by Zack Beauchamp

An excellent piece by Yair Rosenberg over at Tablet debunks a pair of big ones. First, Obama has been significantly less harsh on Israel than...his GOP predecessors:

Reagan was not the only president willing to put daylight between the United States and Israel. His successor, George H.W. Bush, made waves at a 1990 news conference when he said, “My position is that the foreign policy of the United States says we do not believe there should be new settlements in the West Bank or in East Jerusalem.” It was a statement that could just as easily have been made by President Obama. But unlike Obama, Bush took this controversial position a step further, conditioning $10 billion of loan guarantees to Israel on a total cessation of settlement building. He later compromised and allowed the loans to go forward, but with deductions commensurate with Israel’s construction in the occupied territories.

Second, Netanyahu is significantly less right-wing Israeli than his Likud predecessors: