By Akiva Eldar, Ha’aretz, 15 February 2008
Tensions in the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination are mirrored in the American Jewish community. As the gap between the front-runners narrowed in the primaries, the clash between the two Jewish camps has become more heated.
Official Israel is making an effort to maintain a respectable neutrality. Has-beens are being called into the ring, like a former ambassador to Washington, Dan Ayalon, who jabbed Obama in a sensitive spot – the volume of his support for Israel.
Ayalon is not alone. Jewish advisers and non-Jewish supporters are almost obsessively occupied with searching for skeletons in the black candidate’s past.
The Republican Party’s neoconservative clique is trawling archives for “anti-Israeli” essays by advisers who had been seen in Obama’s staff.
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