Last weekend's European Parliament and British local county council elections (6/04-07) were not only a victory for the right over the left. More significantly, they were indications of the growing rejection of the last 60 years of denationalized European history. They were, particularly, a sharp assertion by many indigenous Europeans that they will not put up with losing their culture to overly assertive Islamic immigrants in Europe. The latter point was made emphatically by the voters of Holland, Hungary, Finland, Britain, Austria, Denmark and Italy.  But the loudest vox populi was heard in Britain.

During his White House years, William Jefferson Clinton -- someone Judge Sonia Sotomayor might call a "white male" -- was dubbed "America's first black president" by a black admirer. Applying the standard of identity politics and pandering to a special interest that earned Mr. Clinton that distinction, Barack Hussein Obama would have to be considered America's first Moslem president. This is not to say, necessarily, that Mr. Obama actually is a Moslem any more than Mr. Clinton actually is black. However - after his five months in office, and most especially after his just-concluded visit to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, a stunning conclusion seems increasingly plausible:

St. Petersburg, Russia. The economic glitterati have descended on Russia's "second capital." President Dmitry Medvedev, vice premiers and ministers, CEOs of Intel, Nissan, Coca-Cola and other Forbes 500 companies, and oligarchs are rubbing shoulders with superstar pundits such as Thomas Friedman and Nuriel Rubini. All have flocked to the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Russians are all smiles after the purchase of 2 percent of Facebook, and state-owned Sberbank's participation in acquisition of the General Motors Corp.'s German subsidiary Opel. The public discourse is all about diversification, innovation and coping with the global crisis. Mr. Medvedev says he wants innovation-based growth. But privately, many sotto voce discussions turn to the question: What is Russia's global strategy?

From an Israeli perspective, Mr. Obama's speech yesterday (6/04) in Cairo was deeply disturbing. Both rhetorically and programmatically, Obama's speech was a renunciation of America's strategic alliance with Israel. Rhetorically, Obama's sugar coated the pathologies of the Islamic world - from the tyranny that characterizes its regimes, to the misogyny, xenophobia, Jew hatred, and general intolerance that characterizes its societies. In so doing he made clear that his idea of pressing the restart button with the Islamic world involves erasing the moral distinctions between the Islamic world and the free world. In contrast, Obama's perverse characterization of Israel - of the sources of its legitimacy and of its behavior - made clear that he shares the Arab world's view that there is something basically illegitimate about the Jewish state.