Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Related: Hussein in trouble with the Catholics

New York Times:

As he battles for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama is trying to strengthen his support among Jewish voters and in doing so, is navigating one of the more treacherous paths of Democratic politics.

The challenge of meeting the concerns of the Jewish electorate, a cornerstone of the Democratic base, was evident Tuesday when Mr. Obama was asked at the Democratic debate in Cleveland about Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has endorsed him.

Mr. Obama called Mr. Farrakhan an anti-Semite and denounced his support, but was pressed to go further by his rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, an experienced hand at Democratic politics who herself has been on the defensive with Jewish voters after an encounter in 2000 with Suha Arafat, the wife of the Palestinian leader.

Mr. Obama has also faced criticism over remarks he made about the suffering of Palestinians — remarks he says were incorrectly reported — and about who is advising him on foreign affairs. And he has had to beat back false tales, spread in viral e-mail messages, that he is a Muslim who attended a madrassa in Indonesia as a boy and was sworn into office on the Koran. In fact, he is a Christian who was sworn in on a Bible.

Winning the trust of Jewish Democratic voters is all the more difficult for Mr. Obama because of the tenuous relations between blacks and Jews. He addressed that very issue at the Cleveland debate when he used the answer to the Farrakhan question to call for a renewal of the ties between blacks and Jews.

But other issues he faces arise from his newness to national politics. While his positions hew to mainstream Democratic views, some critics have expressed concerns that they are not heartfelt.

“His record is relatively sparse, so I want to look at the totality of influences that might bear on Senator Obama,” said Ed Lasky, news editor of the online magazine, American Thinker, whose criticisms of Mr. Obama for aligning himself with allegedly anti-Israel advocates have been widely circulated among Jewish voters.

Mr. Obama said on Thursday that some questions about his commitment to Israel and the Middle East are being provoked by Mrs. Clinton and her advisers, as well as other rivals.

“Those concerns have been continually stoked, whether through these e-mails that suggest that I’m a Muslim and attended madrassas and was sworn in with my hand on the Koran and scurrilous e-mails that were untrue,” Mr. Obama said. “Or whether it was an article that was in Newsweek recently indicating the degree to which Clinton supporters had questioned my positions on Israel.

“I think it’s very clear why there have been problems,” he added. “It’s been part of a series of political strategies not all necessarily, by the way, by the Clinton administration.”

Campaign advisers said they approached Jewish voters the way they did others, confident that once they knew more about Mr. Obama, they would be reassured. At the same time, they acknowledged that many Jewish voters were “vigilant” in testing candidates for president, particularly on Israel.

“The Jewish community, rightfully so, is a sensitive and anxious community and has many historical reasons for that,” said Representative Robert Wexler of Florida, a top adviser to Mr. Obama on Israel. Campaign officials said they were surprised, however, by the penetration of the viral e-mail messages, which were background static in the campaign until they began flooding the inboxes of Jewish voters right before nominating contests.

The e-mail messages have not gone unchallenged. Jewish supporters of Mr. Obama have sent thousands of their own e-mail messages, and some have started an online petition for other Jews who support his candidacy.

The campaign in recent days has moved to shore up Jewish support, with Mr. Obama speaking last Sunday to an influential group of Jewish leaders in Cleveland and addressing their questions about Israel, Mr. Farrakhan and even his church in Chicago, whose pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., has been viewed with suspicion.

“Nobody has ever been able to point to statements that I made or positions that I’ve taken that are contrary to the long-term security interests in Israel and in any way diminish the special relationship we have with that country,” Mr. Obama told reporters Thursday in Texas. “My job is just to keep on getting the information out and this is part of the political process.”

Jews make up about 1.7 percent of the adult population, but they are a stronghold of the Democratic base and important to the party’s fund-raising.

Over all, Jews made up 5 percent of the voters when more than 20 states voted on Feb. 5, and they divided their votes 54 percent for Mrs. Clinton and 44 percent for Mr. Obama, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky.

But while Mrs. Clinton took the Jewish vote by 2 to 1 on her home turf, New York, and also in New Jersey — states she won — Mr. Obama captured the Jewish vote in Connecticut 61 to 38, which he won, and in Massachusetts, 52 to 48, which he lost. And he split it with Mrs. Clinton in California, where she won.

On some levels, that is hardly a surprise. Democratic Jewish voters, like any voting cohort, are hardly monolithic.

Some Jewish leaders said the anxiety over Mr. Obama might reveal more about Jews than about the candidate. By their analysis, those who heed the e-mail are generally older and have closer ties to Israel. The break is between “those who are motivated by traditional Jewish liberalism and those motivated by traditional Jewish anxiety over Israel,” said J. J. Goldberg, editorial director for The Forward, a Jewish newspaper.

On Israel, some Jews have found fault with Mr. Obama’s commitment, if not his policies. They worry about his call for direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Many also point to a now oft-repeated remark of his, made last year in Des Moines, that “no one has suffered more than the Palestinians.”

His supporters say his stance toward Iran does not mean capitulation. Further, Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that his remarks about the Palestinians were incomplete, and that he went on the blame their leaders.

His campaign Web site says the American commitment to Israel’s security is “incontrovertible.” As a senator, he backed Israel during its invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and supports military aid to Israel. Weeks after he was sworn in in 2006, he visited Israel.

E-mail messages circulating about Mr. Obama’s untrustworthiness assert that the former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and diplomat Robert Malley, figures loathed by many Jews, are top advisers to his campaign. Mr. Brzezinski has met with Mr. Obama, but he is not a top adviser. Mr. Malley has communicated with the campaign by e-mail but has never spoken to Mr. Obama, a campaign spokesman said.

The candidate’s Israel advisers are three former staff members to President Bill Clinton: Dennis Ross, a top Mideast adviser; Anthony Lake, national security adviser and Susan Rice, assistant secretary of state. Other advisers on Israeli and Mideast matters are Mr. Wexler; Dan Shapiro, formerly of the Clinton national security council, and Eric Lynn, a former Congressional aide. (All but Ms. Rice are Jewish.)

Many Jews have expressed concern about Mr. Obama’s minister, Mr. Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. In an article in The Jerusalem Post that is being circulated on the Internet, Marc Zell, co-chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel, described Mr. Wright as “well known for his virulent anti-Israel remarks.”

The Anti-Defamation League, however, has said that it has found no evidence of anti-Semitism on Mr. Wright’s part.

The concerns of Jewish skeptics, meanwhile, are shared by conservative Christians, passionately protective of Israel as the Holy Land, and by many Republicans. Criticism over Israel in the Democratic race now hints at fights Mr. Obama could face should he end up the nominee: This week, the Tennessee Republican Party issued a news release that said there was “a growing chorus of Americans concerned about the future of the nation of Israel, the only stable democracy in the Middle East, if Sen. Barack Hussein Obama is elected president of the United States.”