Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli diplomat who was stationed in Washington for many years, said that US President Barack Obama’s interview on Channel Two earlier this week was a showcase for his complete lack of understanding on the situation in the Middle East.

“After all, this is the president who claimed that the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere would lead to democracy in the Arab world,” he told Arutz Sheva.

“This is the president who, in his famous speech in Cairo five years ago, proclaimed that ‘Islam has always been part of American history,’ when of course any grade school student knows that this is not the case,” Ettinger asserted.

“This is the president who put a knife in the back of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and embraced the Muslim Brotherhood – and even now, when the Egyptian people have rejected the Brotherhood and embraced the military dictatorship that now runs the country, Obama is still a lobbyist for the Islamists.”

“I wouldn’t buy a used car from this man,” Ettinger stressed. 

During the interview with Ilana Dayan for Channel 2‘s “Uvda” show, which aired Tuesday night, Obama said that Israel’s refusal to renew peace talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA) would “make it hard” for the US to veto motions in the UN against Israel.  

But with such a track record on the Arab Spring, Ettinger argued, Obama should be the last man to urge Israel to sacrifice its security to match his world view.

“We cannot afford to be sucked into his fantasy. We must deal with our reality, which is clearly the opposite of Obama’s worldview. One thing to be said for him is that he never lets reality get in the way of this worldview. History will yet judge him for these massive failures.”