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. These are supported by the Tides Foundation, a group backed by George Soros and, previously, Bill and Melinda Gates. Nick and Susan Pritzker, who gave Biden’s 2020 campaign more than $300,000, fund pro-Palestinian protests today. Susan Pritzker and Obama are old friends.

The protests have warped perceptions in America. Eighty percent of Americans say they support Israel over Hamas, according to an April 24-25 poll of nearly 2,000 registered voters, but the protests create the impression that there is division and merit on both sides.

Kangaroo Courts

Netanyahu has also been attacked on the international level. The International Court of Justice (icj) is investigating Israel for genocide and has produced rulings that paint Israel in a bad light. International Criminal Court (icc) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan has accused Netanyahu personally, as well as Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, of committing war crimes.

Both of these organizations have ties to Barack Obama.

When the icj began its genocide investigation, Joan Donoghue was head of the court. She had moved to the court directly from Obama’s State Department, where she served as the senior career lawyer. “She advised on the application of human rights law and drafting United Nations resolutions, as well as oversight of legal work relating to maritime law and treaty approval processes,” states one of her biographies. “She also implemented President Obama’s executive orders on Guantanamo, including detention and interrogation.”

When Donoghue’s term ended earlier this year, she was replaced on the icj by Sarah Cleveland, another legal adviser to the State Department during the Obama years. During her tenure (2009–2011), she assisted with legal work relating to war, counterterrorism and human rights. She didn’t inherit Donoghue’s title of chief justice, but she’s still a former Obama appointee now part of an international panel attacking Israel.

Meanwhile, Amal Clooney, wife of actor and activist George Clooney, was one of the icc’s prosecutors who recommended going after Netanyahu. Khan reportedly asked her specifically to be a part of this case.

The Clooneys and Obamas are long-time friends. As far back as 2006, George was campaigning with then Senator Obama in causes like the Darfur crisis in Sudan. In 2009, President Obama invited Clooney to the White House to discuss Africa policy, and Clooney offered foreign-policy advice. As recently as 2022, the Clooney and Obama foundations, as well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced joint projects. The Clooneys invited the Obamas to their vacation home on Italy’s Lake Como.

The people at the top of these courts are in the Obamas’ social circle. Considering how much influence his people in Washington have given him, who is to say he hasn’t been using similar influence in forums like the icj and icc?

The icj has the less power of the two; it is powerless without enforcement by the United Nations Security Council (unsc). But the icc ruling, if approved, means that any country that’s a party to the Rome Statute (which created the icc) would be obligated to arrest Netanyahu if he ever set foot on their soil. That includes the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Japan and many other influential countries.

The ruling also puts him in ignominious company. Because of a lack of enforcement mechanisms, the icc is generally reluctant to indict sitting heads of government. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir—the man responsible for the infamous Darfur genocide—was an exception in 2009. The icc arrested him in 2020. Last year, the icc put a warrant out for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his mass abduction of Ukrainian babies, which also falls under the laws of genocide. According to the icc, Netanyahu is a criminal like Bashir and Putin.

Not everybody in the U.S. supports the icc. The House of Representatives voted June 4 to pass legislation that would sanction the court pending Senate approval. (The Democrat-controlled Senate is in no hurry to bring the bill to the floor, and Biden said he “strongly opposes” the bill.) Biden, for his part, called Khan’s conclusions “outrageous.”

Nations United Against Israel

On May 31, Joe Biden told the world that Israel had advanced a new peace plan that seemed acceptable to Hamas. A three-stage Gaza withdrawal would free the hostages and end the war.

Biden was lying. This was the same defunct peace plan his administration had pushed for weeks, dressed up as a new Israeli initiative. The fact that he spent most of the speech persuading Israelis to accept the plan they had supposedly created was a clue something was off.

But again, Joe Biden is not the real mover behind this plan.

A few days later, Obama uploaded a three-paragraph post on his X account endorsing Biden’s plan. He called it “a clear, realistic and just plan to establish an immediate ceasefire and end the war in Gaza,” one which would give Palestinians “the security, freedom and self-determination that they have sought for so long.”

On June 3, the U.S. proposed a ceasefire plan to the unsc based on Biden’s proposal. For months, the UN has struggled to mount any meaningful response to the Israel-Hamas war. But on June 10, the Security Council almost unanimously agreed to the proposal. Of its 15 members, 14 voted yes and Russia abstained, allowing the measure to pass.

The resolution claims Israel has already accepted the terms. At the time of writing, Israel has yet to publicly embrace the ceasefire proposal, but it has suggested it may comply. Strictly speaking, the resolution doesn’t force anything on Israel, and Hamas still has to formally accept it. But it very well may be the Obama-endorsed resolution that Israel knuckles under.

Proxies in Israel

All these attacks put Netanyahu under pressure. But to remove him from office, a local politician must wield the knife. Plenty of people want his job, but again, polls show Israelis overwhelmingly want Netanyahu at least until Hamas is dealt with.

So the Biden administration has tried to encourage rivals. Last month, it invited Benny Gantz for a visit. The Financial Times wrote that he was treated “as though he were head of government. Praying that Benny Gantz will replace Benjamin Netanyahu as the country’s next prime minister is now the U.S. president’s unofficial policy” (May 8).

The Biden administration is clearly trying to divide Netanyahu’s coalition. Gaudi Taub wrote in Tablet, “Never before has an American administration worked so systematically to undermine Israeli democracy and sovereignty, an effort that is especially shocking in the context of an existential war for survival following a heinous, large-scale terrorist murder spree. Wars provide opportunities, and it seems clear that the opportunity that the Biden administration saw in the October 7 attacks had less to do with ensuring Israel’s security than it did with stifling any remaining resistance to Washington’s pro-Iran regional integration policy” (May 7).

Gantz resigned from the war cabinet on June 9. The departure of his ironically named National Unity group from Netanyahu’s coalition so far doesn’t mean anything. Netanyahu still has enough seats in the Knesset to form a government. But right when the war is coming to a close, the fact that somebody being courted by the U.S. would pull this political stunt suggests something awry.

Endgame

Obama said he would “personally pursue” the formation of a Palestinian state “with all the patience and dedication that the task requires.” He has already shown he’s willing to work as long as it takes, in or out of office, to fundamentally transform the United States. Is he doing the same with the Middle East?

What Obama wants is an immediate and unilateral withdrawal by Israel from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Nominally, the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, would take over as the new state’s government. But Abbas is a corrupt autocrat who runs half his realm as his personal fiefdom and has lost control of the other half to terrorist groups. Most Palestinians want him gone. Hamas, by contrast, is gaining popularity on the street. And any “ceasefire” deal would legitimize Hamas internationally.

Gaza is a deadly thorn in Israel’s side. But a Hamas-ruled West Bank would be a catastrophic nightmare; the next war in the Middle East would be far bigger, longer and bloodier. If this ceasefire is adopted, Hamas would be capable of a Holocaust on the same scale as the Nazis. Everybody knows this. Obama knows this.

Why would a U.S. leader push this ceasefire then?

The Bible reveals the spiritual reality behind world events, the only way to understand trends like this. Daniel 8:9-12 and 11:21-31 prophesy of a man who would shut down the temple in Jerusalem and attack the Jews.

In the second century b.c., Antiochus iv Epiphanes besieged Jerusalem and killed tens of thousands of Jews. He ransacked the temple, desecrated it, and tried to destroy the Jews’ religion. Daniel 11:31 describes this assault, saying he would “pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.”

Jesus Christ clearly refers to this verse in Matthew 24:15, explicitly referring to “the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet.” But He speaks of it not as a past event but as something that will happen in the end time. Clearly, Antiochus Epiphanes is not the main fulfillment of this prophecy; he is a type of more to follow, men with a special hatred for God’s tabernacle and the Jews.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explained this prophecy in 2016, writing: “Daniel 8 … is more than a prediction; it is a prophecy of God about what Antiochus will do in modern times! God says this prophecy is going to prevail three different times here in this last end. This is prophecy for the end time, and it’s in the Bible of the Jewish people.

“[W]e have a modern, political Antiochus leading our nation [America]. And now, that Antiochus is interacting with the [leader] of Judah—the Jewish nation!” (Trumpet, March 2016).

Why does Obama hate the Jews so much? Because he is influenced by the devil, and because of the Jews’ connection to God. “God made a scepter promise to the Jews,” Mr. Flurry explained. “They were also chosen to preserve the Old Testament and the sacred calendar—‘the oracles of God’ (Romans 3:1-2)” (ibid). This man hates the Jews and the biblical values evident in the U.S. Constitution. That is why he works so hard to fundamentally transform both the United States and the Middle East.

2 Kings 14 provides context for what we are seeing in Israel today: “For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash” (verses 26-27).

“The Bible shows that anciently, God raised up the kingdom of Israel to represent Him,” Mr. Flurry writes in America Under Attack. “Satan attacked that nation in every way he could. History shows that at one point in the ninth century b.c., an enemy almost completely destroyed it—but God intervened. … Israel was in bitter affliction—on the verge of being blotted out of existence! There was an effort to blot out the name of Israel—a very satanic goal.”

Mr. Flurry continues in the book to show that this isn’t only ancient history. The book of Kings is one of the former prophets, which is prophecy mainly for this end time. (Request Gerald Flurry’s free book The Former Prophets.) 2 Kings 14 is actually a prophecy describing conditions in our day. This means that a modern Antiochus is trying today to accomplish the same goal: to blot out the name of Israel.

The world got a hard look at what blotting out the name of Israel means on October 7. But the damage Hamas did from Gaza, horrific as it was, was limited. A Hamas-controlled West Bank would be a ticking time bomb threatening sudden death for the nation.

There is good news, though. The same prophecies that speak of “no helper for Israel” also show that God sees what is happening and has a plan to save the nation. God intends to expose this evil for all to see. In doing so, He will give the nations of Israel—including but not limited to the Jewish state of Israel—one last chance to turn to Him.