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President Obama's stance toward Israel is the "No. 1 Jewish water cooler issue," said Martin Raffel, senior vice president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs at Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen.

"There is a captivation among the Jewish community," Raffel said on April 29 at a lecture sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County. "People want to know what's the bottom line."

Acknowledging he wouldn't answer that query with a simple one word answer, Raffel suggested that if Obama "is good for America, he will be good for Israel."

"It's a simplistic and glib way of looking at it, but I think it has some merit," he said.

Raffel described the American Jewish community as split into three general camps. The first, which largely hail from the 22 percent that did not vote for him, believe Obama is putting Israel at grave risk. The second have little criticism of his Middle East policy and believe he has got it "just right." The third, mostly drawn from his original supporters are "uncertain, a little bit uneasy." This group is not ready to write him off as horrible for Israel, he said, but is also not ready to embrace his policies either.

Tensions between the two countries arose, according to Raffel, when Israel announced the construction of 1,600 housing units in the neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo while Biden was visiting Israel. "The next day the administration made the decision to make it a bigger issue than Biden was willing to make it while in Israel," Raffel said.

Following that public rebuke by the American administration, the dynamics between the two countries began to "spiral in a very negative direction."

Raffel reminded the audience that although no American administration has been supportive of West Bank Jewish settlements (diverging only on how vocal their opposition was), "most administrations tended to stay away from Jerusalem."

The Obama administration, he said, made a calculated decision to raise the issue of building in Jerusalem over the Green Line in a "pointed and public way."

Another source of tension was testimony by General David Petraeus, Commander of the U.S. Central Command, that Raffel said people misinterpreted to mean that U.S. support of Israel is harming American troops overseas.

That statement (which has been echoed by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Obama himself) is only meant to suggest that the ongoing conflict is "a major complicating factor for our policy in the Middle East" because it is used as wedge issue by foreign leaders, he said.

In reaction to this tension, members of the organized Jewish community, including the Anti-Defamation League, have expressed their concern about the rhetoric coming from the White House, Raffel said.

Aware of the concerns raised by Jewish supporters, Raffel said "the administration has now gone on a campaign to reassure the Jewish community of its good intentions with respect to Israel."

This "campaign" has included an open letter to Alan Solow, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and the "red carpet treatment" given to Defense Minister Ehud Barak when visiting Washington.

"I've heard 'unshakable and unbreakable' more in the last week than ever before," he said.

Among the U.S. administration's policy priorities, Raffel said, is "resetting" America's relationship with the Muslim world, which will lead to a greater willingness to criticize Israel publicly when it disagrees.

Despite this change in approach, the "special relationship" between the U.S. and Israel remains paramount. The two countries, Raffel said, "continue to be on the same page in their broad strategic agenda."

Raffel also spoke about Israel's "delegitimization" in the international community, which while in existence since the founding of the country has accelerated since the 2001 U.N. Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. This conference, where "raw anti-Semitism" was displayed, gave rise to the so-called BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement, he said.

Those measures "are just the tools being used by those who want to undermine Israel's status among the league of nations." Their ultimate goal, he said, "is "to weaken Israel politically and economically so it will be more vulnerable."

With this effort to delegitimize the Jewish state, Raffel said that it is "vitally important" that the pro-Israel community responds.

Supporters of the Jewish state, however, cannot "have a one-size-fits-all response to Israel advocacy." Whether one engages with a labor union, in a corporate setting, or a college campus, the approach must correspond to the audience.

"Each has a different culture and we must tailor our approaches accordingly," he said, adding that allies beyond the Jewish community are essential.