Ed Lasky's two AT articles discussing Barack Obama's foreign policy advisory team (here and here) have caused a lot of comment, published and not, within the pro-Israel community. Today, Noah Pollak writes about another member of Team Obama on the Contentions blog of Commentary Magazine:

There has been an awakening in recent days to the presence of a disturbing number of foreign policy advisers to the Obama campaign who harbor hostile views of Israel. Ed Lasky of the American Thinker has been doing serious work on the subject, and his two pieces - here and here - are must-reads. Caroline Glick adds to the discussion here.

But there is another Obama foreign policy adviser-a prominent one-who has so far escaped criticism. This is Samantha Power, a Harvard professor, journalist, and human rights specialist who of late has become a high-profile liberal critic of American foreign policy.

Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the "national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued . . . America's important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.

So greater regard for international institutions along with less automatic deference to special interests-especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace-seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.

Power is not just assenting to the Israel Lobby view of American foreign policy, but is also arguing that Israel had something to do with the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in 2003-an appalling slander, and a telling one.