The centrifuges continue to spin in Qom and the Obama White House doors continue to revolve – with Islamic radicals and apologists coming and going. It’s no wonder that many Israelis hope for a different president, soon.

Published in Israel Hayom, October 25, 2012. Click for a printer-friendly copy.

A year-long investigation published on Sunday by Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism has found that scores of known radical Islamists made hundreds of visits to the Obama White House, meeting with top administration officials. Many of these visitors as belonging to groups serving as fronts for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and other Islamic militant organizations.

This says a lot about the Administration’s outlook on Mideast affairs. This should be big story. Amazingly, it has not become so.

I don’t blame the Romney campaign for not seizing on the revelations, because the campaign is understandably tacking toward the center and focusing on economic issues in these final days of the presidential campaign. Nor did I really expect the Obama-biased liberal American press to make a story of this. But for the life of me I can’t understand why American Jewish groups and Jewish-Israeli media haven’t picked up on this explosive story. Is everybody covering for Obama?

Consider: Among the American Arab visitors to the Obama White House have been officials representing groups which have been designated by the Department of Justice as unindicted co-conspirators in terrorist trials; people who have extolled Islamic terrorist groups including Hamas and Hizballah; people that have obstructed terrorist investigations by instructing their followers not to cooperate with law enforcement; people that regularly sermonize about the “US war against Islam”; and people who claim that the US government is framing Islamic terrorists as part of an anti-Muslim profiling campaign.

Individuals from the Council on American-Islamic Relations have visited the White House at least 20 times since Obama took office. Louay Safi, formerly executive director of the Islamic Society of North America, a front for the Muslim Brotherhood and for Hamas, visited the White House twice. Esam Omeish, former head of the Muslim Brotherhood-created Muslim American Society, visited the White House three times. The Muslim Public Affairs Council has secured the closest working relationship with the Obama White House, despite, according to Emerson, that organization’s record of anti-Semitism, whitewashing the terrorist threat and hostility toward law enforcement.

These revelations, which the White House hasn’t even bothered to counter or respond to, suggest once again that Obama has more than a soft spot for Moslem Brotherhood types. That he still hasn’t dropped his declared goal of a grand US-Islamic world rapprochement – despite the continued rebuffing of his “outreach to the Moslem world” by Ahmadinejad, Morsi and others. And that in a second term, Obama might cut a “grand bargain” with the Iranians on the nuclear issue, at Israel’s expense.

The story this week by the unabashedly pro-Obama New York Times about a secret US-Iran agreement to start direct talks on the nuclear issue – ramps up the suspicion level. After all, Iran has clandestinely crossed every virtual “red line” set by Obama over the past four years – putting nuclear plants online, building heavy water facilities, refining uranium, working on explosive triggers and warheads, and generally breaching all its obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty – and has gotten away with it, without ever really angering Obama.

Despite all Obama’s protestations to the contrary, Israeli officials are concerned that Obama might quietly acquiesce to the Iran’s current nuclear status in exchange for understandings with Tehran on the division of power in the region.

A “grand bargain” with Iran could involve tacit recognition of their hegemony in the Gulf region and an agreement to press Israel to forgo its nuclear arsenal in exchange for Iranian promises not to enrich uranium beyond 20 percent. Aside from crippling Israel, this would leave Iran’s nuclear development facilities intact, including the Fordow underground center, instead of dismantling them, and allow the Iranians to quietly continue refining their nuclear skills.

In a little noticed move, the Administration has recently indicated its support for a UN conference scheduled for Finland in early 2013 on a nuclear-free Middle East – which would likely concentrate pressure on Israel. This directly contradicts Obama Administration guarantees to Israel that were given just last summer.

The most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency underlined the fears being expressed in Israel about Iran moving inevitably into a zone of “immunity” beyond which attacks on their nuclear facilities might be futile. It stated that Iran had doubled the number of its centrifuges enriching the uranium needed for a bomb and is now housing them in a secure underground bunker. Obama’s team has issued no response to the IAEA report, except to breathe relief when Netanyahu hinted at the UN that Israel’s “deadline” for destroying Iran’s nuclear factories has been bumped forward to next summer.

All the while, the centrifuges continue to spin in Qom and the White House doors continue to revolve – with Islamic radicals and apologists coming and going. It’s no wonder that many Israelis hope for a different president, soon.