Recently Barack Obama made fun of the image of Hillary Clinton as a new Annie Oakley. The idea of a staunchly pro-Israel Obama is hardly more plausible, and yet the Boston Globe reports today:
Senator Barack Obama yesterday criticized former president Jimmy Carter for meeting with leaders of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas as he tried to reassure Jewish voters that his candidacy is not a threat to them or to US support for Israel.
Something doesn't add up...
I'm a staunch Obama supporter, because he sounds to me like an exceptionally honest and gifted politician. But on the subject of Israel he undergoes a bizarre, almost unbelievable transformation in which he morphs into the typical dishonest-sounding politico, straight out of Central Casting. I actually find this transformation downright spooky, and wonder what on earth is going on behind the scenes.
His recent attack of Jimmy Carter's talks with Hamas directly contradicts his often-stated intention to talk, without preconditions, to leaders of states hostile to the US. More importantly, this intense courting of the pro-Israel vote casts strong suspicion on his claim that his presidency will not be beholden to lobbyists, which is one of the main selling points of his campaign.
Obama needs to be level with his supporters on the issue of Israel, and, in particular, the issue of the Israel lobby in the United States. He needs to explain why how he can justify his disagreement with Carter while at the same time arguing for pre-condition-free talks with countries like Syria and Iran (which, incidentally, provides material support for Hamas). He also needs to clarify his position on the pro-Israel lobby in the US. Is this lobby somehow exempt from the scorn he heaps (and rightly so) on the rest of the lobbying environment?
The issue is all the more important for being intimately tied into the Wright controversy: it will not go away before the election in November. Wright's often-voiced anti-Israel views is probably the main reason for the opposition to Obama by pro-Israel voters. In the great "More Perfect Union" speech on March 18, which Obama gave in response to the firestorm around Wright's sermons, Obama focused only on the race-related themes in these sermons, whereas, arguably it is the comments touching, directly or indirectly, on U.S. foreign policy that people found most offensive. Sooner or later before election day Obama will have to do for these issues what he did for the topic of race.