In 1940s Germany, people like Mel Levine handed out towels and told fellow Jews to enjoy the showers. In 2008 America, Mel Levine is one of seven Middle East advisers to Barack Hussein Obama. He hands out vapid cliches and tells fellow Jews that Obama will be good for Israel because he knows how to appease Muslims.

Obama raised eyebrows recently when, during a meeting with Jewish communal leaders in Cleveland, he took issue with what he said was a “strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.”

When asked, in light of those comments, how Obama as president would work with Binyamin Netanyahu, in the eventuality that the Likud leader might one day be prime minister again, Levine said that Obama was not taking an anti-Likud line.

“I’m sure he will work with whatever government is in power,” Levine said. “I think he was just saying that there are American Jews who don’t agree with Likud policies, and that doesn’t mean they are any less supportive of Israel.”

Picking up a theme from Obama’s campaign speeches, Levine said Obama appealed to him because he could break Washington’s “gridlock.”

The former congressman, who first met Obama about 18 months ago, said, “I felt from the first time I met him that this is a person who has the ability, given his talent and his background, to unify America and to transcend traditional gridlock in Washington that will make America a stronger international player and even a better friend of Israel.”

Asked how breaking Washington’s gridlock helped Israel, Levine said the more unified the US was, the greater its stature would be internationally, which would in turn benefit Israel.

“To me, one of the greatest crises we face because of the Bush administration policy is the isolation of America in the world,” he said. “It is much harder for us to get our allies to do things, much harder for us to get countries to reciprocate.”

Levine said the “greatest tragedy of our Iraq policy” was that it had unwittingly benefited Iran. And Iran, he said, “creates far and away the greatest danger to Israel on the face of the earth.”

As to Obama’s stated willingness to engage Teheran in dialogue without precondition, Levine said the candidate was starting from the premise that the administration’s current polices had failed in getting Iran either to stop terrorism or to halt its nuclear march.

Obama, Levine said, believed that the way to stop Iran was with a combination of carrots and sticks. “He believes that if you use carrots and sticks, and engage in multilateral, aggressive diplomacy, then if you need to use the military option or do anything that needs to be done, you are much more likely to get support of allies, more international support, and broader American support.”

He also said that Obama would be better able than US President George W. Bush to get allies to support sanctions against Iran.

“I think he has the potential to get our allies to be much more cooperative with us across the board,” he said. “I think a foreign policy led by Obama will have much more credibility among our allies.”

Asked whether Bush was good for Israel, Levine said, “I think that Bush has tried very hard to be good for Israel, and his heart is in the right place. But I think his policies have failed. And I think his policies have made Israel less secure, and America less secure.”