How often do presidential candidates write op-eds for Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth? God-o-Meter will look into it. But Barack Obama’s recent appearance in those pages is just another step in a remarkably comprehensive campaign to woo Jews. His weekend interview with The Atlantic was another. The New York Times has some new details about other recent developments in that campaign:
The magazine interview follows recent speeches in which Mr. Obama has affirmed his support for Israel, most notably last week at an event marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel sponsored by the Israeli Embassy in Washington. On Sunday, he contributed an op-ed article to the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest paper in Israel.
But the attacks from the right on Obama’s Israel position keep coming. In a statement yesterday, minority House leader John Boehner jumped what seemed to be Obama’s characterization of the unresolved Isreal/Palestinian issue as a “constant sore” on international relations:
Israel is a critical American ally and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, not a ‘constant sore’ as Barack Obama claims. Obama’s latest remark, and his commitment to ‘opening a dialogue’ with sponsors of terrorism, echoes past statements by Jimmy Carter who once called Israel an ‘apartheid state.’ It’s another sign that Obama is part of the broken Washington Americans are rejecting.
The Obama campaign quickly responded with a vaguely worded statement about the “sore” reference “clearly referring to the ‘lack of resolution to this problem’,” though it never mentioned that the problem was political stalemate and continuing violence between the Israelis and Palestinians. But The New York Times suggests, indirectly, that Obama could still be vulnerable to attacks like Boehner’s:
In a Gallup poll released last week, 61 percent of Jewish voters surveyed said they would vote for Mr. Obama if he became the Democratic nominee. In several recent elections, nearly 80 percent of Jews voted Democratic…
8