Jewish Press: Obama's 'not some ogre'

There has been an obnoxious number of stories lately about Obama's Jewish problem.

I found Jodi Kantor's much-discussed NYT piece yesterday to be heavy on anecdotes and light on evidence. Last week, Jeffrey Goldberg published his interview with Obama, in which they discussed Israel, Hamas and the "kishke question," a conversation that has had more traction than any in recent memory and to which the New York Times followed with this piece on Obama's Jewish campaign.

Thomas Friedman added to the din this Sunday with "Obama and the Jews," a good column about the whisper campaign against the Illinois senator, but, frankly, I'm a bit tuckered out.

I don’t want a president who is just going to lean on Israel and not get in the Arabs’ face too, or one who, as the former Mideast negotiator Aaron D. Miller puts it, “loves Israel to death” — by not drawing red lines when Israel does reckless things that are also not in America’s interest, like building settlements all over the West Bank.

It’s a tricky business. But if Israel is your voting priority, then at least ask the right questions about Mr. Obama. Knock off the churlish whispering campaign about what’s in his heart on Israel (what was in Richard Nixon’s heart?) and focus first on what kind of America you think he’d build and second on whether you believe that as president he’d have the smarts, steel and cunning to seize a historic opportunity if it arises.

I've argued before that the claim that American Jews need to choose between Obama and Israel is false. The right-wing Jewish Press agreed, and quoting from Goldberg's interview ran this editorial:

Sen. Obama is very forthcoming about his commitment to the survival of Israel. This is not some ogre with a hidden anti-Semitic agenda. The devil, however, is in the details.

That's where, of course, they question just what his commitment would look like. And I'd say that's a fair exercise to do with any presidential candidate on any issues you as a voter care about. (Again, this is why I don't vote for politicians based on their purported religious beliefs.)

(Hat tip: Bintel Blog)

'Jews Against Obama'

It was only a matter of time.

Honorary wandering Jew: Barack Obama?

In Jewcy post titled, "How Jewy Should We Want Our Presidents To Be?" Daniel Koffler doesn't really answer that question but does argue that Barack Obama, who has had a "Jewish problem," may, metaphorically, be the biggest Jew yet:

Obama in particular embodies that common thread between my community and his by being (again from Samuels) "a self-made man, part con artist, part performer, living in an imaginary future that will make him and his audience whole."

The flip side is that, truly unlike any potential president since the early days of the Republic (except Lincoln, maybe), he is a person of the book, and of books, and of philosophy and literature. If he does get to be president, his memoirs will be vastly more penetrating in their insights than anything a president has produced since Ulysses Grant more than a century ago, and radically unlike any president's literary output since presidents stopped writing for themselves sometime last century. That literariness is balanced by an Ivory Tower-trained analytic intelligence --- as the Clinton campaign found out to their chagrin, he was in fact a fairly skillful and accomplished legal academic.

All of which means that if elected, Obama will be the first president in ages (if not ever) to suffer from what Joyce called the agenbite of inwit (from ME, meaning "remorse of conscience"), the near-universal soul-sickness of introspective literary and intellectual types in the modern age, grasping for and unable to find concrete, stable concepts of identity and historical progression by which to gain a foothold on their world.

The condition is a two-edged sword for scores of reasons. For example, on the positive side of the ledger, it can provide fuel for empathy, for a creativity in problem-solving, and for just enough misanthropy to motivate the enlightened governance that rejects crude, short-sighted populism (his stand against the gas tax pander, his connections to and education from people like Austan Goolsbee and Lawrence Lessig are the encouraging data points here). And on the negative side, consider that Woodrow Wilson was the closest precedent in this regard, and one of the worst presidents we've ever had, and Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon are next closest. Intellectuality, especially when self-aware, can be a straitjacket and an amplifier for mistakes.

But more to the point here, the agenbite is, if not a Jewish condition, then more pervasive among Jews than any other group, by a wide margin. (It was no accident that Buck Mulligan described Stephen Dedalus as "a jesting jew jesuit," nor was it coincidental that the greatest song ever written about the suffering and dispossession of American southerners in the Civil War was written by a half-Jew half-Mohawk from rural Ontario.) Virtually every significant feature of Obama's biography --- from his name, to his twice-over paternal abandonment, to the clash of skin colors with all his relatives, to his drug years, to his Ivy League education, to his admission to modern day Talmud study in a law faculty --- scream of the agenbite, and through it, to a connection with the experience of overwhelming numbers of post-Haskalah Jews (which may or may not come to the same thing as the Jewish experience).

Obama's Jewish campaign

The New York Times this morning recycles a lot of news you've seen here in the past few weeks. The story is about Barack Obama's push to attract Jewish voters and alleviate their fears; it mentions his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and his congratulations to Israel on turning 60.

Nothing new, except for a reference to an op-ed Obama wrote for the Sunday edition of Israel's largest paper, Yedioth Ahronoth. I, however, can find no trace of this online.

The new Muslim smear for Obama

I made a mistake Monday morning. I should have read that Edward Luttwak op-ed on Barack Obama the Muslim apostate that I linked to here but didn't discuss. As the day dragged on, my Google Reader filled up with a few RSS feeds attacking the bankruptcy of Luttwak's argument that Obama, as an apostate who purportedly was born a Muslim and converted out to Christianity, could not be tolerated by other Muslims and might even be killed for it.

Here is what Luttwak wrote:

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

Obama, in fact, is not the son of a Muslim father. This belief comes from that rumor that he's a closet Muslim. Secondly, Luttwak's argument is not original, having first been made last summer in FrontPage magazine, courtesy of the man leading a battle against peaceful Islam, Daniel Pipes.

"This is an example of editorial lunacy," Richard Silverstein responded to Luttwak's column. "Why would you take a trashy rumor published in a David Horowitz shmate and transfer it to the N.Y. Times? I feel dirty just reading it there."

At Huffington Post, Ali Eteraz breaks down the fallacies inherent in Luttwak's piece, beginning "with his facile understanding of Sharia."

Luttwack and the other fake experts promoting this new smear do not understand Islam. Religion is not hereditary as it is in Judaism. Islam is not a race. Just because a child has a Muslim father -- which, again, Obama didn't -- doesn't mean anything unless the child is being raised as a Muslim. At the time of birth, Muslims engage in a symbolic act -- of saying the Call to Prayer in the child's ear -- that renders a child Muslim. If Obama's father was agnostic/atheist, then he wouldn't have done such a thing.

No call to prayer in the ear, not raised as a Muslim, born to an atheist father, and then abandoned to a Christian mother both by father and his family, equals not Muslim. Obama is right to say he had no religion until he became a Christian.

Also in the Obama files, Republicans politicians and the Republican Jewish Coalition respond to the Illinois senator's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, in which they spoke at length about Israel. Here's a compilation.

Obama on 'the kishke question'

Jeffrey Goldberg, who made an appearance here last week, spent part of his weekend asking Barack Obama about being endorsed by Hamas (he didn't care for it), Jimmy Carter's portrait of Israel as an apartheid state ("I strongly reject that characterization"), whether Israel hurts the U.S. image abroad ("no, no, no") and the lingering feeling among many Jews that he can't be trusted.

Here is Obama's response to "the kishke question":

I think the idea of Israel and the reality of Israel is one that I find important to me personally. Because it speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus, it describes the history of overcoming great odds and a courage and a commitment to carving out a democracy and prosperity in the midst of hardscrabble land. One of the things I loved about Israel when I went there is that the land itself is a metaphor for rebirth, for what’s been accomplished. What I also love about Israel is the fact that people argue about these issues, and that they’re asking themselves moral questions.

Sometimes I’m attacked in the press for maybe being too deliberative. My staff teases me sometimes about anguishing over moral questions. I think I learned that partly from Jewish thought, that your actions have consequences and that they matter and that we have moral imperatives. The point is, if you look at my writings and my history, my commitment to Israel and the Jewish people is more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency. When it comes to the gut issue, I have such ardent defenders among my Jewish friends in Chicago. I don’t think people have noticed how fiercely they defend me, and how central they are to my success, because they’ve interacted with me long enough to know that I've got it in my gut. During the Wright episode, they didn’t flinch for a minute, because they know me and trust me, and they’ve seen me operate in difficult political situations.

The other irony in this whole process is that in my early political life in Chicago, one of the raps against me in the black community is that I was too close to the Jews. When I ran against Bobby Rush [for Congress], the perception was that I was Hyde Park, I’m University of Chicago, I’ve got all these Jewish friends. When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I’ve been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends, so when I find on the national level my commitment being questioned, it’s curious.

In other Obama news (analysis), the Crunchy Con discusses the passages he found most interesting from the New York Times' lengthy profile of Obama's rise and on the op-ed page, Edward N. Luttwak argues that Obama is not going to be the miraculous American emissary to the Muslim world that some hope.

The false claim: Obama or Israel

No matter what Barack Obama says -- earlier this week it was, "We must never waver in our unshakeable commitment to help Israel achieve its goal of true security through lasting peace with its neighbors" -- or how many Jews support his presidential campaign, quite a few believe he spells nothing but trouble for Israel.

John McCain tapped into this fear recently. And today, shortly after I received the above video from Obama's office in which he congratulates Israel on 60 years, Israpundit emailed me his blog post arguing that Jews had to choose between Obama and Israel.

While most Jews favour Obama in a run off with McCain because he is a Democrat, they ignore how pro-Palestinian and anti-American he is.

Let me list the ways.

- Obama said “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people,”

- Obama said “If there is an Arab American family [in the US] being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, those are my civil liberties!”

- Everyone on Obama’s foreign policy team, McPeak, Hamilton, Kurtzer, Brezezinski, are anti- Israel and The Israel Lobby. Their policies are closely aligned with Carter’s and Baker’s.

- Obama has been in bed with Jew haters and Islamic jihad for years. Farrakhan and his dear friend Reverend Wright, Obama’s spiritual guru, is a vile Jew hater.

Israpundit lists another nine bits of evidence against Obama, which he writes "cannot be characterized as a smear as they are all true." Let's take a second look, starting with these first four points.

• The Palestinian people are suffering, even Likudniks and the likes of Ruth Wisse agree on that point.
• Jews more than any minority know that when anyone's civil liberties are being infringed, it is as if their own are. Because, in time, the injustice will find them.
• Brzezinski, which is spelled this way, is, according to Obama's camp, "not advising Barack on any Israel issues."
• It appears the case for that last point, that Obama "has been in bed with Jew haters and Islamic Jihad for years," comes from this article in the Yemen Observer. Funny, I would have expected an American journalist to follow up on that. Kind of seems like a big deal.
  

And I guess those kudos to 60 years of a Jewish State must have come from some other Obama '08 office. Here's how the impostor concluded his congratulations:

I am absolutely convinced that our friendship between the two nations is unbreakable. As someone who has had the great honor of running for the presidency of the United States of America, I pledge to you that I will do whatever I can, in whatever capacity, to not only ensure Israel's security, but also to ensure that the people of Israel are able to thrive and prosper and build on the enormous promise that was made sixty years ago.

Obama: 'Never waver in our unshakeable commitment to help Israel'

Seeking to dispel rumors, and some news reports to the contrary, Barack Obama has stated several times that he is a passionate believer in a Jewish state in Israel. Obama has won the vote of quite a few Jews, but others remain unwilling to enter the fold. As Israel approaches its 60th anniversary, Obama pledged last night what sounds a lot like unconditional American support.

While threats to its existence have endured, Israelis have built their nation into a strong, vibrant democracy, with a prosperous economy, a rich cultural life, and a deep friendship with the United States that benefits both our peoples in so many ways. Even in hard times, Israelis have so much to be proud of. As the Jewish State continues to grow and prosper, the United States will always stand with Israel to ensure it can defend itself against threat of terrorism and violence, from as close as Gaza and as far as Tehran. We must never waver in our unshakeable commitment [to] help Israel achieve its goal of true security through lasting peace with its neighbors.

'Between the pulpit and pews, a gulf on Obama's ex-pastor'

LUMBERTON, N.C. — The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., under fire for statements that have embarrassed Senator Barack Obama’s campaign, has found staunch support in the pulpits of black churches around North Carolina. The people in the pews, however, are far less accepting.

In interviews at churches in cities and towns including Charlotte, Greensboro, Lumberton and Goldsboro, ministers expressed the view that Mr. Obama and Mr. Wright had been attacked by a superficial and biased news media. Many said they were teaching Mr. Wright’s sermons in Bible study classes. They are delivering lectures on the roots of Mr. Wright’s style of ministry and preaching against what they see as attempts to make Mr. Wright a divisive figure.

“People get fired up when they see people trying to scapegoat a presidential candidate because of a pastor,” said the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, the pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro and the president of the state branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “And No. 2, the fact that you’re beating up on someone that’s very profound and very prophetic.”

But many parishioners are not nearly as sympathetic to Mr. Wright, saying they are disappointed with him for taking a personal dispute public with little concern for the harm it would do to the Obama campaign. (This sentiment is particularly strong among younger voters.) Others call Mr. Wright arrogant and untrustworthy, and still others say he is fighting old fights.

“He needs to take the political and keep it separate from the spiritual,” said Rita Harrison, 48, an Obama supporter who was cutting hair at Allison’s Salon in Whiteville. “Why would you risk this man’s campaign because of some personal comments? Because that’s what it is, it’s personal.”

This is a common phenomenon discussed in this New York Times article, and it's an early lesson of religion reporting: Don't just call the pastors and rabbis and imams, or the diocesan and federation leadership -- talk to lay folk who hold a variety of opinions, often divergent from their leaders and in conflict with their co-religionists.

For whatever reason, and I'm open to explanations, leaders at the pulpit are quite often out of touch with their people in the pews. A glaring example of this is seen throughout the U.S. Catholic Church; while many observant Catholics pick and choose the teachings of the church they will follow, leaning particularly liberal on family planning and at times homosexuality, priests and bishops tend to be more doctrinaire (except, of course, for those priests who we hope are no longer employed).

More from the Rev. Wright files

I am completely bored with continuing coverage, seemingly nonstop coverage, of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which is why until now I didn't even bother mentioning the story that was on the cover of every major American paper Wednesday. Today's NYT attempts to pinpoint Barack Obama's breaking point with is former pastor. Yawn. ...

Read on if you like hearing the same info over and over.

Rev. Wright is Mr. Wrong

I was amazed last month when I was speaking with the ZOA's Mort Klein, and he mentioned the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the same sentence as the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. (Klein has taken to Wright for his own reasons.) I find it hard to believe that before Barack Obama began his presidential bid, anyone outside of Chicago even knew who Wright was. But the more attention Obama's former pastor has received for his contested brand of Christianity, one that emphasizes black liberation, the more sought after a speaker he has become.

Now on the speakers' circuit, Wright spoke this morning at the National Press Club. Continuing to dog Obama, Wright joked that he would be open to serving as vice president.

He rejected suggestions that his willingness to associate with Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam, meant that he was anti-Semitic. He said Mr. Farrakhan was “not my enemy” and was too important a black leader to be ignored. When Mr. Farrakhan speaks, he said, “all black America listens — whether they agree with him or not, they listen.”

Historically, he said, when black people were prohibited from meeting in groups, they did so anyway “out of the eyesight and earshot of those who defined them as less than human.”

The result was that black churches, which have existed in America since the 1600s, were “invisible to the dominant culture.” Because of slavery and racial discrimination, he said, black churches focused on the themes of liberation and transformation.

“The black church’s role in the fight for equality and justice from the 1700s to 2008 has always had as its core the non-negotiable doctrine of reconciliation, children of God repenting for past sins against each other,” he said.

As a result of this background and the unfamiliarity of many white people with black preaching, he said, some might find his sermons unsettling. He also noted that the widely circulated clips of his remarks were only short snippets lifted out of the context of much longer, closely reasoned arguments.

“We root out any teaching of superiority, inferiority, hatred or prejudice,” he said. “And we recognize that for the first time in modern history, in the West, that the other who stands before us with a different color of skin, a different texture of hair, different music, different preaching styles and different dance moves; that other is one of God’s children just as we are, no better, no worse, prone to error and in need of forgiveness just as we are.”

Nice try, but I'm not buying it. My friend Manya at the Chicago Tribune has blogged a bit about Wright's new platform. But she says the feel after this morning's talk was that he, so far, has proven too immature for the national spotlight.

Here's the full transcript and the video clips:

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:



Part 4:

Clinton carries Keystone Jews

Hillary Clinton last night not only won the Pennsylvania primary, but carried the Jewish vote, 62 percent to Barack Obama's 38 percent.

Her margin was similar among whites overall, winning 63 percent to 37 percent. Clinton's performance among white Catholics was particularly strong, winning 70 percent to 30 percent.

"I think much of the Jewish vote voted for their comfort level, and they were more comfortable with Senator Clinton," said Marcel Groen, a Clinton supporter and the head of the Montgomery County Democratic Committee, in an interview with JTA a day after the primary. "I just think generally from a Jewish perspective, Hillary Clinton was a known commodity."

This news really shouldn't be a surprise. When you talk about "comfort level," Obama has had a lot of trouble convincing the Jewish community, and a few others, that he's no sheepskin wolf.

Singleton confuses Osama and Obama

Yeah, the guy who is running into the ground the parent company of my old papers, media baron Dean Singleton, showed the error today of axing so many of his editors when he referred to Mr. Most Wanted as "Obama bin Laden." From the AP wire:

Sen. Barack Obama’s name has been mangled plenty of times, though not always in the presence of 1,200 news executives and TV cameras.

It happened Monday at The Associated Press’s Annual Luncheon, where the Democratic presidential candidate spoke and took questions. Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP’s board of directors and head of Denver-based MediaNews Group, slipped when asking the senator if he could envision sending many more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, where "Obama bin Laden is still at large.”

Obama gave a quizzical look and said, “I think that was Osama bin Laden.” Singleton quickly replied, “If I did that, I’m so sorry."

“No, no, no,” the senator said. He called it “part of the exercise that I’ve been going through over the last 15 months, which is why it’s pretty impressive I’m still standing here.”

The crowd laughed and gave him a sympathetic round of applause.

Here's more from Editor & Publisher.

Kristol on Obama's 'bitter' religious believers

Barack Obama's recent closed-door comment about "bitter" country folk who "cling to guns or religion" has been getting a lot of play, thanks in large part to Hillary Clinton's willingness to castigate him for it. Here's more via Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish:

Bill Kristol, trained in the same politics as Hillary Clinton, now argues that Obama's remarks in a fundraiser q and a are the "real Obama" - and that his voluminous writing and speaking about the sincerity of his own religious faith, and of others, are presumably "masks." The reason for inferring Obama's Marxism is the following point Obama artlessly made about the way in which economic distress can alter people's tolerance for others:

"It’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Is this indistinguishable from saying, along with Marx, that all religion is an obviously false consciousness caused by the alienation of the world-historical class struggle? No, it obviously isn't. It's saying that economic distress does often in human history express itself in more rigid forms of religion, more reactionary cultural identification, less tolerance of "the other." Since large swathes of human history have shown this to be true - and perfectly arguable without any materialist understanding of religion - Kristol is deliberately distorting to paint Obama as a cynical manipulator of religious faith for political ends, rather than as a genuine Christian. He's calling him a lying, Godless communist.

(Image: Time)

'Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama'

CHICAGO — It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.

And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed.

At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."

One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology."

Obama adopted a different tone in his comments and called for finding common ground. But his presence at such events, as he worked to build a political base in Chicago, has led some Palestinian leaders to believe that he might deal differently with the Middle East than either of his opponents for the White House.

This is the top of a story that ran on the front page of today's LA Times under the headline, "Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama." With all the work Obama's campaign has been doing trying to convince American Jews their guy's a good friend of Israel, I can't imagine they appreciate stories like this or that one that predicted Obama's the Muslim favorite.

Obama blogger: 'Zionism means ethnic cleansing'

The latest effort to hold Barack Obama responsible for what other people say is this story from IsraelNationalNews.com:

United States Presidential candidate Barak Obama is hosting leftist blogger Tony Wicher on his official website. Wicher’s blog is promoted as “A forum for a new foreign policy based on peace, democracy, and human rights instead of hegemony and war, with particular attention to the Israel/Palestine conflict as the key to a new Middle East policy.”

Wicher repeatedly refers to Israel as an apartheid state, and in fact claims that Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Authority Arabs is “worse than apartheid.” He also refers to the Likud party as “right-wing jingoists,” and insists that “Zionism means ethnic cleansing.”

Israel’s current government, Wicher says, “is faithfully carrying out the Zionist policy, by relentlessly persecuting the Arabs until they give up and go to Jordan or whatever.” He dismisses any who call his claims of Israeli “apartheid” anti-Semitic as members of the “Zionist thought police.”

These words, however, were not uttered by Obama's pastor (not that we know of). And Wicher does not appear to be a contributor to the official Obama blog. He's a registered user of the social networking service at Obama '08, and that is where he promotes "Zionism without a Jewish state."

Why Jews should vote for Obama

I first learned of Saigon Bob one day while putting off deadline at the Daily News and refreshing the home page of LAObserved. Bob Kholos had been press secretary for legendary Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, and on his blog, which LAObserved linked me to, Kholos alleged that while running for mayor, Bradley's campaign had discovered that then-Mayor Sam Yorty once paid for a back-alley abortion that left the young woman dead.

Instead of blasting it in the news media, we decided to use it about 10 seconds prior to a live debate in the San Fernando Valley just a couple of days before the election.

Aide, and future Bradley Press Secretary, Tom Sullivan volunteered to run past Yorty just as the debate started and whisper a name.

Sullivan whispered the name of the person, and Yorty responded, “So, your going to play that game.”

Six months later, Bob contacted me after reading an article I'd written about an eruv dividing Oak Park and its expensive neighbors, Agoura Hills and Westlake Village. I last talked with Bob, whom I believe now lives in Oregon, shortly after I joined The Journal. But yesterday he shot me this note -- "This Obama 'guilt by association' has the definite feel of the old Tom Bradley 1969 campaign ... in which he lost as Mayor" -- with a link to his thoughts on why the Jewish community should support Barack Obama.

Social justice is a four thousand year old tradition in Jewish history(some would say five thousand years..give or take a thousand years)

Of course, that does not mean that every person practices such an ideal, but this strength among the Jewish population has lead to the end of child labor, a movement of Unions, better treatment of animals, and a joining together with other minorities in bringing about the civil rights revolution in America (That's the short list)

Certainly, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, have also enjoyed wide Jewish support, and deservedly so.

Senator Barack Obama, is a special case.

He is trying to bring about a "post racial" attitude among all Americans.

(skip)

As far as Obama's support for Israel, one Israeli newspaper said that, "Barack Obama is pro-Israel. Period."

Also, guilt by association, has been the unfortunate hallmark which has been used to destroy many Jewish communities throughout Jewish history.

An angry preacher, and a Black separatist, have supported Senator Obama. But, nothing could be further from the truth, as to the mind set and political practice of the junior Senator from Illinois.

To blame him for the small mindedness of others is about as "un-Jewish" as you can get.

Barack Obama is his own man, a great candidate, and someone who can bring a nation together.

That is the best reason to support him.

I sense Michael Spitzer-Rubenstein would agree with that logic.

Obama's speech on race in America

Sen. Barack Obama gave a much-anticipated speech this morning on race in America and the preachings of his former pastor (you know, that guy who praised Farrakhan). I'll hopefully come back to this later today when I am off deadline, but for now here's a link to the New York Times' coverage.

11:14 a.m. Mr. Obama has been describing what he calls “a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years.” Here are some key passages:

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely.

…

But the truth is, that isn’t all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor.
…

Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear.
…

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions – the good and the bad – of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

'A man called Lemkin'

Well, Samantha Power flamed out last week when she was asked to resign as an adviser to Barack Obama. Turned out her views of Hillary Clinton were similar to the worst held by some evangelicals. That wasn't the problem; the problem was that she was a bit too candid in sharing it.

Still, I'm enjoying the Pulitzer Prize-winning book she wrote a few years back, "A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide." A central character of this story is Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer who fled Poland for the United States, losing most his family in the process, and dedicated his life to fighting "genocide," a word that he created.

History has remembered Lemkin well, even if his contemporaries found him an obsessive annoyance. But of the Lemkin remembrances, I like Abe Rosenthal's best.

The story in the paper reported that after 40 years of consideration the U.S. Senate voted last Friday to make it a Federal offense to commit genocide. That is the crime of acting with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

The story did not mention a man called Lemkin.

Raphael Lemkin pokes his head into a newspaper office in the headquarters of the United Nations in the village of Lake Success on Long Island.

''Here is that pest, that Lemkin,'' he says. ''I have a genocide story for you.''

Everybody groans; Oh, Lemkin again? He makes a funny face, folds his hands in begging gestures. The reporters gather around for a few minutes. He gets his little story about the genocide convention, usually tucked away in the paper on a Sunday.

Raphael Lemkin was a Polish professor of law, a distinguished academician who spoke nine languages. He was a Jew. During the Holocaust the Germans murdered 49 members of his family; see how few words it takes to tell the whole story.

He escaped to Sweden, reached the United States, found good positions at Duke and Yale. He left them and gave himself over to his life's work.

His work was to convince the nations of the world that they must make it a crime to plan or carry out another Holocaust of any people. He coined ''genocide'' from the Greek word for race and the Latin for killing. He wrote a convention, a treaty for the nations to sign.

Then he walked the corridors of the U.N. He stopped journalists, took junior delegates by the arm and hung on until they listened, at least a moment. To see an ambassador, he would plan and plot for weeks and sit for days in reception rooms.

He had no money, no office, no assistants. He had no U.N. status or papers, but the guards always let him pass. He carried a black briefcase stuffed with documents and his daily sandwich.

He knew that when he opened the door people would say: What, Lemkin, you here again? Sometimes it was said affectionately, sometimes with distaste. Then he would pretend he did not care. But there were many days when he sat slumped in the cafeteria over a cup of coffee, barely able to lift it for the weariness in him and the rebuff.

But if he had to wheedle and plead he did. If he met an arrogant delegate who had influence, he made himself small and fawned. Then he would turn away and make the small smacking noises of a man trying to get a bad taste out of his mouth.

He would bluff a little sometimes about pulling political levers, but he had none. All he had was himself, his briefcase and the conviction burning in him. We would say to him: Lemkin, what good will it do to write mass murder down as a crime; will a piece of paper stop a new Hitler or Stalin?

Then he put aside cajolery and his face stiffened.

''Only man has law. Law must be built, do you understand me? You must build the law!''

He walked the halls every day from the spring of 1946 until Dec. 9, 1948, when the General Assembly, in Paris, adopted a resolution approving his convention. That day reporters went looking for him to rejoice in his triumph. But we could not find him until, hours later, we thought to look into the darkened Assembly hall. He sat there weeping as if his heart would break. He asked please to be left in solitude. Then this Lemkin came back to the corridors for years, pleading with delegation after delegation to follow through on the U.N. resolution by getting their countries to sign the treaty. There was a time when he was considered for the Nobel Peace Prize; Winston Churchill backed him.

But he died alone on Aug. 28, 1959, without medals or prizes, in a hotel in New York. There were seven people at the graveside when Raphael Lemkin was buried.

Israel: In Obama's words

Barack Obama's campaign office is no doubt still worried about the whisper campaign against him. Over the weekend, they sent me an e-mail with links to a number of short videos from Obama's meeting with the Cleveland Jewish community that they had posted on YouTube.

In the above video, Obama says that Israel must remain a Jewish state. There are also short videos about the responsibilities of Palestinians, about Israel's right to defend itself against its neighbors, on opposing negotiations with Hamas, on relations between blacks and Jews, on his difference of opinion with Brzezinski and on President Bush's foreign policy.

I wonder, though, what Obama would have to say about what happened in Gaza and nearby Israel during the past week.