As an American Jew I find that the most deceitful, depraved and disgusting sub-campaign of the presidential season is the viral e-mail and blogging attack on Barack Obama that characterizes him as an enemy of Israel if not Judaism itself.

This campaign goes far beyond the false but persistent rumor that he is a Muslim—as if that in itself were a criminal position—but tries to put him in the political bed of every enemy of Israel and America of the past half century.

Some of the slime that enters my inbox makes Joseph McCarthy look like the chairman of the ACLU.

The most recent, well-circulated missive comes from one Leon A. Weinstein of California who offers as his bona fides the claim that he is a Russian immigrant who first lived in Israel before coming to the States, and elsewhere describes himself as a marketing expert who has pledged to do all in his power to stop Obama.

OK—that’s his right. He is apparently a conservative Republican with lots of legitimate disagreements with the essentially liberal Democratic candidate.

But look at some of Weinstein’s—and others—arguments: Obama, he says, is endorsed by “a scaring host of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli people and organizations” including: “Hamas Terrorist Organization,” “Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades,” “Socialist Party USA (Marxist Political Party)” “Raul Castro (Hard-line Communist Leader, Cuba)” and “Daniel Ortega (Marxist Sandinista Leader, Nicaragua)” to say nothing of Louis Farrakhan, whom Obama has rejected, renounced and denounced. (All the parenthetical descriptions above are Weinstein’s.)

Where did Weinstein get such information?

On the Internet, he acknowledges.

But this tissue of guilt by associations, apparently, is not sufficiently “scaring.” Weinstein goes on to identify a host of actual Obama supporters who have varying positions on the Middle East and misrepresents both their ties to the candidate, as well as their positions.

Weinstein charges that Obama asked Zbigniew Brzezinski to be his “chief political advisor”—a lie. The former National Security Advisor is simply one of many secondary and tertiary foreign policy advisors.

Brzezinski’s sin? He advocated talks with Hamas—talks such as Israel has been undergoing for several months now!

In a major howler, Weinstein tries to make the arch cold-warrior Brzezinski into a Communist sympathizer by taking some odd quote out of context.

And so it goes with half a dozen other figures Weinstein cites.

The goal of these long-winded, demonstrably dishonest rants obviously is to discredit Obama as anti-Israel and his Jewish supporters as self-haters—the ultimate smear of any Jew who does not toe a 250 percent hard line in support of Israel with no sympathy for any Arabs or Palestinians.

It is religion used as a weapon in a way that would make Jerry Falwell envious.

The fact is, Obama already toes a pretty hard line in Israel’s favor. One arbiter of such is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful Jewish lobby, which accords Obama a 100 percent pro-Israel rating.

More fact: many progressive Jewish organizations, which do not share AIPAC’s hard-line thinking, have criticized Obama for going overboard in AIPAC’s direction, as in his calling for an undivided Jerusalem as capital of Israel.

Obama has plenty of Jewish support. In the primaries he won about 43 percent of the Jewish vote against Clinton and others who have spent decades courting the tiny but potent Jewish base. Compare that to 39 percent of the rest of the white vote.

Even Sen. Joe Lieberman’s stepson Ethan Tucker—a rabbi—is an Obama endorser.

Conservative Republicans have long tried to use Israel as a wedge issue to peel Jewish voters away from their solid Democratic roots.

With something less than 3 percent of the population, Jews cast nearly twice that number of votes and are a major political funding source.

Want to talk political power? With that small percentage of the population, Jews constitute 13 percent of the U.S. Senate, comprising 9 Democrats, 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats and 2 Republicans.

Little wonder the Republicans want to break up this powerful voting bloc.

Ever since Franklin Roosevelt got 90 percent of the Jewish vote, only one Republican ever got 40 percent—Dwight Eisenhower. Ronald Reagan came close with 36 percent.

Bill Clinton got the vote back to 80 percent; Al Gore got 79 percent and John Kerry 76 percent.

With Obama’s unusual background, odd name and the backdrop of race, GOP strategists see a potential of eating further into the constituency. Guys like Leon A. Weinstein among others don’t seem to care how they accomplish the goal.

The whispering campaign about Obama being a secret Muslim was denounced by Jewish leaders of all stripes—most recently by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York.

Earlier in the year a letter signed by groups ranging from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee and National Council of Jewish Women said “…many in our community have received hateful e-mails that use falsehood and innuendo to mischaracterize Senator Obama’s religious beliefs and who he is….

“These tactics attempt to drive a wedge between our community and a presidential candidate based on false attacks and innuendo based on religion….

“Attempts of this sort to mislead and inflame voters should not be part of our political discourse and should be rebuffed by all who believe in our democracy.”

Now it’s time for Bloomberg and the rest of Jewish leadership to stand up again and denounce the political treachery of the Weinsteins and those who falsely use the issue of religion and the Jewish homeland to accomplish their political ends.

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Don Rose, a veteran liberal strategist, is a regular columnist for The Chicago Daily Observer.