A challenge to Hendrik Hertzberg. This morning in the New Yorker he writes that Obama has been held hostage by “the political salience, actual and perceived, of certain Jewish and evangelical constituencies.” Well, here is a congressional letter of a month back to UN Ambassador Susan Rice, calling on the United States to “introduce a resolution expunging the Goldstone Report from the official record of the United Nations.” And who is signing this defamation of human rights and international law? 9 of the 15 signers are Jewish– Weiner, Berman, Israel, Engel, Berkley, Schakowsky, Schiff, Nadler, Deutch. Several are very “progressive” ones at that. Yes there are conservative Republicans like Dan Burton, but if there is a problem, and we all know there is, shouldn’t the New Yorker be taking on the intolerance in its own community? Don’t east coast liberals have more influence over their own community than over that perennial bugaboo– the community of evangelicals?
(Note that in the accompanying letter, liberal Weiner brags on debating Brian Baird at the New School– a debate we set up, in which Weiner said there’s no such thing as the occupied territories.)
