Mitt Romney’s main theme on his foreign trip to the U.K., Israel and Poland this week is that President Obama isn’t sufficiently friendly to America’s allies, particularly the Jewish State. “The people of Israel deserve better than what they have received from the leader of the free world,” Romney said in a speech just days before he left American soil.

But two senior Israeli leaders have a different view. In recent interviews with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that aired this afternoon, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres praised Obama’s commitment to Israel:

BARAK: I should tell you honestly that this administration under President Obama is doing, in regard to our security, more than anything that I can remember in the past. … In terms of the support for our security, the cooperation of our intelligence, the sharing of sorts in a very open way even when there are differences.

PERES: When I look at the record of President Obama concerning the major issues, security, I think it’s a highly satisfactory record, from an Israeli point of view.

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Praise for Obama’s policies toward Israel is nothing new for Barak and Peres, but the timing of their recent acclaim is significant given Romney’s theme that the president isn’t pro-Israel.

Even Blitzer took notice. “They were extremely complimentary to President Obama, both of them, even as Romney was still basically on the ground in Israel,” Blitzer said today. “I was pretty surprised by the effusive enthusiastic praise they had for President Obama given some of the problems President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu had in their personal relationship.”

Indeed, just last week, Obama signed a measure approving $70 million for Israel’s short-range rocket shield known as “Iron Dome.” “I have made it a top priority for my administration to deepen cooperation with Israel across a whole spectrum of security issues,” Obama said.

During a speech today at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace marking the release of a report about religious freedom around the world, Secretary of State HIllary Clinton took a moment to deal with religious freedom a little closer to home. Specifically, she touched obliquely on accusations made about a top staffer in her office by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN).

In a letter to the State Department demanding an investigation into alleged Muslim Brotherhood infiltration, Bachmann suggested Clinton aide Huma Abedin is tied to Muslim Bortherhood and exercising influence on what Bachmann said were “actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests.”

In a thinly veiled reference, Clinton lauded those Republicans who stood up to Bachmann’s bogus and Islamophobic allegations:

Leaders have to be active in stepping in and sending messages about protecting the diversity within their countries. … We did see some of that in our own country. We saw Republicans stepping up and standing up against the kind of assaults that really have no place in our politics.

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Among those Republicans were Sen. John McCain (AZ), Sen. Scott Brown (MA), Sen. Marco Rubio (FL), House Speaker John Boehner (OH) and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (WI). The Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Rep. Mike Rogers (MI) went from supporting Bachmann, who sits on his committee, to disavowing her witch-hunt. Sensenbrenner, in particular, called out Bachmann’s Islamophobic allegations as “wrong ” and an affront on religious liberty:

Religion is a personal issue to every one of the people who lives in the United States, whether you practice a faith, how you practice a faith, whether you don’t practice a faith, whether you say you’re a member of a faith but don’t practice it, it’s none of the government’s business. And this is the whole issue of religious freedom.

However, some Republicans have come out and supported Bachmann’s allegations. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) also defended Bachmann’s charges. An adviser to GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, John Bolton, voiced support for Bachmann’s allegations on a radio show hosted by the progenitor of her conspiracy theories, notorious Islamophobe Frank Gaffney. Former presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, who also acts a as a surrogate for Romney, defended Bachmann, too, even writing a long Politico opinion piece today.

At a Romney campaign event in Virginia on Monday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took questions over his weekend op-ed defending the practice of questioning prominent Muslims in government jobs over alleged ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and four other Republican lawmakers have been wrapped on the knuckles by prominent members of their own party for requesting an investigation into the supposed infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the U.S. government, and the role of Huma Abedin, a top Hillary Clinton aide, in the organization. And while Gingrich deliberately did not mention Abedin in his Sunday evening op-ed, when asked by ThinkProgress on Monday, he defended Bachmann’s call for an investigation into Abedin’s loyalty:

ADAM PECK: Do you think it was fair for the “National Security 5″ to explicitly name Huma Abedin in this letter?

GINGRICH: I think all they asked for was an investigation. I can’t imagine, given our track record over the last 70 years, that we want to start with the principle that anybody is automatically exempt. And therefore I think it’s not illegitimate to raise the question, it’s not a question I raised in my piece…Who’s offering advice to Secretary Clinton? I think it’s totally legitimate to ask that question.

What Gingrich failed to mention is that the appropriate questions have already been asked of Abedin and every other member of the Obama administration. As the top aide to the Secretary of State, Abedin underwent a thorough background and security check before assuming her position within the State Department. It seems Gingrich has stricter standards than the nation’s top intelligence agencies, which cleared Abedin.

Gingrich also makes the incorrect assumption that simply raising questions is a harmless exercise. In the weeks since Bachmann’s letter became public, Abedin has been subjected to direct threats on her life, and the NYPD has given her a security detail.

Listen to the remarks here:

In a speech to wealthy donors in Tel Aviv over the weekend, Romney praised Israel’s “economic vitality” compared to the poor Palestinian economy. He attributed the economic success of the nation to a strong culture:

I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things. …
As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality.

Palestinians took offense at Romney’s remarks, interpreting them to mean that Israel had the superior culture, and claimed that their economic development has been stymied by continued Israeli occupation. In response, the Romney campaign claimed the statement was “grossly mischaracterized” and chided the press for omitting the candidate’s full remarks. To contextualize Romney’s comparison — which actually underestimated the disparity between Israel’s GDP of US$31,000 to the West Bank and Gaza’s US$1,500 — the campaign offered his next line as proof that he did not target Palestinians: “And that is also between other countries that are near or next to each other. Chile and Ecuador, Mexico and the United States.”

This defense underscores the fundamental tone-deafness of the comparison. To give the full context, Romney discussed two economic theories, one attributing success to the physical characteristics of the land, while another attributes it to culture. He argued that the successes of Israel, the U.S. and Chile can be attributed to strong cultures; conversely, the geographically similar Palestinian, Ecuadorean and Mexican economies are the result of a poorer culture.

The “culture” argument doesn’t merely imply that poorer economies somehow deserve their fate due to an inferior value system. It makes generalizations about the characters of both populations. Abraham Diskin, a political scientist professor from Tel Aviv pointed out, “You can understand this remark in several ways. You can say it’s anti-Semitic. ‘Jews and money.’”

In their current campaign against automatic military spending cuts, Republican Senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) claim the reductions will be “devastating” to the U.S. military. But when asked to provide specifics on that claim on CNN this morning, McCain came up empty:

SOLEDAD O’BRIEN: Senator McCain, let’s start with you, if we can. The $500 billion cut over the next 10 years. You’ve had said that sequestration would be devastating. Give me a list of why?

MCCAIN: Well, first of all, it’s on top of another $460 billion that is already being cut. Second of all, it’s the view of Secretary Panetta and our uniform leaders who have used words like devastating, impossible to carry out our national security, challenge — meet those security challenges in the most graphic terms they have used as to the effects of these cuts.

And not to mention the job losses — the over a million jobs that would be lost and the billions of dollars also in defense industry so it’s a very serious situation.

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Panetta does repeatedly say the military spending sequester would be “devastating” to the U.S. military but he has also failed to explain why. Panetta’s most specific remark on this point has been to say that the U.S. would have to reduce its presence in Latin America and Africa — i.e. hardly a “devastating” blow to the military or U.S. security. Moreover, a recent non-partisan Congressional Budget Office report found that the automatic spending cuts would bring the Pentagon’s budget back to what it spent in 2006.

As for McCain’s jobs argument, defense industry CEOs and other experts have said warnings that the military spending cuts will damage the economy and cause massive layoffs are “overblown.” And if you’re going to argue that federal spending is necessary to create jobs — a concept Republicans are now embracing in order to protect the nation’s bloated military budget — it’s probably better to, as one study has found, try to direct those dollars away from the Pentagon toward other domestic priorities.

Mitt Romney’s speech yesterday in Jerusalem focused on easy applause lines for his right-wing audience, including major donors. He was hawkish on Iran, declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and said the U.S. should not publicly criticize Israel. Completely absent was any mention of the other residents of the Holy Land and its marquee city: Palestinians.

When Romney finally did broach the topic, he raised the ire of Palestinian officials by attributing Israel’s successes to “the power of at least culture and a few other things,” and contrasting Israeli economic gains to those of its Palestinian neighbors. At a fundraising breakfast on Monday morning, Romney said:

[A]s I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things. …

As you come here and you see the GDP per capita, for instance, in Israel which is about $21,000 dollars, and compare that with the GDP per capita just across the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority, which is more like $10,000 per capita, you notice such a dramatically stark difference in economic vitality.

In addition to vastly understating the disparity between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories — per capita GDP is actually $31,000 in Israel and $1,500 in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip — Romney incensed Palestinians.

Saeb Erekat, a top official in the Palestinian Authority (PA), the body that has partially governed the occupied territories since the Oslo Accords, blasted Romney’s statement:

It is a racist statement and this man doesn’t realize that the Palestinian economy cannot reach its potential because there is an Israeli occupation.

It seems to me this man lacks information, knowledge, vision and understanding of this region and its people. He also lacks knowledge about the Israelis themselves. I have not heard any Israeli official speak about cultural superiority.

While in Israel, Romney didn’t meet with PA President Mahmood Abbas, but he did briefly visit with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Fayyad is well-regarded by Israelis and Americans alike for his attempts at institution building, something that dovetails with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s sometimes faltering plan for “economic peace” with the Palestinians.