\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re anti-Israel and that can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not going to make progress.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
He said even more about the confined nature of the debate over Israel and its security in this country, according to the dispatch in the Jewish Telegraph Agency<\/a> (JTA). Apparently in defense of his consultations with Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has been harshly critical of neo-conservative influence in the Bush administration, Obama said:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Frankly some of the commentary that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to have problems moving forward.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And he contrasted those constraints on the debate here with the breadth and vigor of the discussion of those same issues in Israel itself.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There was a very honest, thoughtful debate taking place inside Israel. All of you, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure, have experienced this when you travel there. Understandably, because of the pressure that Israel is under, I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation. But all I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m saying though is that actually ultimately should be our goal, to have that same clear-eyed view about how we approach these issues.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The staunchly pro-Likud New York Sun <\/em>is carrying a partial transcript<\/a> of the meeting it obtained from the Obama campaign.<\/p>\n Barack Obama reportedly said something very important and long overdue to a group of some 100 Cleveland Jewish leaders on Sunday \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that being pro-Likud and being \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pro-Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are two different things. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4205"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/lobe\/lobelog.jpg\")
<\/a>Visit Lobelog.com<\/a> for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"