Presidential races are a hoot, aren't they? Every four years we get this year-long sporting event with all sorts of mini-stories along the way. Often absent from the real drama is the issue of America's Middle East policy, where candidates, whatever their views, see little to be gained by breaking from the two-party line and everything to lose by doing so.

It's a little different this time. In an interesting twist, the Barack Obama campaign has been besieged by both sides of the Israel-Palestine question. Pro-Palestinian forces (who are commonly more radical and politically clueless than the Palestinian people they claim to be fighting for) have berated Obama for not throwing his candidacy down the tubes by standing against Israeli policy in his campaign.

But the most radically right-wing of Israel's "supporters" (the quotes are there because these people, in fact, do extensive harm to Israel's interests) have really outdone themselves with their smear campaign against Obama. Saying he's really Muslim (Heaven forbid! If true, he must be evil!), and that he harbors a deep animosity toward Israel, the campaign, waged largely over e-mail, but also in some media like the American Thinker and the New Republic, has set off alarm bells in the Jewish community and in Obama's campaign.

Those alarms were serious enough for the largest mainstream Jewish organizations to denounce the attack on Obama.

One key piece of "proof" the attackers have used against Obama is one of his advisers, Robert Malley, whom they accuse of being...