The battle for Jewish hearts and minds in the presidential race escalated this week, as the Republican Jewish Coalition conducted what Democrats condemned as a "push poll.''

One of the calls happened to go to a reporter for The New Republic named Jonathan Cohn, who got out a pen and paper. Would it affect your opinion of Democrat Barack Obama if you knew he has a relationship with Palestinian leaders? If you knew that a Hamas leader endorsed him? And so on.

The questions were misleading, and apparently, none of them probed the Illinois senator's pro-Israel voting record. Just another day in a campaign obsessed with influencing Jewish voters -- regardless of the facts.

''We've never experienced anything like this in the competition for Jewish voters,'' said Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. ``I've never seen this kind of interest, intensity and nastiness.''

Let's face it. The reason is that we've never had a young, black presidential nominee who grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, and whose ancestors on his father's side were Muslims in Africa.

So the battle lines are drawn. The GOP coalition also ran newspaper ads this week quoting Pat Buchanan, a Republican viewed with suspicion in the Jewish community, praising Obama. (The ads are a legitimate tit-for-tat to the false claim made by Democrats that McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, was a Buchanan supporter.)

The battle is waged in synagogues, where members of Congress and Middle East experts are shuttled to tout their candidates' pro-Israel credentials.

And, of course, the battle rages over the Internet, from the ''talking points'' that can be downloaded at the pro-Obama website, www.jewsvote.org, to the outlandish e-mails that claim Obama is secretly an Islamic terrorist.

Most of the Muslim-peddling is trafficked in cyberspace, but it is also perpetuated by well-known authority figures.

Like when Sen. Joe Lieberman spoke at Temple Solel in Hollywood last month on behalf of Republican John McCain and didn't say a word when someone in the audience derisively called out ''Barack Hussein Obama.'' (McCain himself has said it's inappropriate to disparagingly wield Obama's middle name from his African grandfather.)

Or like when ex-state legislator Dennis Baxley, who heads the Christian Coalition of Florida, told me recently: ''He's pretty scary to us. I think his Muslim roots and training -- while they try to minimize it -- it's there.'' (Baxley said he meant the four years Obama spent as a child in Indonesia, a predominantly Muslim country. He didn't dispute that Obama is Christian.)

Republican state Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, who is leading McCain's Jewish outreach in Florida, agreed that Obama's background is ''an issue of concern,'' though she sensibly added that a more pressing question is his lack of foreign policy experience. She also dismissed the idea that the Republican Jewish Coalition's survey was a ''push poll'' designed to smear Obama.

''All candidates do it. They find out what are the hot buttons, what are the most important issues to you,'' she said. ``Negative works. It's bothersome to most people. It's bothersome to me, but it works.''

But at what cost? House Democratic leader Dan Gelber, who frequently speaks to Jewish groups, offered a sensible gut check.

'The question that needs to be asked is, `Are you trying to help Israel, or are you trying to help your party?' '' Gelber asked. ``Are you just trying to throw bombs to get votes?''

Beth Reinhard is the political writer for The Miami Herald.

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