Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz published an open letter to Barack Obama in today’s Jerusalem Post, reminding the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate that Israel’s struggle for its survival is not yet over.

And if anyone’s wondering about the halting pace of progress in the development of Israel’s transportation infrastructure, it’s probably because the transportation minister is more concerned with rockets in Iran than trains in Jerusalem: “The only truly important issue for the State of Israel has been and will continue to be our ability to continue living and surviving here as a people,” Mofaz said.

The Post’s Calev Ben-David says Obama’s real greeting to Israel came yesterday in the form of a Jerusalem terrorist attack within sight of his hotel in the city, when an Arab from eastern Jerusalem went on a bulldozer rampage.

That terrorist’s message?

His message to you was that some things are not negotiable, and some people do not really wish to be negotiated with, at least not on any terms but their own; that Israel’s crime is not what it does or where its borders are, but its very existence; and that no matter which president sits in the White House, those basic - or, one might say, sacred - principles will remain unchanged.

The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at the “black conversion movement” — as in conversion to Judaism.

Numbers are hard to pin down. Besides well-known conversions such as that of the late entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., black Jews remain an unfamiliar part of the American religious landscape. Yet Lewis Gordon, director of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia, estimates there are as many as 1 million blacks with Jewish blood in the US.

Another recent study by the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco estimates that there are as many as 150,000 practicing black Jews in the US today, with synagogues across the country reporting increasing numbers of blacks either exploring or converting to Judaism.

The story has a few interesting details/quotes, but doesn’t come close to backing up the ambitious claim in its subhead: “Conversions to Judaism among African-Americans are growing in a way that could affect the presidential election.”

The writer takes a stab or two at pushing this thesis:

Sen. Barack Obama is lighting up connections to the black-Jewish alliance of the 1960s while at the same time trying to calm Jewish fears over his Muslim middle name and ties to pro-Palestinian activists. This could have critical implications in key states with large Jewish populations such as Florida and Pennsylvania.

In the end, though, the article fails to produce a single black convert to Judaism who is voting against Obama because he’s bad for the Jews. It does have a few quotes from Dov Hikind, a Democratic state assemblyman from Brooklyn, explaining why black hatted Jews will note vote for Obama.

Over at JTA Election Central, we posted on Liz Cheney’s not so veiled swiped at the Bush-Rice policy of pressing for the Palestinian elections that culminated with a Hamas victory. Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo linked to our post, under the headline “All in the Family,” referring to Cheney’s vice-presidential dad.

Well, later in the week at the AIPAC conference, a Cheney family cousin (Barack something or other) also took a swipe at the Bush administration over the issue:

We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements. There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations. That is why I opposed holding elections in 2006 with Hamas on the ballot. The Israelis and the Palestinian Authority warned us at the time against holding these elections. But this Administration pressed ahead, and the result is a Gaza controlled by Hamas, with rockets raining down on Israel.

Rice is sticking to her guns. Here’s what she had to say about the topic in a recent essay that she wrote for Foreign Affairs: (more…)

I have an article up about the National Jewish Democratic Council event Sunday night, during which several speakers and attendees expressed concerns about Barack Obama’s ability to hold on to Jewish voters. Even NJDC’s executive director, Iran Forman, who generally can be counted on to dismiss GOP predictions of a Jewish shift, was voicing concern about the presidential race.

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JTA’s Ron Kampeas had an exclusive phone interview with Barack Obama earlier today. Among other things, Obama said that it was important for both Israelis and Palestinians to live up to their agreements.

Full interview (sorry, the quality isn’t perfect):

For those interested in the Jewciest moment of the discussion, here’s a clip of Obama telling us why Passover is one of his favorite holidays (and Ron getting into the holiday mood):

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Perhaps the highlight of Keith Olbermann’s weeklong fifth anniversary celebration of his MSNBC show “Countdown” has been his back-and-forth with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

Olbermann kicked off his big week on Monday by naming Rendell, a big-time Hillary booster, the day’s worst person in the world and suggesting that he might be an idiot. Rendell’s crime? Suggesting that Olberman’s favorite punching bag, Fox News, has been the most balanced of all the cable networks in covering the Democratic primary race.

Then the other day, Rendell shot back, asking one reporter if Olbermann “gets checks from the Obama campaign.”

Put aside the fact that Olbermann’s rant on Monday didn’t really speak to Rendell’s assertion that Clinton and Obama get balanced, if not fair, coverage on Fox. Olbermann might want to check in with NBC’s resident Yiddishist, Brian Williams, about the meaning of chutzpah.

Whether or not Fox (Olbermann prefers “Fixed”) News deserves the “most balanced” distinction, what’s indisputable is that Olbermann now presides over the most one-sided anti-Hillary show on all three major cable news networks. These days Olbermann arguably spends more time bashing Clinton than either President Bush or John McCain. And he basically never has a harsh word to say about Barack Obama.

The issue isn’t accuracy: Olbermann hits Clinton hard, but usually above the belt. The problem (if one chooses to see it that way) is that he only goes after one of the two Democratic front-runners. Again, to borrow the Fox paradigm, Olbermann is fair, but not balanced: When the Clinton campaign finds itself under fire, Olbermann sees it as his job to pour on the gasoline; when Obama is feeling the heat, Olbermann moves to put out the flames.

Looking past the hypocrisy issue, is there anything wrong – in the increasingly opinionated world of cable news — with the blatantly anti-Clinton tone of Olberman’s show?

To be honest, I never had much of a problem with his choosing-sides approach when the target was the president. After all, the media is supposed to be keeping watch on the White House, and with so many mainstream outlets falling down on the job, and conservative hosts playing apologist and cheerleader, Olbermann has played an important role.

But now it feels different. In the Obama-Clinton race, Olbermann isn’t checking power — he’s trying to swing the election. And, while liberal attacks on John McCain and conservative attacks on the two leading Dems certainly fall into the same category, playing favorites during the primary season is taking opinionated mainstream journalism to a new high/low. Now we’re not only going to have liberal and conservative shows/networks, we’re going to have them for individual candidates on each side of the aisle? Are there enough shows to go around?

All that said, the real issue isn’t Olbermann, but his role in MSNBC’s overall election coverage and the supporting cast of journalists from ostensibly unbiased media outlets that frequent his show. Olbermann isn’t just a guy with a show – he often plays co-host during debate and election night coverage. To be fair, he does a fairly decent job of toning it down and playing it less crooked in these settings. But, still, why is a blatantly anti-Clinton host sharing the point at a network that still claims to aspire to some standard of balance and objectivity?

Along similar lines, why are the Washington Post and Newsweek willing to pimp out their reporters to a show that is so one-sided? Sure, in print Dana Milbank and Howard Fineman might aspire to play it straight, but Olbermann’s consistently anti-Clinton line of questioning effectively turns them (and their publications) into pawns in his political crusade.

The ZOA’s Mort Klein is pushing ahead with his calls on Barack Obama to quit his church. In addition to the organization’s press release from last week, Klein now also has an Op-Ed. In each case he veers off course a bit in trying to argue that Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., has no grounds for harboring any racial bitterness.

In the press release, as a parenthetical P.S., Klein is quoted as saying:

(Obama excuses some of Wright’s statements by saying, “Wright was a child of the 60’s.” In fact, Rev. Jeremiah Wright went to high school in Philadelphia from 1955 to 1959. The high school he attended was my own alma mater, Central High School. Central, the second oldest public high school in the country, was a magnet school attracting the elite, most serious academic students in the city. The school was 80% Jewish and 95% white. My experience was that the African-American students were treated with the same respect as the white students. The African-American students loved Central as much as the white students did. Many of them come to Central’s reunions. Also, it is interesting to note that Rev. Wright’s father was a prominent pastor and his mother was a teacher and later vice-principal of the Philadelphia High School for Girls, also a distinguished academic high school.)

What started out as a tag-on turns into the lead in Klein’s Op-Ed. Here’s the opening few graffs:

The whole world now knows that for nearly 20 years, Senator Barack Obama has attended Chicago’s Trinity United Church and that his pastor is Rev. Jeremiah Wright. In his speech on race on March 18, Senator Obama criticized some of Rev. Wright’ statements but also essentially excused and rationalized Wright’s sermons. He summarized the reality for many African-Americans growing up in past decades – inferior, segregated schools; discrimination; lack of economic opportunity, inability to provide for one’s family – before stating, “This is the reality in which Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up.” Half right. African-Americans suffered, many even horrifically, in the past. But Rev. Wright was not one of them.

How do I know?

It happens that, as a Philadelphian, I attended Central High School – the same public school Jeremiah Wright attended from 1955 to 1959. He could have gone to an integrated neighborhood school, but he chose to go to Central, a virtually all-white school. Central is the second oldest public high school in the country, which attracts the most serious academic students in the city. The school then was about 80% Jewish and 95% white. The African-American students, like all the others, were there on merit. Generally speaking, we came from lower/middle class backgrounds. Many of our parents had not received a formal education and we tended to live in row houses. In short, economically, we were roughly on par.

I attended Central a few years after Rev. Wright, so I did not know him personally. But I knew of him and I know where he used to live – in a tree-lined neighborhood of large stone houses in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. This is a lovely neighborhood to this day. Moreover, Rev. Wright’s father was a prominent pastor and his mother was a teacher and later vice-principal and disciplinarian of the Philadelphia High School for Girls, also a distinguished academic high school. Two of my acquaintances remember her as an intimidating and strict disciplinarian and excellent math teacher. In short, Rev. Wright had a comfortable upper-middle class upbringing. It was hardly the scene of poverty and indignity suggested by Senator Obama to explain what he calls Wright’s anger and what I describe as his hatred.

New Republic honcho Marty Peretz is impressed by this take on Wright; N.J. Jewish News editor Andrew Silow-Carroll — not so much.

My two cents: Wright has supplied Klein with plenty of decent ammunition to make his case that Obama should quit the church (after all, the candidate himself suggested that he might have done so, if not for the fact that his longtime pastor was retiring). But this attempt to challenge the idea that Wright might be carrying some legitimate racial grudges around is ridiculous — especially coming from Klein, who runs an organization that raises money and lobbies in D.C. based on the premise that we here in America can feel solidarity with Israelis living thousands of miles away.

It would be like if I wrote an Op-Ed saying, “It’s true that there are many Israelis who have been killed in terrorist attacks. Yet that can’t be why Mort Klein is so angry about Palestinian incitement. Take it from me. I went to high school just a few blocks away from his home in suburban Philadelphia. And it’s a really nice neighborhood — there’s been no terrorist attacks there. So, yes, Israelis might have a right to be angry about terrorism, but not Mort, everything is swell where he lives.”

Managing Editor Ami Eden talks with a Democratic fund-raiser about what Nebraska — which holds its primary tomorrow — tells us about race, gender and the fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

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Former JTA staffer Matthew Berger says Giuliani is too much of a leader to take a Cabinet post if the GOP takes the White House. Berger has been following Rudy’s campaign for MSNBC.

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Obama’s foreign policy adviser, Tony Lake, was at NYU today, talking to students at the Bronfman Center about why he thinks the Democratic presidential hopeful is so great. But before he got into details, Lake, who served as national security adviser in the Clinton administration, described his own history of first being mistaken for, and then actually becoming, a Jew.

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