Trying to dispel concerns about his commitment to American-Israeli relations on the eve of primaries in states with large Jewish constituencies, Senator Obama yesterday highlighted a Senate bill he had sponsored encouraging the divestment of money from Iran and reiterated his commitment to maintaining Israel as a Jewish state with a qualitative military edge.

He also condemned anti-Semitism in the black community, including that of Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, and noted that he had made such condemnations of anti-Semitism not only to the Jewish community but also for decades in the black community, including in a recent appearance marking Martin Luther King Day at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

At the end of a conference call with reporters of Jewish publications yesterday, Mr. Obama volunteered that he wanted to counter a “smear campaign” that “may have gotten traction in the Jewish community,” which included emails of false allegations that he was a Muslim who refused to recite the pledge of allegiance and was sworn in with his hand on the Koran. He called on the reporters to use their “megaphone” to dispel these smears.

One reporter asked Mr. Obama about the Christian church where he worships – and its afro-centric pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Mr. Obama acknowledged in yesterday’s conference call that the magazine of the 8000-member Trinity United Church of Christ in south Chicago, The Trumpet, “made an error of judgment” by awarding a prize to Louis Farrakhan.

“I have always denounced the abhorrent anti-Semitic views of Louis Farrakhan,” Mr. Obama said. “I have done so since I was a community organizer on the south side of Chicago” 20 years ago. He declined to sever his ties to the church, as was suggested in the question by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s reporter. “My church has never issued anti-Semitic statements, nor have I heard my pastor utter anything anti-Semitic,” Mr. Obama said. “If I had, I would have left the church.”

In a sermon printed in the August, 2005 issue of Trumpet Magazine, Rev. Wright compared Israeli governments to the Apartheid regime in South Africa and to the genocidal rulers of Sudan. “Twenty years after the divestment strategy concerning South Africa worked, a similar strategy has been proposed by members of the United Church of Christ as it pertains to Sudan and to Israel,” he wrote. But unlike the case of Sudan, he added, “Nobody is trying to hear what we are saying in terms of divestment from Israel.”

He went on to advise readers to throw the idea of divestment from Israel out of their minds.

President Bush and Senator Clinton are both members of the United Methodist Church, which will meet Friday to discuss divesting from Israel. The New England and Virginia branches of the United Methodist church have already passed resolution in favor of divesting from Israel.

Mr. Obama credited Mr. Wright for coining the phrase used in his book title, “The Audacity of Hope,” which has become a central campaign theme for the Illinois presidential candidate. But the pastor was not invited to stand by Mr. Obama last February when Mr. Obama announced his presidential candidacy. “When his enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli,” Mr. Wright told The New York Times, “with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.”

Mr. Wright said his meeting with Colonel Gadhafi was designed neither as an endorsement of the Libyan strongman or of Mr. Farrakhan. But shortly afterward, the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award went to the Nation of Islam leader, citing Mr. Farrakhan as a man that “truly epitomized greatness.”

Mr. Obama said yesterday that while the punitive approach to Iran has worked — although he said his Senate divestment from Iran bill has yet to pass – the Bush administration’s policy lacks “carrots” to coax the Mullahs to end their nuclear ambitions. The “key is to give the Iranians incentives to behave differently,” he said.

Last week, in a letter to America’s U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, Mr. Obama urged the Security Council to “clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks” against Israel, or “not speak at all.”

A former Israeli ambassador in Washington, Daniel Ayalon, attacked Mr. Obama’s record on Israel, writing in the Jerusalem Post he was “not entirely forthright with his thinking.”