President Barack Obama is a Muslim, pro-Arab, naive, weak and would love to screw Israel. Obama is in fact Osama; he knows how to speak nicely but is completely incompetent when it comes to implementing his words.

Orly Azoulay

This is what is quietly being said about Obama in Israel. Behind closed doors they treat him like a malady that needs to run its course and disappear from this world. I heard these things with my own ears while covering Obama’s campaign and while writing a book about him. They were disturbing just as they were patronizing, and they attested mostly to ignorance.

George W. Bush was a hero for Israelis and a true friend. Obama was a suspicious face from the very beginning, a person that cannot be addressed without bias.

Obama is a different type of president. He brought with him a new spirit to America, a liberal and humane spirit. A spirit of reconciliation. The world cheered him on. Yet we, in Israel, didn’t even give him a chance. We refused to connect to the new message.

It’s very easy to judge his actions from the narrow Israeli angle. How he addressed West Bank communities and how many homes he will not allow us to build in East Jerusalem. It’s very easy to declare that we’ll be showing this Obama character who’s boss, and that he won’t make suckers out of us. Yet there’s not much we can do about the fact that the world thinks otherwise.

Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize mostly because of who he is: An inspiring leader who managed to give hope to millions in America and across the world. A man of mixed descent who managed to become the leader of the world’s most powerful nation against all odds. A leader who is among the few who possess both a worldview and an amazing ability to present it.

Obama has a dream: To turn the world into a better place. One is allowed to dream. One needs to dream. History proves that only dreamers and crazy people have been able to prompt just revolutions. The moment the United States chose him to be its president, Obama’s dreams turned into the agenda of the administration he heads.

Obama presented his dream of a world devoid of nuclear weapons; a world where Israel is at peace with all its enemies. He ruled that there is a need to engage in dialogue with enemies before directing the smart bombs at them, and embarked on direct talks with Iran. Should Obama manage to curb the Iranian threat through diplomatic means, as he hopes, one Nobel Peace Prize won’t be enough.

However, Obama did not receive the prize for his dreams. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in honorable recognition of his action plan, which he is closer to realizing today than ever before. He is the president, and from that moment on the burden of proof that he deserves this award is borne on his shoulders.

Orly Azoulay is an Israeli author and the Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, which owns Ynetnews.com. She wrote this piece for Ynet.