I don't think the headline has too much to do with this guy's whining. Anti semitism has been around for a long time(the mushrooms would be huge!) and if he is looking to make a political statement about America, this is a pretty lame attempt. I don't know of any true American that doesn't feel or hold more than one nation's loyality(ours) that needs to or should accept any foreign country, without reserve, as "just like it". Israel was founded as a religious state. The USA wasn't. Historically, we have believed our Founding Fathers saw good reason to establish this country's government as they did. They addressed the issue of religion in their own writings and in our Constitution. We have survived over 200 years guided by their wisdom. Israel chose a different path. Good for them. They are free to live as they please. When we think it is in our interest to align with them, so be it. When it is not, it's not. We are not Siamese twins. Perhaps Israel and those in this country who feel a dual loyalty should come to understand this.

First of all, raising AT LEAST an eyebrow at the behavior of some Israelis toward the Palestinians is NOT de facto anti-semitic. For a Jew such as myself, it's downright embarrassing -- often -- to see what Begin, Sharon, Netanyahu, et al think and have thought is proper behavior.

To equate Jews with Zionists is in and of itself a racial -- and incorrect -- generalization. Many Jews are not Zionists -- including the very religious who know from the Talmud that the state of Eretz Yisroel can NOT be established until AFTER the messiah has come, and while neither the NY Times nor the Washington Times are very fond of news that doesn't fit their world view, I haven't seen either of them mention that such an event has either happened or is reputed to have happened.

Second -- the biggest supporters of the State of Israel in America are and have been the Southern Christians -- Baptists, Evangelists, etc. That's why Reagan's people laughed at having gotten Jewish groups to support his policies (which they didn't particularly like) IN EXCHANGE for continued solid support for Israel. They laughed because the Jews didn't seem to realize that the Christians still -- as they had for the past 1000 years -- staked their souls on controlling "The Holy Land."

So when the party of Nixon ("Name sounds like a Jew? Is he a Jew?") Pat Buchanan, Jim Baker ("Fuck the Jews -- they don't vote for us anyway" -- a nasty comment that caused William Safire to turn to Ross Perot in 1992), Joe McCarthy and the rest try to point a finger at Democrats who are being critical of the tactics used by the Israeli government, try to paint them as anti-semites, it's Daffy Duck Time in Dada Land.

The entire exercise of trying to present either one of our two major groups of snout-in-the-trough hypocrites as in some way morally superior to the other (and I don't care which), is meaningless.

But to suggest that if someone says they think Bush, Perle, Cheney, whomever this week's conspiracy points at, is in Iraq in part because of THEIR protective attitude toward Israel and that to say so is actually an attack on Israel and therefore an attack on Jews ...I think it might be overreaching a tiny bit, eh wot?