Stop the Presses

Rosner is shocked, shocked that the Israelis for Obama video has been -- get this! -- edited in a way that is favorable to Obama! An outrage! Stop the presses! In Rosner's defense, it is certainly ridiculous how many eager Obama supporters forwarded this video to their Florida grandparents, not realizing that just because someone like Arnold Jacob Wolf is a rabbi, and says Obama is good for Israel, or Naomi Chazan is a former Knesset member and says Obama is good for Israel, this is not likely to persuade the readership of Commentary or the buyers of Brigitte Gabriel's book... for precisely the reasons Rosner suggests... and on a more basic level because, well, not all rabbis, and not all Israelis, and not all Jews, are the same! If anybody it is the forwarders, not the forwardees, who are being misled... by a debate that is based on false premises.

And who or what is responsible for the dumbing down - which is the real scandal - of the whole debate about Israel and the America-Israel relationship, that leads people to think in terms of simplistic platitudes like "good for Israel?" At bottom it is the staggering contempt that politicians from both sides of the aisle, and their journalistic enablers like Rosner (who is not only intelligent enough to know better, but does know better, and panders anyway) have for American Jews and their supposed fealty to Israel-right-or-wrong tribalism.