Guilt By Association

by The editors

Did the leadership of Hamas think they were helping Barack Obama’s candidacy by endorsing him the other day? “We like Obama and we hope that he will win the election,” said Ahmed Yousef, a political advisor to the terror group.

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, pounced on the statement, saying it was “a legitimate point of discussion” and accused Obama of being willing to negotiate with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who last week referred to Israel as “a stinking corpse facing annihilation.”

Obama responded by asserting that his position on Hamas was the same as that of McCain — and Hillary Clinton — and accused the Arizona senator of “smear” tactics. He has also sought

to distinguish his position between possible negotiations with countries like Iran and North Korea, under certain conditions, and his opposition to meeting with terror groups like Hamas or Hezbollah.

As part of an effort to shore up his support in the Jewish community, where some see his position on Israel as weak, Obama spoke to Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine this week. In an interview posted on the magazine’s Web site, Obama elaborated on his personal connections to Israel as a black man seeking his own roots, and his support for the Jewish state as a matter of principle.

Goldberg got to the heart of the matter when he asked what he called “the kishke question,” namely “the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you – [for example, as with] Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski – then everything is suspect.”

Obama said he found that “really interesting,” going on to discuss the importance of “the idea and the reality of Israel,” from its “history of overcoming great odds” and “courage and commitment” in creating a democracy, to its openness in dealing with “moral questions.” He asserted that his “commitment to Israel and the Jewish people is more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency.”

Will such talk help him in the face of the unease expressed by many pro-Israel supporters in the Jewish community? Probably not, and it is difficult to discern how much of that lingering suspicion is due to politics, the Rev. Wright controversy, his past association with pro-Palestinian activists, or veiled racism — or some combination thereof.

Let’s be clear. We are not endorsing Obama here. But in the interest of fairness and the pragmatism of strengthening rather than fraying ties with political leaders, the Jewish community would do well to judge candidates — whoever they may be — on their policies, statements and actions rather than on what others say about them. And as the campaigns move into the next phase, we need to be more alert than ever to the difference between accusations meant to serve purely partisan interests and legitimate debates over Mideast policy – something we’ve heard too little of in 2008.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization