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Obama’s mild defiance at AIPAC cost him $10 million in Jewish donations

Adam Kredo in the Washington Jewish Week honestly addresses a central political issue that a far more prominent journalist, Robert Siegel on NPR, sought to mystify earlier this week. First Kredo:

One prominent Jewish leader who attended Obama’s AIPAC speech told me that “the Jewish community has a form of IBS [Irritable Bowel Syndrome] with the president. They’re unsettled.”

“It’s safe to say,” the source added, “that about $10 million [in Jewish donations to the Obama campaign] evaporated in that speech.”

Now here is Robert Siegel and Ron Kampeas of JTA talking about the same issue on NPR the other day. Note that Kampeas, who is a settler in occupied East Jerusalem, owns property there, is halfway honest about the money issue. But Siegel immediately makes it about voters. This is a lie, and Siegel knows it. Jewish voters can swing one state maybe, Florida. As the Wall Street Journal noted the other day, this is about money…

KAMPEAS: The issue is how it’s played with Jewish donors to the Democratic party and there, there has been some concern. There’s sort of three levels of Jewish donorship to the Democratic party. There are Jews that donate just because overall they favor the party and then on the right, there are Jews who only donate because of Israel….

SIEGEL: And is the degree of difference that we’ve seen between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, do you think it’s substantial enough that republicans who are eager to peel away some votes from the Democrats in 2012 might actually have something to work with?

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