Remember how important Rabbi Lerner was to the last Democratic White House? He was a spiritual adviser to Hillary Clinton. Well now he's extending his hand to Obama. That means taking a slap at the left, too. From the New Jersey Jewish News:
The Newark-born founding editor of Tikkun magazine also urged fellow liberals to challenge “those on the Left who would totally demean Israel.”
Lerner said the Left’s penchant for harsh criticism of Israel is “a huge error.”
“It
is a huge error to make it seem as though the Israeli people are the
worst human rights violators on the planet,” said Lerner. “That
particularly is absurd coming from [critics in] the United States,
which has been involved in killing about 100 times as many people as
those who have been killed in the Israel-Palestine struggle.”
The answer to Lerner's critique is: no one said Israel is the worst human rights violator, but it's an important one Americans can do something about; two wrongs don't make a right; these human right abuses are being done in our name; and when the U.S. does this kind of thing, the left squawks too. Recall that Tikkun printed a defense of the Gaza slaughter a couple months back. I wonder if Rabbi Lerner isn't going wobbly on us.
