Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Halfway to the sky sits a tiny village of little white houses that has attracted the ire of the White House.

The village of Amona with its small white houses and red roofs could easily be mistaken for some lost Italian village or a dusty California town. But the White House would not have “boiled in anger”, as one anonymous official claimed, over the doings of some Italian village.

There’s only one place on earth that makes Obama’s blood boil. It isn’t Iran or North Korea. It’s Israel.

Amona’s small scattering of houses have a fraction of the square footage of the White House. The 40 families living there in defiance of Islamic terrorists and left-wing lawfarers would hardly be noticeable if they all crowded into the White House foyer. And yet they’ve been condemned by the State Department in more virulent tones than most Muslim dictators.

What is it about this handful of Jews caught between heaven and earth that outrages so many?

That may be the great question of history. It will not be solved among the sheep pens and orchards, the little white houses of Amona and their inhabitants, who despite the rage of the big White House, continue to go to work each day, to raise their children and to worship in the way of their ancestors.

In the official parlance of the media, Amona is a “settlement”.  That is to say it dates back a mere 3,300 years to the time when Joshua, born a slave in Egypt, commanded the Jews, “’Go and walk through the land, and describe it, and come back to me, and I will cast lots for you here before the Lord in Shilo.”

Today Shilo is a city of some 3,500. Like Jerusalem, it is also deemed a settlement. But on the list of places described by Joshua’s men, the mere speck of Amona appears before Jerusalem.

But then Amona, unlike Jerusalem, vanished from history. For thousands of years the name would have only meant something to the most dedicated biblical scholars. And then the left went to war against Amona. And out of that hatred the forgotten town was raised up from its forgotten place in history.

The handful of families living in Amona have been the subject of more legal proceedings, international debates, threats and international outrage than most genocides. 3,000 feet above sea level, its residents look up at a kind blue sky and down at an angry world that is unwilling to let them live in peace.

[…]

According to some anonymous official, the plan to build houses for the evacuees in Shiloh is “of great concern” to the White House. Anyone wondering why Obama isn’t concerned about ISIS or the economy had better realize that his eye is firmly fixed on a small town in Israel up against the bulldozer.

And he’s determined to see to it that the bulldozer wins.

State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner claimed that building 98 homes would endanger peace. Peace in Israel is as dead as the dodo. But somehow it never seems to be endangered by any amount of Muslim suicide bombings, stabbings or rockets. The Palestinian Authority funds Islamic terrorism by paying salaries to terrorists using taxpayer money dispensed to them by Obama.

More here.