Barack Obama “told me he would always have Israel’s back,” Alan Dershowitz told Fox & Friends yesterday morning. “I didn’t realize what he meant — that he would have Israel’s back so he could stab them in the back.” Seething with fury, Dershowitz condemned Obama as “one of the worst foreign-policy presidents ever,” and also of acting in a “most undemocratic” manner on his way out of the Oval Office. Practically every line Dershowitz speaks is quotable, but he gets his most derisive when chewing up Obama’s post-UN resolution excuses (via RealClearPolitics):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThfDjztyJSc

DERSHOWITZ: What he did was so nasty, he pulled a bait and switch. He told the American public this is all about the settlements deep in the West Bank. And yet, he allowed he representative to the U.N. to abstain –which is really a vote for– a resolution that says the Jews can’t pray at the Western Wall, Jews can’t live in the Jewish Quarter [of Jerusalem] where they have lived for thousands of years. And he’s going to say, ‘Whoops! I didn’t mean that!’ Well read the resolution! You’re a lawyer, you went to Harvard Law School.

It’s nothing more than a petulant swipe at Benjamin Netanyahu, and as Dershowitz explains, it’s going to backfire — badly:

DERSHOWITZ: This will make peace much more difficult to achieve because the Palestinians will now say ‘we can get a state through the UN, we can get a state through the BDS movement,’ because this will encourage that. ‘We can get a state through the International Criminal Court,’ because this will encourage that. ‘We don’t have to negotiate, we don’t have to make painful compromises.’ He will go down in history, President Obama, as one of the worst foreign-policy presidents ever.

Dershowitz goes on to explain that he supported Obama’s domestic policies — naturally, as a liberal Democrat himself — but that Obama “created a terrible conflict” for his fellow liberals with “appalling, appalling” record on foreign policy. Dershowitz mentions Syria and Aleppo in particular, but doesn’t mention the Iraq withdrawal that set the wheels in motion in Syria, nor does he mention the destruction of Libya — a decision that rests entirely on the shoulders of Obama and Hillary Clinton, and which has fueled radical Islamic terrorism.

The overall impact of the Obama/Hillary/John Kerry foreign policy is, as Dershowitz aptly argues, to have allowed a power vacuum which Russia has adroitly exploited in both the Middle East and eastern Europe. That’s what makes the “Trump loves the Russians!” argument over the past few months so patently ridiculous. Trump’s lack of concern over Vladimir Putin may be worrisome, although his selection of Gen. James Mattis as Secretary of Defense will almost certainly bring a heavy dose of reality to the Trump White House on this score. It’s difficult to imagine that incoming Trump administration will be anywhere near as beneficial to Putin’s regime as the Obama administration has been over the past eight years.