US presidential hopeful Barack Obama's visit to the Middle East has drawn a cynical reaction in the region's media, with both Israeli and Arabic commentators interpreting it as a gesture aimed largely at Mr Obama's US audience.
Although one Israeli commentator believed the Democratic senator acquitted himself well, but the broadly liberal Ha'aretz accuses him going of too far in pandering to pro-Israeli sections of his electorate.
isits by senior leaders to this country - Israel and the Palestinian territories - are coming thick and fast, and the visit by Obama is just the latest... These repeated visits and this clear bias towards Israel's position once again emphasise the strength and influence that Israel and its allies have across the world.

The Bush administration is reportedly trying to push through a measure that would severely weaken regulation of workplace exposure to dangerous chemicals. The rule change calls for reexamining how to determine risks posed by workplace toxic exposure. The rule would also impose extra requirements before government officials can impose new limits in the workplace. The Washington Post reports the Department of Labor violated its own rules by failing to announce its plans in public regulatory notices. David Michaels, a workplace safety professor at George Washington University’s School of Public Health, said, “This is a guarantee to keep any more worker safety regulation from

JERUSALEM, July 24 (Xinhua) - An Israeli parliamentary committee has greenlighted the construction of 20 new housing units for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, local media reported Thursday.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is slated to endorse the project soon, which will be carried out at a site named Maskiot in the Jordan Valley, following the approval of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said local daily Ha'aretz.
tion, which The Jerusalem Post said would become Israel's first new settlement in a decade, is certain to infuriate the Palestinians and raise the eyebrow of the Americans, as the two sides have repeatedly warned the Jewish state that its settlement expansion would jeopardize the already sluggish peace process.

While visiting US presidential hopeful Barack Obama was meeting with top Israeli leaders on Wednesday, representatives of leading Israeli and American Jewish organizations came together under the banner of the Coalition for a United Jerusalem to demand that the candidate reaffirm his initial support for a unified Jerusalem under Israeli control.
In a June address to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama declared to thunderous applause that "Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."
parison to what would happen if Palestinians were given free rein in a divided Jerusalem."

Lagging previous Democratic presidential nominees in that demographic, he visits two symbolically important sites in Israel and has been stressing his commitment to protecting the country.
By Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
y see as Israel's most dangerous threat.

By STEPHANIE RUBENSTEIN Increasing numbers of anti-Semitic cartoons depicting US presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have surfaced

Perhaps now, when US presidential candidate Barack Obama embarks on a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, it is the right time to consider what Israel really needs from its friendly, number one supporter: America.
Words in support of Israel were recently iterated by current American President George W. Bush in his Knesset speech. Words supporting Israel and her “undivided capital, Jerusalem” were also uttered by presidential candidate Obama in his latest speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. However slogans in support of Israel, important as they may be, will not usher us into a resolution of the conflict.
very friendly strategy adopted

In the wake of Obama's pledge of support for Israel, it is interesting to reflect on Nakba Day, May 15 - a day that few Americans have ever heard of. In fact, it is in my estimation a forbidden word, a taboo, and in this climate of Palestine-bashing, I probably put myself at risk for even mentioning it!
But what else is new? The encyclopedia defines Nakba as "day of the catastrophe," and it is an annual day of commemoration of the 1948 exodus and the loss of land that followed from the war with Israel and the displacement and dispossession of the Palestinians as a result.
ders' diverse views. Those of 350 words or fewer are given preference. Letters are edited for grammar,

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF On his visit to the Middle East, Barack Obama gave ritual affirmations of his support for Israeli policy, but what Israel needs from

By TRAVIS PANTIN In December 1998, preaching a gospel of socialist revolution that had gone blessedly unvoiced in the decade following the fall of the

By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent Numerous cartoons have appeared recently in the Arab press that portray presumptive US presidential candidates

By Matthew Bigg - Analysis MIAMI BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - If US presidential candidate Barack Obama's trip to Israel is to be judged a success,

By VOA News Israeli media report a group of Jewish students attacked and beat two Palestinians in Jerusalem, hours after a Palestinian man rammed a

Senator Barack Obama sought to reassure Israel today that a White House led by him would not just maintain but strengthen the traditionally close links between America and the Jewish state.
By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem
m chose Hillary Clinton over the Illinois senator during the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

By Caren Bohan and Adam Entous JERUSALEM (Reuters) - US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged staunch support for Israel on a visit to

TEL - Employing a series of visceral backdrops to demonstrate twin commitments to the peace process and Israel's security, Sen. Barack Obama has scheduled a whirlwind tour Wednesday that takes him from Jerusalem and Ramallah to a heavily shelled Israeli town near the Gaza Strip.
Speaking in Amman, Jordan, on Tuesday, the presumptive Democratic nominee pledged to work on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks "starting from the minute I'm sworn into office.”
. In addition to meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Mr. Obama will visit Israel's Holocaust memorial, the missile-scarred city of Sderot and reportedly the Western Wall.

You think Israel’s economy is on the rise? That the Israeli third sector is growing fast enough to make American philanthropic dollars less necessary? That Israel is on the cusp of being an international financial power?
Think again, Benny Landa told the Fundermentalist.
t a rosy picture in the wide-ranging telephone interview Tuesday from Israel.

Tomorrow, Barack Obama will step off his plane into Israel and under a microscope. While he is there, American voters - Jews, Evangelical Christians and others - who factor a presidential candidate's policies toward Israel into their electoral choice, will watch Obama's every step and listen to his every word very, very closely.
he Palestinian cause and taking advice from persons openly hostile to Israel's interests. It is because Obama is seeking to succeed a pair of American presidents who each remain extremely popular in Israel and among her supporters for one basic reason - Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, each in their own way, conveyed a gut level kinship with the

It's lucky Barack Obama has people to carry his bags these days, because when he arrived in Israel last night he brought with him a whole lot of baggage. Most of it was packed with negative associations that owe more to urban myth than reality, but that combined to make the Democratic candidate an object of suspicion from the earliest days of his campaign, first among American Jews and then in Israel. The mix of facts, lies and hybrids of the two is now wearily familiar: Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim; he was educated in a madrasa; he has terrorist friends; his former pastor is an Israel-hater and admirer of the anti-Jewish Louis Farrakhan; he was against the war on Iraq,

WASHINGTON (AFP) - While Barack Obama can expect to be feted as a hero as "Obamamania" strikes Europe, he faces a more uncertain welcome on the Middle East leg of his international campaign swing this week.
The presumptive Democratic White House nominee is less popular in Israel than his Republican rival John McCain, and his offer of direct talks with Iranian leaders has caused some consternation in the Jewish state.
er of the political minefields lying in wait in the Middle East.

To strengthen ties, he should not ask 'Why do they hate us?' but 'Why don't they believe us?'
By Janessa Gans
ere a thick coat of skepticism and cynicism has dulled the reflection of American aspirations.

Can you imagine a J Street poll suggesting that most American Jews oppose a vigorous Israeli-Palestinian peace process? Can you imagine such a poll asserting that American Jews oppose any American pressure on Israel to make compromises?
If you can't, this is your lucky day. J Street just released a public opinion pollwith no such surprises. Not if you read the press releases accompanying it. American Jews, the poll says, want peace, readily support American pressure, and believe that Middle East peace is "a core American interest" (55 percent).
that can hardly be considered "fundamentally misread."