to blame others for regional tensions it is aggravating, as well as its public campaign to demonize the government of Saudi Arabia." That's a real eyebrow-raiser. So Saudi Arabia spreading violent fundamentalist Islam has nothing to do with regional conflict? It seems that Halevi's remark about coordination with a superpower was no mere whimsical flourish. It was based on the perception of closely aligned interests between Israel and the U.S. Democratic Party establishment, which has begun to pivot toward a possible Clinton presidency.

U.N. soldiers stand at the site of a shell in the Lebanese village of Wazzani on border with Israel on Jan. 5, one day after the Israeli army shelled the area in retaliation to an attack by Hezbollah that targeted an Israeli army. (AFP/Getty/MAHMOUD ZAYYAT)

One ofIt resonates remarkably closely (perhaps not unsurprisingly) with the way senior Israeli officials seem to look at the Middle East today. And perhaps Halevi's speech at Herzliya is an indication that the IDF considers Hilary's path to the White House a slam-dunk?

Shouldn't the modern missiles and battle experience Hezbollah's fighters have acquired in Syria be a deterrent to an Israeli attack?

Sunni jihadist forces have long been a Western tool to undermine Iran. The Gulf Sunni states also want to make sure al Qaeda and ISIS jihadists neither completely succeed nor completely fail, so it would be logical for Israel to see the jihadists who dominate the fighting in Syria as useful in a fight against the Iran-Hezbollah alliance.

As Halevi said at the Herzliya conference, "Some of the interests