By Ami Eden on Jul 23, 2008 in Uncategorized - Before becoming the Orthodox Union’s man in D.C., Nathan Diament went to Harvard Law School with Barack Obama and used to shoot hoops with the future presidential candidate. But however well Diament knows Obama, he really knows Jews, especially the ones who are likely to have concerns about him. Diament addressed the issue in an article for Real Clear Politics on the day that Obama arrived in Israel:
Recent polling indicates that Barack Obama has less support among American Jews than previous Democratic presidential nominees. This is not merely because an unprecedented campaign has been waged by viral emails and incendiary articles

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
inejad without preconditions, Obama has had to parry charges that he would appease a country many see as Israel's most dangerous threat.

The Guardian reported today that American Jewish leaders are predicting that Jews will vote for Democratic candidate Barack Obama in huge numbers, despite suspicions among some voters that he is not sufficiently pro-Israel or anti-Iran.
I think Obama will win the Jewish vote by a large margin. The question is how much? declared Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

by James D. Besser A key adviser to Sen. Barack Obama depicted him this week as “baffled” by the resistance of many Jewish voters to his presidential

By Ami Eden As he headed to Israel and the Palestinian Authority earlier this week, Sen. Barack Obama told reporters that as president, he would begin

Barack Obama has a large, nearly 2 to 1 lead over John McCain among Jewish voters, according to the latest Gallup data.
Obama's 60 to 33 percent advantage in polls conducted before his high-profile overseas trip is close to the average split among Jewish voters in exit polls going back to 1972 (65 to 32 percent), but if McCain gets a third of these voters on Election Day, he will do better than any GOP candidate has since 1988.
04 74 25 0 *

Barack Obama's trip this week to Israel and Europe has provided fresh opportunities for cynical bloggers and special-interest groups to stir up a baseless claim: that an Obama presidency would be bad for Israel and for American Jews.
Though Obama has the support of a majority of Jewish Americans, the allegation that he wouldn't be sufficiently pro-Israel is being stirred up by the right, and confusing some Jewish voters, alleges Ira N. Forman, director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.
h got about 80 percent of the Jewish vote, and John Kerry about 76 percent.

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.
the 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