It must be an election year. President Obama is now casting himself as a staunch defender of Israel. During his speech on Sunday before a pro-Israel audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (aipac), the president admonished people to ignore critics who question his support for Israel and to instead examine his deeds.

To any objective observer, however, his deeds over the past three years have been transparently hostile toward the Jewish state.

Since he moved into the Oval Office in January 2009, Mr. Obama has seized upon every possible opportunity, publicly and privately, to question Israel’s commitment to peace and to upbraid and even humiliate Israeli leaders. He has compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinian refugees to Germany’s extermination of Jews during the Holocaust. He has rejected the legitimacy of Jewish settlements and demanded that Jews stop building in all lands claimed by Palestinians. He called on Israel to apologize to its attackers after the Turkish flotilla incident. And during the so-called Arab Spring last year, President Obama said Israel should return to the indefensible armistice line borders from 1967.

The administration’s anti-Israel policy has been so alarming that in 2010, three fourths of the United States Senate scolded the Obama administration for its confrontational positions against Israel. Half the people who signed the letter of rebuke were Democrats. A similar letter composed by the House garnered 333 signatures. And both letters, incidentally, were backed by aipac.

So members of aipac can be forgiven for thinking the president’s recent assurances ring a little hollow.

“The fact is my administration’s commitment to Israel’s security has been unprecedented,” President Obama assured his listeners on Sunday. There should be no shred of doubt, the president said. “When the chips are down, I have Israel’s back” (emphasis added throughout).

With respect to the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran, Mr. Obama maintained that he is leaving every option on the table—including the threat of military intervention. “And I mean what I say,” he said at aipac.

Two days later, however, he told reporters that he didn’t really mean what he said on Sunday. “It was not a military doctrine that we were laying out for any particular military action.”

Even in Sunday’s speech, if you leave out the bluster about having Israel’s back and leaving all the options on the table, you can clearly see how committed this president is to diplomacy alone when dealing with the threat to Israel’s very existence.

“I firmly believe that an opportunity still remains for diplomacy—backed by pressure—to succeed,” the president said. There is still time for Iran’s leaders to make the right decision, he insisted. “After all, the only way to truly solve this problem is for the Iranian government to make a decision to forsake nuclear weapons. That’s what history tells us.”

The lesson of history, he believes, is that the only real solution to this crisis is for the mullahs to decide on their own to lay down their weapons. He didn’t specifically say what historical lesson he was referring to. But the tragic history of the Islamic regime in Tehran has been written with the blood of many thousands of Jews—not to mention Americans.

From the very beginning of the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iran has seized embassies, held hostages, assassinated diplomats, targeted civilians, hijacked planes and ships, stoned women and used children as human shields on the battlefield. Its leaders openly deny the Holocaust, blame the U.S. government for 9/11 and fantasize about the soon-coming destruction of Israel.

Iran is also the number one state sponsor of terrorism. Its proxies have murdered and maimed U.S. soldiers on battlefields in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan—and who knows where else.

This is the history lesson Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted the aipac audience to be reminded of on Monday, the day after President Obama’s speech. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then what is it? That’s right, it’s a duck—but this duck is a nuclear duck.”

Of course, the best outcome would be if Iran willingly abandoned its nuclear weapons program, Netanyahu added. But it hasn’t happened! For 10 years, the international community, led by the United States, has tried diplomacy. For the past six years, the West has applied sanctions, only to have them undermined by nations like Russia, China and Japan.

None of it has worked.

The prime minister then laid out his case for an Israeli strike on Iran: “Israel has waited patiently for the international community to resolve this issue. We’ve waited for diplomacy to work. We’ve waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer. As prime minister of Israel, I will never let my people live under the shadow of annihilation.”

Despite the campaign rhetoric we can expect from the Obama administration over the next nine months, these two aipac speeches, along with the events of the past three years, illustrate just how wide the ideological divide is between Israel and the United States.

This reality, prophesied in the Bible, is setting the scene for a dramatic escalation in end-time events. In Zechariah 11:14, God said He would “break the brotherhood between Judah [modern-day Israel] and Israel [primarily the United States and Britain].”

Israel may try to go it alone for a little while. If Israel does strike Iran, however, we can be certain that it will not be successful in eliminating the Iranian threat. Whether it takes action or not, we can expect Iran to only grow more belligerent and pushier—effectively bringing on a more severe crisis down the road. An Israeli strike may buy the Jews some time—or it may hasten the Islamist push for Jerusalem.

Ultimately, Bible prophecy reveals, Israel will seek outside help to counter its radical Islamic enemies. But it won’t look to the U.S. Numerous prophecies point to the Jewish nation going to the Assyrians (study Germany and the Holy Roman Empire for proof of who they are today) for protection in the end time. Hosea, for example, talks of Judah sending to King Jareb of Assyria for help (Hosea 5:13). Ezekiel prophesies of Jerusalem doting on the Assyrians as “lovers” (Ezekiel 23).

The evident divide between the leaders of America and Israel, as demonstrated in their respective aipac speeches this week, further sets the scene for the Jews to look elsewhere for support. For some time, Germany has been growing more active in the region, and relations between the two countries have been improving. We can expect Israel to move further in this direction as it becomes more desperate and its relations with America continue to fray.

The Jews’ need for a protector, however, is itself a result of their true problem when it comes to their safety: They will not trust God to protect them. Standing up to Iran now and going it alone will not solve their problems. Even if Washington supported them, their problems would not be resolved. And ultimately, going to Germany for help will backfire in a spectacular way.

As editor in chief Gerald Flurry writes in Hosea: Reaping the Whirlwind, “It seems the Israelis can trust their worst historical enemy, but they can’t trust God to protect them! And God is their only source of help.” Both President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu miss this point completely. Neither diplomacy nor an Israeli first strike will bring safety.