Obama Campaign Grapples With Complaints About Advisers

Ron Kampeas
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

WASHINGTON

Even as U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) solidifies his status as the Democratic front-runner with recent victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii, he is facing a new line of attack from some Jewish circles regarding his advisers on foreign policy.

In recent weeks, writers associated with several right-wing media outlets have taken aim at what they describe as anti-Israel voices counseling Obama on Mideast issues, spurring a rash of mass e-mails voicing similar concerns.

Among those cited by critics are Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter administration; Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University; Robert Malley, an adviser on Israeli-Arab affairs during the Clinton administration; and George Soros, an international financier who has funded pro-democracy efforts throughout Europe, and in recent years became a major supporter of the Democratic Party in the United States.

Each has been on the receiving end of criticism from some pro-Israel activists or Jewish groups over positions viewed as being hostile to the Jewish state.

The Obama campaign acknowledges that it has received advice from the people named in the negative e-mail campaign, describing the meetings with these individuals as a product of Obama's "one America" philosophy of reaching out to all Americans.

But, in the end, campaign officials say, the candidate should be assessed according to his own votes and statements. Besides, they add, the personalities in question do not play any formal role in advising Obama on Middle East issues. That task, they insist, falls to a collection of policy experts in good standing with the pro-Israel lobby.

'A Potential Problem'
Unlike the Internet attacks falsely painting Obama as a secret radical Muslim, the "adviser" e-mails appear to have struck a chord among some Jewish organizational leaders, in addition to worrying some grass-roots voters.

This week, in an interview with Shalom TV, a Web-based Jewish channel, World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder said that "if you have an adviser that is not sympathetic to Israel -- not sympathetic to some Jewish concerns -- you have a potential problem."

The Obama campaign notes that its Mideast policy is strictly the province of four individuals, each of them perceived as pro-Israel and three of them Jewish: Dan Shapiro, a longtime activist and bridge between the Jewish organizational leadership and Democratic Party; Anthony Lake, a Clinton-administration national security adviser; Eric Lynn, the Obama campaign's Jewish liaison who has lived in Israel; and Dennis McDonough, once the foreign-policy adviser to former U.S. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who had impeccable pro-Israel credentials during his time in office.

Malley, in particular, has come under fire from pro-Israel activists.

Malley was a senior adviser to the Clinton administration at the U.S.-Israeli-Palestinian talks at Camp David in the summer of 2000. Malley has differed with Clinton and others over the degree of blame to be assigned over the talks' breakdown. Dennis Ross, the Clinton-administration's top Middle East envoy who singled out the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat for that failure defends Malley.

"When you're in the political season, every difference tends to be magnified," said Ross, who has given the Obama campaign advice and who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank

The targeting of Malley led Ross and four other Clinton-era officials to publish an open letter earlier this month defending his record.

Soros, the billionaire philanthropist, has donated to Obama's campaign. He has also been critical of Israel and of pro-Israel orthodoxies, but the Holocaust survivor says that he has cast his criticisms as mindful of Israel's security.

Despite what Obama supporters and some other observers say are distortions and falsehoods, there's enough that would worry parts of the pro-Israel community, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and its allies.

Brzezinski's time as Carter's national security adviser left a bitter taste among Israelis and pro-Israel activists.

It didn't help that Brzezinski initially endorsed the views of Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, academics who promulgated the thesis that the pro-Israel lobby fundamentally distorts U.S. foreign policy. He later backtracked to a degree, suggesting that their book overstated its case.

The Obama campaign says that it does not take advice from Brzezinski, but has accepted his endorsement as a senior U.S. statesman, who says the Illinois senator has the best policy for extricating the United States from Iraq.

Power, the lecturer from Harvard, is a more sensitive problem for the campaign. An expert on genocide who has worked with Jewish activists who press the case that the United States should have done more to stop the Holocaust during World War II, she served for two years on Obama's Senate staff and is a permanent adviser -- but not, the campaign says, on Middle East-related issues.

In a 2003 Soros-funded symposium, she appeared eager to jump to the conclusion that Israel had committed war crimes in the West Bank town of Jenin.

The Obama campaign has rejected efforts to paint her as anti-Israel, although notably, it does not address her writings related to Israel.

Even as they defend Power, Obama campaign officials add that she has little say on Middle East issues, confining her advice to issues such as the genocide in Darfur.