Ilene Cohen writes (and I stuck in one parenthetical): Check out today’s NY Times piece about “wary” American Jews– headlined, “Jews in US are wary in happiness for Egypt”. The article itself does not make the case for either the headline or the framing of the first paragraph.
Across the political spectrum, American Jewish leaders say that when they consider the future in Egypt and what it means for Israel, it is as if they are standing on a shaky tightrope stretched between poles of hope and dread.
What is that political spectrum? It’s tiresome, isn’t it, how they talk to a few people and don’t come up with much to support the premise (David Harris in this case) or only right wingers. It’s like the NY Times owes it to Israel to print this stuff, which then feeds the Israeli anti-Obama machine—which had been going crazy but is now pulling back a bit (for example, Shimon Peres) because it doesn’t look so nice to support a dictator who’s already been ousted. But it’s a way of continuing to try to sell the story that “we” are essentially torn, and with Little Israel. [The non-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace is not included.] We’ll just have to see what the Egyptians come up with, but the idea that we should have supported suppressing the revolt against Mubarak the dictator (and how would we have done that anyway?) is just crazy.
