Just to tie together my previous post about Howard Dean and Jewish Democrats with my posts on Iraq and Darfur, I'd like to note the conjunction of two news items this week:
(1) "Jews out front for Darfur rally" and (2) "Republican chairman booed at AJCommittee event"
We all know about the Darfur rally, but consider this from the article about Ken Mehlman's speech at the 100th anniversary celebration of the American Jewish Committee: Mehlman (the head of the Republican National Committee is a Jew, by the way) got a polite reception for his speech, but one AJC board member, Edith Everett, just couldn't take it and told Mehlman what was wrong, in her view, with the Bush administration's Iran policy:
The room burst into applause, however, when AJCommittee board member Edith Everett asked Mehlman to “take a message” to President Bush to stop linking Israel and Iran.So for anyone who's been wondering whether professional Jews are totally out of their minds, you no longer have to wonder. The man says that Iraq is "less of a challenge than when Saddam Hussein was in power," and he gets booed and hissed.
“It does not help Israel and it does not help American Jews to appear to be stimulators of any action against Iran,” Everett said.
She added that “it’s easy to understand why Iran is not worried about us” because Iraq is consuming so many U.S. resources.
Mehlman replied by acknowledging that Iraq was a “challenge,” but claimed it’s “less of a challenge than when Saddam Hussein was in power.”
The room filled with boos and hisses.
And, by the way, the administration isn't doing enough about Darfur.
No wonder Howard Dean isn't losing sleep over the possibility of Jewish party-switching.
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