The last president to take a firm stand against Israel was Dwight Eisenhower over the Suez Crisis, says historian Kai Bird. Now Obama must be like Ike and support Israel’s liberal wing by staying tough.
Kai Bird spent his formative years in the Middle East. He and Martin J. Sherwin won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for their biography, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Bird's memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978, will be released by Scribner in April.