Where the Left and Right Always Seem to Agree

Joseph Epstein's excellent essay in The Wall Street Journal about I.J. Singer's The Brothers Ashkenazi (them that is in the know -- and that includes most of us Forward veterans -- know that I.J. was a better writer than his brother I.B.) contains this penetrating observation: "Politics taught I.J. the bitter lesson that, however much the extreme left and the extreme right might disagree, the one common ground upon which they met comfortably was anti-Semitism."  This is an evergreen phenomenon, unfortunately. We see the brown-red coalition aligned against Israel in Europe, of course, and, in less dramatic, but still disturbing fashion, we The American Conservative, Pat Buchanan's paleo-con magazine, featuring the writings of doctrinaire leftists on Buchanan's least-favorite country, the one he recently compared to Nazi Germany. The Buchananites have even recruited Jews to do their Israel-bashing for them.  This particular development falls in the category of shocking yet not exactly surprising.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/02/where-the-left-and-right-always-seem-to-agree/9557/