Jewish surrogates for Barack Obama called the Clinton campaign “hypocritical” following reports that its staff had criticized Obama’s Middle East advisers.
The presidential campaign for the U.S. senator from Illinois reacted to a Newsweek article this week that cited an anonymous source quoting Ann Lewis, a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), as telling a teleconference of Jewish leaders last month that Zbigniew Brzezinski was Obama’s chief foreign policy adviser.
Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, has angered pro-Israel advocates by claiming that U.S. policy is excessively weighted in favor of the Jewish state. He is not an Obama adviser but has endorsed Obama.
Also, a Clinton campaign supporter and a staffer circulated e-mails critical of Obama’s foreign policy staff.
Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), Obama’s top Jewish surrogate, told JTA that the attacks were the “height of hypocrisy” given that most of the advisers named in the e-mails had also advised Clinton’s husband when he was the president. The Clinton campaign did not respond.
