
 A former aide  to New York State Governor George Pataki slammed the Obama administration's  treatment of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the State of Israel in a  prelude to Sunday's “Break the Silence' rally, set to begin at 1:00 p.m. (EDT)  outside the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan. 
The event will take place  rain or shine, according to organizer Beth Gilinsky, head of the Jewish Action  Alliance.
Among those on the podium will be Jeff Weisenfeld of Bernstein  Global Wealth Management, a long-time leader in New York's “mainstream” Jewish  community who for years was also active in the National Committee for Jewish  Education. Weisenfeld spent four years as chief of staff in the city  administration of former Mayor Ed Koch, a Democrat before becoming an aide to  Governor George Pataki, another Republican. 
Speaking late Friday  afternoon in an interview with Israel National News, Weisenfeld called the  current diplomatic crisis “the biggest accidental or deliberate miscalculation  in American-Israeli relations made by any American president.” He added that the  Obama administration's overtures to the Muslim world, and the contrast with its  hostility to the State of Israel, had transformed the U.S. executive branch into  a “complete Alice-in-Wonderland government. I don't want to make light of it  here,” Weisenfeld said with some sarcasm, “but it's like Purim, when Mordechai  becomes Haman, and Haman becomes Mordechai.”
He reserved special  criticism for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Special Presidential  Adviser David Axelrod, both traditonal Jews in the Obama administration who are  among the president's closest aides. “I had positions like theirs, I worked for  a governor, a senator... I always made sure that I was representing the Jewish  community to the governor, and the governor to them. But there are some who see  their power as an end in itself. They don't want to tell the boss when he's  wrong. And they are the worst kind of people to have in government,” Weisenfeld  said. 
“Islam has evolved backwards, has become more violent than perhaps  it was even in its inception, since they did not have the weapons then, that  they have today. And you have Emanuel and Axelrod, who have bad judgment, and  who do not see the need to fight this moral equivalency.”
Weisenfeld also  noted that most “mainstream” Jewish community organizations did not – and could  not – officially sign on to sponsor Sunday's rally for fear of retribution from  the Obama administration. “The mainstream groups are about access and response  to a direct threat from the White House. 
“The [Jewish] Federations and  their beneficiaries and subsidiaries have been warned by Rahm Emanuel to stay  away from public criticism of the president on Israel. But unless the weather is  horrendous,” he added, “there will be an abundance of “establishment-affiliated”  people. Maybe we can wake up this president and pull him back from the  abyss.”