Daniel Schorr is a commentator on NPR's Saturday morning radio show. He has esteem in the liberal community. Per his autobiography, his mother was devoted to the Zionist cause, and that familial bias shows through in his work. This morning, Scott Simon asked him about the Harman case and Schorr began by saying that Harman is a close friend of his, before getting the case wrong in a couple particulars. It didn't happen as Harman was trying to get the chairmanship of House Intelligence; it was fully a year earlier, as she was battling to keep her status as "ranking member" of the committee. It didn't involve an "investigation" of Israeli lobbyists, as Schorr said; the lobbyists had been indicted long before. Schorr concluded that the matter is "something of a brouhaha." Brouhaha, now being replaced by kerfuffle in journalistic lingo, means People getting into a tizzy about something silly.
This takes me back to Jewish identity. Harman is a liberal hawk, virtually a neocon on Middle East matters. She pushed the disastrous Iraq war. Schorr is a liberal, and I'm sure hawkish. What worldview do these two people share? How much does Israel figure in it? What is its religious basis? And how important is antisemitism to them? What political crimes does this worldview overlook? And what should young liberals make of these values?
P.S. Both Scott Simon and Chris Matthews have called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, "the American Israel Political Action Committee." But AIPAC is not a PAC. It is a devoted lobbying group, but it doesn't collect money to give to candidates. It takes stands on issues, and its members can do as they please.
