This is huge. Beth Elohim is the biggest Reform temple in Brooklyn. I've seen Combatants for Peace at Beth Elohim, and I've heard the rabbi talk about Darfur. Well Rashid Khalidi is speaking there next month— "one of the world's leading scholars of the contemporary Middle East."
Obama did this. Gaza did this. Khalidi who believes that Palestinians live in a state of enslavement in the West Bank. Khalidi whose relatives fled scared across Gaza last month. Khalidi whom McCain tried to demonize in the last weeks of the campaign and whom Obama couldn't embrace. The American Jewish community is dividing. At long last. The Republicans will get the neocons and Netanyahu. The Democrats will keep the liberal Jews, including Michael Walzer. And J Street, which is co-sponsoring the Khalidi talk.
Will the Israel lobby break up in time to save the two-state solution? It doesn't matter. The only question, as Adam Horowitz said at Temple University the other night, is What are the principles of the solution? Are they about equality?
