The great editor Gene Roberts used to say that big stories don’t break, they ooze. Certainly this is the case with Obama’s meeting with 100 Cleveland Jews a week back, which I believe was merely monumental. The New York Jewish Week now echoes my view, saying 1, that Obama made some important shifts–
… “there was a sense that this is not
business as usual,” said Seymour Reich, president of the Israel Policy
Forum (IPF), a group that advocates a stronger U.S. peacemaking role.
“There was a new awareness of the issues, of the fact that the Bush
administration came into the conflict very late and that a possible new
approach may be necessary in 2009.”Dan Fleshler said… Obama “showed
that…. he will
not pander to Jews who are only comfortable with confrontational
stances."
and 2, that Hillary may now jump on Obama’s statements to ramp up her campaign in Pennsylvania.
A revived Clinton campaign is “not going to be afraid to press very
hard on the issues the Jewish community cares about,” said a top
Democratic strategist. “They have seven weeks to work the big Jewish
communities in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. That’s a lot of time.”
I can’t wait for all this to bust loose! This is a big reason I’m for Obama. He says he wants to "end the mindset" that got us into war. To me that means we are finally going to have a discussion of the Israel lobby and the ways that Israel’s brutalized relationship with its neighbors has infected our relationship with the Arab world…
