Indyk Rushes to Ohio for Clinton

Jewish and Israel-related issues are bubbling to the surface of the presidential contest as senators Clinton and Obama tussle over the Jewish vote in Ohio and Republicans seize on Ralph Nader's new claims that Mr. Obama until recently harbored "pro-Palestinian" views.

On Sunday morning, Mr. Obama spent an hour trying to address the concerns some Jewish leaders in Cleveland had about his candidacy. Last night, President Clinton's ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, arrived in Ohio for two days of meetings that Mrs. Clinton's campaign arranged to reach out to Jewish voters and rabbis.

RELATED: In Cleveland, Obama Speaks on Jewish Issues

A Cleveland lawyer who supports Mr. Obama, Gayle Horwitz, said the Illinois senator's meeting there was organized in part because of e-mails that have widely circulated in the Jewish community labeling him as a secret Muslim and radical.

"There unfortunately is a spate of e-mails that seems to go out with a lot of vigor," she said. She said she did not know where they originated, adding that some are passed along innocently by people who are not hostile to Mr. Obama. "The worst thing for me would be to hear of somebody who was on the fence between Clinton and Obama who saw one of these e-mails and it pushed them over the edge to vote for Hillary," the attorney said.

In part because of the e-mails, backers of Mrs. Clinton are walking a fine line. They want to portray her as preferable on Jewish issues, but are eager to steer clear of any underhanded attempt to question Mr. Obama's faith or patriotism.

"The main reason she wins and will continue to win the majority of the Jewish vote is this is a community very much about 'Show me, don't tell me,'" Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida told The New York Sun yesterday. "With Senator Obama, although he says all the right things, he just doesn't have that longevity to prove to Jewish voters that he will be there like Hillary Clinton."

Asked if there was anything specific in Mr. Obama's record that should give Jewish voters pause, the congresswoman said, "There's no pause….It's just that he's starting completely from scratch."

A few of Mrs. Clinton's supporters are willing to raise substantive questions in public about Mr. Obama's record on Israel. They question his stated willingness to meet heads of rogue states such as Iran. "There are some in the Jewish community who would not like the U.S. president meeting with Ahmedinejad," the vice-mayor of Parkland, Fla., Jared Moskowitz, said.

"You engage and establish a serious willingness to make peace before you simply open the Oval Office and give a leader hostile to the interest of the United States and the interests of Israel" a platform, another Clinton backer, Steven Grossman of Boston, said. He said he also had concerns about Mr. Obama's statements about the security barrier between Israel and the West Bank, including his description of it as a "wall" between two nations.

Mr. Obama's stance in favor of presidential-level talks with the leaders of Iran, Cuba, and North Korea led one participant at Sunday's meeting in Cleveland to ask whether the senator favors direct discussions with Hamas.

"The answer is no," Mr. Obama replied, according to a partial transcript made available by his campaign. "The distinction would be that Hamas is represented in the Palestinian legislature, or it was before the current rift, but they're not the head of state…The point is that, with respect to Hamas, you can't have a conversation with somebody who doesn't think you should be on the other side of the table. At the point where they recognize Israel and its right to exist, at the point where they recognize that they are not going to be able to shove their world view down the throats of others but are going to have to sit down and negotiate without resort to violence, then I think that will be a different circumstance."

Mr. Obama played down the role played in his campaign by a foreign policy adviser viewed with suspicion by some in the Jewish community, Zbignew Brzezinski. "He's not one of my key advisors. I've had lunch with him once. I've exchanged e-mails with him maybe three times," the senator said. "I do not share his views with respect to Israel."

Mr. Obama's most provocative statement to the Jewish group may have been a swipe at those who insist that American officials should always back Israel's hawks. "There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel and that can't be the measure of our friendship with Israel," he said.

Meanwhile, the Republican Jewish Coalition called attention yesterday to comments in which an independent presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, said Mr. Obama had changed his tune on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. "He was pro-Palestinian when he was in Illinois before he ran for the state Senate" and while he served in Springfield, Mr. Nader said Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press." "Now…he's supporting the Israeli destruction of the tiny section called Gaza with a million and a half people."

"As a long time antagonist to Israel, Ralph Nader has zero credibility in the pro-Israel community," a congressman who supports Mr. Obama, Robert Wexler of Florida, responded.

A spokesman for Mr. Nader had no immediate reply to a request to explain his assertions, but the Nader campaign's Web site links to a 2007 article in which an Arab-American writer, Ali Abunimah, claimed that through 2000 Mr. Obama was sharply critical of American policy in the Middle East and called for an evenhanded approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In 2004, Mr. Abunimah claims, Mr. Obama fell silent on the plight of Palestinians.

"Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race," Mr. Abunimah claimed Mr. Obama said at the time. "I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." The Obama campaign did not respond to a request for comment yesterday about Mr. Abunimah's article.

Information surfacing on the Internet again roiled the presidential race yesterday, when the Drudge Report posted a photograph of Mr. Obama in traditional Somali dress and reported that supporters of Mrs. Clinton were circulating the image. The image could stoke fears of Mr. Obama among some Jewish voters since he is wearing a type of Arab dress.

A conservative news site, Worldnetdaily.com, also posted a story which reported that Mr. Obama sat on the board of an organization, the Woods Foundation, which gave $75,000 in grants in 2001 and 2002 to the Arab-American Action Network. Mr. Obama left the foundation's board in 2002, but the article noted that in 2005, the Arab group sponsored an art exhibit lamenting the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs by Israeli forces in 1948.

During a foreign policy speech in Washington yesterday, Mrs. Clinton did not address Israeli-Palestinian issues directly. However, she railed against Mr. Obama's plan to meet hostile heads of state without preconditions, a strategy she said would "legitimize rogue regimes" and "weaken American prestige." "It may sound good, but it doesn't meet the real-world test of foreign policy," she said.

Many Jewish backers of Mrs. Clinton, including Mr. Grossman, said they would enthusiastically support Mr. Obama if she does not prevail in the primary, but some are not yet willing to make that commitment. "To me the next president is, very early on, going to have to deal with some very serious foreign policy issues," a former American Israel Public Affairs Committee president, Lonnie Kaplan, said. "If it's not her, then I'll start to personally investigate more in terms of what I personally will be doing in the general election."