Today cable news shows trotted out two black commentators, Jonathan Capeheart of the Washington Post and–I’m going to get this wrong–but someone I believe is named Maria Wall of the Washington Times, to say in so many words that Rev. Jeremiah Wright is an extremist who is out of touch with the mainstream black church. A black anchor whose name I missed echoed the theme. The two pundits invoked their own experience as black Americans. Who am I to question them? They are, to use Michelle Obama’s word from her 1985 thesis, assimilationist. They feel safe in mainstream America. (In his first book, Obama himself describes such types as Uncle Toms. I’m sure he doesn’t feel this way today.)
I draw one lesson from this. There are countless signs that young Jews, who are intermarrying at the rate of 62 percent, who don’t have Holocaust memories, who feel safe in America, are moving away from blind support for Israel. Will non-Zionist Jews be given a platform in the media to assail the Israel lobby as extremist and dangerous to America’s place in the world? When do we get to say that the Zionists’ religious visions of Greater Israel entail policies of ethnic cleansing and an ideology of Jewish supremacy?
