WASHINGTON – After months of seeking to paint each other as opposites on Middle East policy, U.S. Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were on the same page Wednesday at the AIPAC policy conference as they ripped into the Bush administration and John McCain on several fronts.

In back-to-back speeches a day after Obama appeared to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, the two senators eschewed any attempt to draw distinctions between themselves. Instead they opted to argue that the Bush administration’s policies on Iran and Iraq have hurt American and Israeli interests.

NEW YORK – It’s become as much a campaign-season staple as Iowa and New Hampshire: Each election cycle Republicans predict a major shift in the Jewish vote and Democrats end winning upwards of 75 percent at the ballot box.

This year, however, something is different.

Many Jewish Democrats — at least in the heart of Hillaryland — are worried as it becomes increasingly likely that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will be the party’s presidential candidate in November.

The anxious mood was easy to detect Sunday night at the annual dinner of the New York chapter of the National Jewish Democratic Council, especially during a speech by one of the night’s five honorees, U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.).

The Democratic race may have a few more weeks left, but Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are already waging a bruising battle for Jewish support in the general election.

In recent days, the McCain team has stepped up its efforts to link Obama to Hamas, with several surrogates also misrepresenting the Democratic candidate’s comments to make it seem as if he had criticized Israel in harsh terms.

Shatner explores Passover story in dramatic reading of Exodus

Less than a month after the death of Charlton Heston, another of Hollywood’s great
over-actors is taking center stage in the retelling of the Passover story.

Last week the Jewish Music Group released "Exodus: An Oratorio in Three Parts," a dramatic biblical reading by William Shatner accompanied by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.

The album is taken from recordings of back-to-back evening performances in April 2005 at the Robinson Center Music Hall in Little Rock.

Children dressed in costumes. Parents celebrating. Stories of massacres greeted with revelry.

Sounds like a decent pitch for Hamas television — if you switch out the Hebrew for Arabic and ignore that it’s the scene at most synagogues in the world on the night of Purim.

To be fair, most of the Jews in the pews — and for that matter, the rabbis in the pulpits — don’t think of it that way.

Barack Obama has spent months fending off successive waves of highly misleading and outright false e-mail campaigns, but this week the Democratic front-runner found himself scrambling to respond to an indisputable YouTube-documented outrage: the inflammatory sermons of his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. declared from his South Side of Chicago pulpit just days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Many conservatives, not to mention Clinton supporters, were smiling last week during the Democratic debate in Ohio when MSNBC’s Tim Russert asked Barack Obama about being praised by Louis Farrakhan.

But the controversy faded almost before it started after Obama denounced the Nation of Islam leader’s anti-Jewish remarks and, with a little prodding from Hillary Clinton, rejected his words of support as well.

Instead it’s John McCain who has spent the past week on the defensive over an endorsement from a controversial clergyman, John Hagee.

What’s a conservative to do if he views the Annapolis peace push as a dangerous exercise in foreign policy naiveté but still clings to the image of George W. Bush as Israel’s best friend and the only Western leader who knows how to get tough with Islamic extremists?

Blame Condi.

Bret Stephens, the foreign affairs columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the former editor of the Jerusalem Post, managed to produce two columns slamming U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her "pointless Middle East conference."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert found himself under criticism this week by America’s largest Orthodox group, foreshadowing a likely showdown between left-wing and right-wing Jewish groups.

The Orthodox Union, which claims to represent about 1,000 synagogues, issued a statement Tuesday criticizing Olmert for not defending Israel’s right to Jerusalem in the face of Palestinian claims on parts of the city during his speech at the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Facing mounting skepticism over the upcoming U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian peace summit, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a massive gathering of Jews here that progress toward a two-state solution is vital to confronting Iran.

"What is at stake is nothing less than the future of the Middle East," Rice said Tuesday during an address to delegates at this week’s General Assembly here of the United Jewish Communities.