I heard a report that Sen. Barack Obama’s position on Israel/Palestine is no different from the Democratic mainstream, that in fact he abandoned a more progressive view—which you might expect given his multicultural/international backstory—to get there.

I asked someone who would know, Ali Abunimah (of electronic intifada), who lives in Chicago. Abunimah wrote me back:

Poppa’s got a brand new bag!

I knocked around on the Federal Election Commission database (fec.gov) to understand Obama’s tergiversation, looking at his 2004 Senate warchest of $14 million. The impression I got was that Obama had a ton of Jewish givers—as all winning Democrats do—but that they weren’t hack givers, they were idealists. They hadn’t given to lots of candidates other than Obama; many of the ones I looked at had given only to Obama.

The other pattern I noticed was that Obama givers had sometimes given to Hillary and Chuck Schumer. I got the impression that Hillary and Chuck had really pulled out the stops for Obama in ’04, as representing the best of American idealism (who’s cryin’ now?). None of this is inconsistent with Abunimah’s analysis above. It shows (as I said yesterday) that the Israel lobby is not based in a control room, or even Chuck Schumer’s office. Concern for Israel pervades the liberal American Jewish success story. That community functions, in politics, as a monolith. And a gateway. At fundraisers at fancy apartments in N.Y.C., a congressional candidate will be asked, Where do you stand on the settlements in the West Bank?

The questioner doesn’t need a script, he’s feelin’ it. The candidate needs to get a script in a hurry. But I’m an optimist; I think the Jewish grassroots are beginning to change.