Jonathan, it certainly is getting harder and harder, even for the most devoted Obama spinners, to explain away Obama’s obvious lack of affection for Israel and his enchantment with the Palestinian narrative and negotiating posture. When a president is this “ideological — and vindictive” toward the Jewish state, as Jackson Diehl put it, it raises this question for mostly liberal American Jews: what will they do about it?

This AP story is headlined “Obama risks alienating Jewish voters?” What’s missing is any evidence that this has yet happened or that Jewish Democrats are prepared to withhold support, financial and otherwise, from Obama. Off-year elections are a poor proxy for foreign-policy sentiments, except in extreme cases. (2006, at the height of the anti-Iraq-war sentiment, was the exception that proves the rule.) But certainly there will be Senate races in which the administration’s policies on Iran and the Palestinian conflict are prominent. However, the definitive answer as to whether American Jews will actually withhold their votes and campaign dollars from Obama will have to await the 2012 election cycle.

In the meantime, the question remains whether the push back we’ve seen over the last two weeks on the Obami’s Jerusalem housing gambit will continue, and how prominent Jewish organizations will react when, as we suspect will be the case, Obama’s effort on sanctions on Iran proves to be far less robust than advertised. This week AIPAC set the bar fairly high — reminding the administration that “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” making it clear that the bully-boy routine needed to stop, and urging those crippling sanctions. If that is not forthcoming, its members and the larger Jewish community will need to make some choices. The credibility and continued relevance of major Jewish organizations depend on holding the administration accountable.

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