Is the Israel lobby out of touch with America today? Or is this just the charm offensive for President Obama? Here’s an ad that the lobby group FLAME (Facts & Logic About the Middle East) is running in at least one Jewish newspaper and that is on the group’s website, too: an answer to the question, "Israel: An Apartheid State? Is there any truth at all in this oft-repeated calumny?" Excerpt:

Israel has granted permanent residence and full citizen rights to a large number of legal and illegal foreign workers and their families – from the Philippines, Eritrea, Colombia, Nigeria, and from many other countries. Nobody, of course, is forced or requested to convert to Judaism as a condition of their being allowed to stay. Israel has accepted a shipload of Vietnamese refugees who had sought asylum. No Arab country has accepted a single one of those refugees. Israel has brought in about 70,000 black Ethiopian Jews, who despite their backwardness have become fully integrated citizens of Israel. Everything that Blacks were not allowed to do in South Africa is totally open to non-Jews in Israel.

Is this how the Israel lobby works, by employing racist stereotypes? Also, what about Blacks with a capital B? Sounds very officially racial… A friend saw it in J Weekly of Northern California, a relatively progressive Jewish news magazine. Progressive. Is there any truth to that oft-repeated claim?