After four years in the White House and two inquisitorial presidential election campaigns, what Barack Obama really thinks about foreign policy is still an open question.

Margaret Thatcher entered office as a great admirer of Israel, and remained so in the years after she left 10 Downing Street. Not only that, but during her second term, Anglo-Israeli relations reached an all-time high when she became the first British Prime Minister to visit Israel while in office, in May 1986.

Prior to her visit to meet the rising Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1984, I was asked to join a delegation in Finchley to meet Margaret Thatcher. I hesitated because I was no fan and believed her policies to be destructive and divisive. Yet my family convinced me that I should participate because of my long involvement with the Soviet Jewry campaign.

Much has been written of the special bond between Baroness Thatcher and Lord Jakobovits.

His discretion and irritation at tittle tattle meant that he would never talk publicly about the true depth of their relationship. He believed that their private discussions should remain just that.

The much-heralded #OpIsrael, a campaign by the hacker collective Anonymous to “wipe Israel off the face of the internet”, created a good deal of media hype but failed to cause much more than a nuisance to Israelis.

The resignation of Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati late last month has not only plunged the country once again into political turmoil, but is also a sign that Hizbollah is seeking to tighten its control of Lebanon and parts of Syria.

Even for Jerusalem, where Jew-against-Jew tensions often get bitter, this attack is harsh. On unsigned posters across the city’s religious neighbourhoods, posters draw a parallel between one of Israel’s political parties and the ancient enemy of the Jews, Amalek.