On Friday afternoon, a freaky thing happened at the Bronx Zoo. A 25-year-old animal lover purposely jumped from the Wild Asia Monorail into the tiger habitat. David Villalobos of Mahopac, New York spent 10 full minutes being attacked by a 400-pound Siberian tiger, before being rescued by zoo keepers, who sprayed the large mammal with a fire extinguisher.

Miraculously, Villalobos survived the mauling, though he sustained several injuries to his limbs and back. One analyst theorized that the reason the tiger hadn’t immediately gone for the young man’s jugular was that the animal had lost the instinctual skills of the wild by having grown up in captivity, and therefore didn’t quite know how to tackle prey.

Less clear to all concerned was the behavior of Villalobos, who certainly should have known better than to leap into an enclosure with a carnivorous predator. When asked why he had behaved in such a suicidal manner — not to mention break the law and put zoo keepers in peril — he responded happily that he had “wanted to be at one with the tiger” and had gotten his wish to pet the huge cat.

On Saturday evening, an equally creepy and incomprehensible event took place in New York, this time in Manhattan. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived, entourage in tow, at the Warwick Hotel. It is there that he and his delegation of anti-Western genocidal Muslim maniacs are staying throughout their visit to attend the U.N. General Assembly. Though Ahmadinejad has already given some interviews and has even delivered a couple of speeches at the U.N., his major address to the General Assembly will take place on Wednesday — Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holiday of atonement.

On Sunday morning, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Ahmadinejad to tell him to keep his “incendiary rhetoric” in check. After all, a major topic of the annual meeting of world leaders will be the film about the Prophet Muhammad that radical Islamists are claiming was the cause of their having slaughtered a United States ambassador and many other Americans this month. So the last thing Ban needs right now is for the man behind the Islamic uprisings to acknowledge that he is prepared to wipe the Small Satan off the map with his “peaceful” nukes, and then go for the jugular of the Great Satan.

Many Jews are among those gathering in front of the Warwick Hotel and the U.N. building to protest Iran’s nuclear program and ambitions. This is something they have to do now, because from sundown Tuesday until Wednesday night — after Ahmadinejad is done wreaking his oral havoc — they will be fasting and going to synagogue.

The reason I am referring to the Jews as “they” in this case, as opposed to “we,” is that I will not be joining them at these protests. Ahmadinejad should not be allowed into this country. He should not be welcome at the U.N. He should not be presented with “options on the table.” There should be only one option for him and that is defeat.

The Jews of New York in particular, though by no means exclusively, voted for Barack Obama in 2008. A majority of them will repeat that act of insanity come this November.

It is an act no less insane than that of Villalobos, who wanted to be “at one” with an animal bent on his destruction. Obama’s policies, that involve wanting to be “at one” with the forces of the world bent on America’s and Israel’s destruction, are no less dangerous for American Jews than hopping head first into a tiger’s lair.

At dinner the other night, a friend bemoaned the fact that man is the only animal in God’s kingdom that does not have the instinct to detect and protect himself from his enemies. This is especially true of people who live in free societies, where their “fight or flight” mechanism tends to grow rusty from lack of use. Less fortunate are those members of the human race for whom such a luxury is as unfathomable as petting a tiger.

If the former should take that blessing too much for granted, they are liable to end up in the latter category. It is this that the Jews should be contemplating while engaging in soul searching, and not only on Yom Kippur. It is this, too, that all Americans should be considering before opting for another term of Obama.

Ruthie Blum is the author of "To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring,’" now available on Amazon and in bookstores in Europe and North America.