Quote For The Day

"Here we have a major split between the U.S. and Israel, with key American military and political leaders explaining ... that Israeli actions are directly harming U.S. interests and jeopardizing American lives.  And what is the reflexive, unambiguous response of virtually every American Israel-centric neocon?  To side with Israel over the U.S.  AIPAC, the ADL, Elliott Abrams, AIPAC-loyal Democrats in the House, Marty Peretz, Commentary, etc. etc. all quickly castigated the U.S. Government and defended Israel, notwithstanding the dangers to Americans posed by Israeli conduct and the massive price paid by the U.S. in so many ways for this relationship (by contrast, J Street called the administration's anger towards Israel both "understandable and appropriate"). 

There's nothing wrong with taking Israel's side per se -- one is and should be free to criticize one's own government in its foreign policy -- but incidents like this make it increasingly futile to try to suppress what is glaringly visible:  that (as is true for numerous groups in the U.S.) a significant segment of the neoconservative Right (which includes some evangelical Christians and some American Jews) are guided in their political advocacy by their emotional, religious, and cultural attachment to another country, and want U.S. policy shaped to advance that devotion.

On a related note:  there has been a long-standing effort to equate those who make this observation with anti-Israel hatred or even anti-Semitism.  Two widely-cited reports did exactly that with regard to me recently:  this pseudo-scholarly report from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and this post on the blog of the American Jewish Committee, both of which hurl all sorts of ugly though trite accusations at me for daring to suggest that some American Jews are guided in their political advocacy by allegiance to Israel.  I'll just note that the author of both "reports" is someone named Adam Levick, who -- with extreme, unintended irony -- lists this as his biography on his Twitter account:

I'm an American who just made Aliyah (moved to Israel), and love America and my new country,"

- Glenn Greenwald.