The President meets with Jewish leaders.
Gets Jewish support on peace push, questions about style

July 14, 2009 Excerpt

WASHINGTON (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) -- Top Jewish organizational leaders expressed support for President Obama's Middle East peace strategies at a White House meeting but said the president must do a better job of showing he expects hard work from all sides, not just Israel.

Obama’s meeting Monday afternoon with 16 Jewish leaders from 14 groups comes after weeks of tense exchanges between the Obama administration and Israel’s government over freezing Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank, prompting expressions of "concern" from some U.S. Jewish organizational leaders.

"The view was expressed among the organizations at a minimum there was concern about an imbalance in pressures placed on Israel as opposed to on the Palestinians and Arab states," Alan Solow, the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told JTA. "The president indicated he had a sensitivity to the perception of that imbalance and had to work harder to correct that perception."