From the JTA: "Life story, Israel trips tie Sotomayor to Jews"
It doesn't hurt that Sotomayor, 54, is a poster child for strong Jewish-Hispanic relations. In 1986, when she was in private legal practice, she joined one of the first young leadership tours of Israel sponsored by Project Interchange, which is affiliated with the American Jewish Committee.
Sotomayor so enjoyed the country — its immigrant culture, its popular music influenced heavily by Jewish immigrants from Argentina and Brazil — that she made a return visit in 1996 when she was a federal judge, and recently joined a Project Interchange U.S.-Israel forum on immigration. In the process, she formed a lifelong friendship with Project Interchange founder Debbie Berger and her husband, Paul, who attended her swearing-in as a Manhattan appeals court judge in 1998.
"She enjoyed Israel not just from an intellectual perspective, she liked the music and the people," Paul Berger told JTA.
Richard Foltin, the legislative director for the AJC, said her background naturally played a role in how the Jewish community would welcome her.
The Kate Winslet/Ricky Gervais joke is here.
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Such an ODD headline for the content Phil.
Your point is what — that gentiles kowtow to Jews to advance their careers? No, you couldn't have meant that — critics of Israel never traffic in anti-Semitic tropes, a sthis site keeps telling me over and and over.
I fail to see the connection between the title of this post and its content. Does the fact that Judge Sotomayor visited Israel twice and enjoyed her stay disqualify her as a supreme court justice?
Corrupt social networking. This is old news.
Well, I think Phil is making a clever point of Academy gold with Supreme Court immortality that no one is really "getting" here. It corresponds with his theme of the rise of Jewish power in the US and the need to pay homage to Jewish touchpoints if you're an outsider (Sotomayor and Winslet) from the corridors of Jewish power of American politics and Hollywood. Jewish power is not to be denigrated, but it is to be acknowledged in the same way WASP power controlled America in the 1970s. Not to read too much into it, but what Phil has been saying all along is that the rise of Jewish power in America is not something to be ignored, it's to be acknowledged (not despised) and with a clear eye, to be critically assessed in how our foreign policy is conducted. Phil/Adam, if this is accurate, I would appreciate a thumbs-up.
That's exactly how I understood it. The Lobby imposes an informal vetting process when it can, and the federal judiciary has long been a focus of effort. Witness the outcomes of Israeli espionage cases, which I've been following for years and I can tell you that there is a hell of lot more going on than the couple stories you see in the MSM every once in a while. Ambitious people who want to advance in a 'vetted' occupation must play the game. It's not rocket science, and while Israel-firsters may have taken the game to a new level, they are hardly the first group to look out for their own interests by attempting to staff important positions with like-minded people. The WASP's did the same during their heyday. The difference is that the former are working on behalf of a foreign government, while the latter were working to ensure that America developed in a manner consistent with their own vision. Phil, it would be interesting to learn more about how pro-colonization vetting works in the Democratic Party. There was an article by some Californian politician/activist years ago (Tom ?) on how he compromised his integrity by supporting the 1980 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to facilitate his political advancement. I think the vetting process is why senior Democratic leadership hold radically different views on Israel than rank and file party members.
Why doesn't Phil tell us what he means instead of all the exegesis? Who is he, f**king Don Mclean? Colin's comment, "The Lobby imposes an informal vetting process when it can, and the federal judiciary has long been a focus of effort," is an example of, yes, the anti-Semtic b.s. that this site keeps claiming immunity from. Therre is this conspiratorial assumption that AJC and ADL and AIPAC and [insert Jewish organization here] are all partof a single Lobby intent on coercing and controlling all our branches of government. I happen to know Paul and Debbie Berger. They are peaceniks from wayback, have lived for long stretches in Amman, and their Project Interchange is an effort to INCREASE dialogue among Jews, Israelis, Palestinians and Muslims.
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