Obama's Hebrew Blog In Israel

It was only a matter of time before someone did it:

Obama also plans to launch a vigorous PR campaign to win Israeli support. Obama’s campaign headquarters has recently launched a Hebrew blog [here], the first ever by a US presidential candidate. The blog, powered by the Tapuz internet website, is available to web surfers in both Hebrew and English and was launched Friday morning.

Obama’s campaign managers decided to launch this blog prior to the Philadelphia primaries in an attempt to win over the city’s ample Jewish community.

Very nice, but what exactly does Obama gain from a Hebrew blog in Israel? Is that really supposed to help him in Philadelphia?

Could be. David Hazony writes:

One of the least understood aspects of Israel-Diaspora relations is the high-bandwidth sharing of information and opinions between liberal American Jews and the left-leaning Israeli media elite. This is clearly a two-way street: American Jewish opinion tends to follow whatever the mainstream media in Israel has to say about Israeli politics, while the Israeli media tend to parrot American Jewish thinking about the United States. Thus you often find Israeli pundits opposing the war in Iraq (despite the fact that the elimination of Saddam Hussein was one of the greatest strategic windfalls in Israel’s history), or criticizing Christian Zionists (usually without having ever met any of them).

Barack Obama understands that Hillary is crushing him in Israeli polls, and that this reverberates back into the American Jewish debate over who is better for Israel. It’s a bit of a stretch to imagine that this alone will tip the scales on the American Jewish vote. But as part of a broader strategy, it makes more sense than one might think.

We won't be seeing a Obama blog in Arabic coming out of Gaza. It did not take new technology--just good old fashioned politics to capture that vote:

the warm embrace Obama gave to [Rashid] Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

Their belief is not drawn from Obama's speeches or campaign literature, but from comments that some say Obama made in private and from his association with the Palestinian American community in his hometown of Chicago, including his presence at events where anger at Israeli and U.S. Middle East policy was freely expressed. [emphasis added]

How convenient for Obama. Unlike Wright and Khalidi, Jews will not be making any inopportune statements in Obama's presence that he will have to disavow.

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