To recap: one of Obama’s advisors, Gen. McPeak, once made a claim in an old interview about resistance to change in U.S. policy on Israel and Palestine coming in part from “New York and Miami,” which almost everyone sought to make into an invidious “anti-Semitic” statement.  Today comes news that the McCain camp has won the support of a major Jewish donor from south Florida, who had previously been a major contributor to Democratic campaigns, because of Obama’s alleged weakness on Israel.

As The Hill explains:

Jewish support is especially important in Florida, a crucial swing state where Obama trails McCain in recent polls. Jewish voters make up about 5 percent of the electorate in that state. Florida’s Jewish community is also a lucrative source of political fundraising. [bold mine-DL]

Jewish Democrats are concerned about Obama’s stance toward Israel, and many big donors from this group supported Clinton. McCain has moved aggressively in recent days to win their allegiance since Clinton dropped her White House bid.    

 
“Her dropping out was huge in terms of potential for crossover voting and crossover support,” said Cantor.
Jewish Democrats are concerned about Obama for several reasons. While stumping in Iowa last year, Obama told Democratic activists, “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.”
 

Some Jewish voters interpreted the statement as a sign that Obama would be overly sympathetic to the Palestinian side in future peace negotiations with Israel. And some are concerned about a senior Obama adviser’s comments regarding the influence of American Jews on foreign policy. Merrill “Tony” McPeak, the former Air Force chief of staff, told the Portland Oregonian newspaper in 2003 that the political influence of the Jewish community had hampered efforts to negotiate peace in the Middle East [bold mine-DL].

So here we have a case of a prominent south Florida donor breaking with the Democrats because of concerns about Obama’s support for Israel, and these concerns are based at least partly on the claims by McPeak that Jewish voters in south Florida serve as an impediment in making significant changes to U.S. policy towards Israel and Palestine.  So we are seeing a candidate losing some important backing in south Florida because of merely perceived insufficient support for Israel, and that perception is driven in no small part by the fact that one of the candidate’s advisors said that there is no change in policy because politicians are afraid of being punished by Jewish voters in south Florida for deviating from the status quo on Israel.  The very thing McPeak was describing is happening for all to see, and people are even attributing part of it to the fact that McPeak once noted this phenomenon five years ago.  Obviously, McPeak is crazy.

The irony of all this is that Obama proposes to change absolutely nothing about U.S. policy towards Israel and Palestine, yet he is still being treated as if he would because some people in his orbit have been impolitic enough to explain part of the reason why nothing changes very much.  Even though Obama’s position on Israel is essentially indistinguishable from that of Clinton, McCain or the Bush administration, he is suffering the political cost of the mere perception that his position is somehow different.  If that doesn’t drive home the validity of McPeak’s observations from 2003, I’m not sure what could.