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Barack Meets Barak; Tells Bibi: "I Could Fall Asleep Standing Up"

July 23, 2008 4:26 AM

JERUSALEM -- Boker tov!

At the fabled King David Hotel this morning, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, had breakfast with Israeli Defense Minister and Labor leader Ehud Barak.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee was accompanied by senior advisers Dennis Ross, Jim Steinberg, former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer; former Navy secretary Richard Danzig and Dan Shapiro.

Also present: Barak's chief of staff Mike Herzog; chief of the Defense ministry's military political department Gen. Amos Gilad; Defense ministry director Brig. Gen. Pinchas Buchris; and military secretary to the Minister of Defense, Gen. Eitan Dangot.

Obama, wearing a blue-and-white striped tie, posed for photos with Barak.

"Where are we sitting?" Barack asked Barak.

Barak motioned him to the other side of a large wooden table covered with orange juice, bread, fruit, cheese and salad.

The next meeting was with Knesset member/Likud Party Chair Benjamin Netanyahu, who asked Obama how he was feeling.

"I could fall asleep standing up," Obama said, according to Bloomberg News' Tel Aviv correspondent Jonathan Ferziger.

Obama advisers Steinberg, Danzig, Shapiro and Dr. Susan Rice met with Bibi as well. Bibi was joined by former Ambassador Dore Gold; former national security adviser Uzi Arad; Zalman Shoval, former ambassador to U.S.; Netanyahu's counselor Ron Derner and Netanyahu chief of staff Ari Harrow

"Mr. Obama?" asked one of the reporters in the small pool permitted into these meetings.

"There's not going to be any questions now," Obama said. And the reporters were escorted out.

(As Rabbi Hillel said, "If not now, when?")

Obama "raised his policy in which he said that he would never seek in any way to compromise Israel's security and that this would be sacrosanct to his approach to political negotiations, and I think this is very much something on our minds," Netanyahu said after their meeting.

"The Senator and I agreed that the primacy of preventing iran from becoming a nuclear power is clear and this should guide our mutual policies." He said he told Obama that "achieving this goal is more important than how you achieve it, but it's terribly important to achieve it."

**

A Gallup poll from May shows Obama beating Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., among American Jewish voters, 61% to 32%.

But it's a relatively weak performance considering how Democratic Jews traditionally vote -- it's 20 points worse than both Bill Clinton and Al Gore did, and 15 points worse than Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in 2004.

**

Right now Obama is touring the Holocaust Museum here, Yad Vashem. After that, he will meet with Israeli president Shimon Peres.

Then, on to Ramallah in the West Bank where he will meet with Palestinian National Authority President Mahmud Abbas and Prime Minister Dr. Salam Fayyad.

Amidst some reports questioning whether the Palestinians would be in charge of Obama's security while in the West Bank, Dr. Rice underscored this morning that the U.S. Secret Service will be in charge as it has been this entire trip.

Following a visit with Foreign Minister Tzipora Malka "Tzipi" Livni, Obama will fly by helicopter with Livni and Barak to Sderot, where they will meet Minister of Internal Security, Avi Dichter.

Located less than a mile from Gaza, Sderot has been a target of Qassam rocket attacks from militant Palestinians. Since 2001, 13 people in the town of roughly 20,000 have been killed; aid organizations estimate that up to one quarter of the town's residents have fled their homes.

"We had a tragic and painful reminder of the persistent threat terrorism poses to Israel's people just steps from here yesterday," Rice said this morning to reporters, referencing the bulldozer attack, "and today in Sderot he'll have an opportunity to see the pain and the challenges posed to Israeli people by living in such dangerous proximity to Hamas rockets." In Sderot Obama will meet with a local family selected by Israeli officials.

Obama will visit a police station there, where a number of rockets that have fallen are on display. Reporters may or may not get to ask Obama a question or two in Sderot.

He will return by helicopter back to Jerusalem and in the evening will have a dinner meeting with embattled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. 

-- Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller

July 23, 2008 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (23)

User Comments

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Obama and his campaign of fear.

Obama has one-upped McCain's bluff to win in Iraq by raising the prospect of an even more deadly quagmire in Afghanistan.

Change.

Posted by: freaky deak | Jul 23, 2008 5:53:22 AM

I think Obama has a few problems with, especially, older Jewish voters. I don't know if this is racism or not but I think that some see Obama think African American leader and convert Obama into another leader who is against them in the mould of Farakhan, Malcolm X or to a lesser extent Jesse Jackson. But I also think that there is a level of suspicion of the young userper amongst this voting block, and a sense of the cocky young kid. I also wander if there is a level of 'minority jealousy' going on in a few groups that says that they feel they should be the next minority to be represented in the Presidency. (I don't know but for instance how well did JFK do amongst Jewish voters?) I think eventually some will move back to the Democrats when they start to view Obama less as African American more as Democrat.

Posted by: markymark | Jul 23, 2008 5:15:38 AM

I'm detecting a hint of skepticism in these posts...

Posted by: Ben (The Tiger) | Jul 23, 2008 4:41:38 AM

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