This story in the Forward today reminds me of something my older son wrote to us in a letter from Jewish summer camp when he was 14.

He told us the kids were terrific but that some of them were so paranoid about Israel that he thought they were "crazy." After all, these were all pretty well-off Jewish kids at a beautiful spot in Massachusetts and yet they acted like they were under assault by the world . Some of them were even Republicans (because of Israel).

"Dad, he wrote, there is nothing worse than fascist children."

Naturally, I saved that letter.

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The Washington Post reports today that Steve Rosen, indicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 for passing US secrets to Israel (the charges were ultimately dropped) is suing AIPAC.

They fired me after they heard the FBI threatening that their investigation could be broadened at AIPAC," Rosen maintained in a telephone interview.

I was sacrificed like Jonah to save the ship and they were going to make things right" later on, he said.

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The Israelis will never tire of their obsession with Judge Richard Goldstone. Because he had the temerity to write a United Nations report calling Israel's actions in Gaza "war crimes," they are utterly unhinged by the man. And so are their media messengers.

The obsession is personal because they have no way to knock down the facts about the Gaza war (1400 Palestinians killed, including 320 kids) while 13 Israelis were killed, four by friendly fire. Not only that, the Israelis leveled Gaza and have now kept it under blockade for a year and a half.

In other words, the Israeli government cannot win any argument about the Gaza war if they deal with the facts.

So they have decided to focus on Judge Goldstone's record as a South African judge during the apartheid regime. Here is the Israeli argument in a nutshell. It is from the Yedioth Achronoth "expose" on Goldstone that appeared on Thursday.

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The crazy right's obsession with the President's place of birth won't go away. Ever.

And I'll tell you why. It is also why the obsession with invalidating Obama's Presidency is very different from the equally intense lunacy during the Clinton years.

It is because the birthers want the first African-American's name erased from the list of Presidents. Even an impeached President or an assassinated President or a 30 day President remains on the books.

Harrison who served 30 days is #9. Garfield, shot after 120 days, is #20. The resigned Nixon is #37.

So the only way to make the fact that we elected a black President go away is to prove he was ineligible in the first place. In their fevered hopes, he is then removed from office, a white guy takes over, and Barack Obama is either not listed as President at all or is listed with an asterisk.

That is what the birther movement is all about. These people simply cannot live with the fact that America elected an African-American and they know that not even the very worst thing that could happen to him will not change that fact.

So...they come up with the one sure way to maintain their fantasy. They will never quit because if America actually elected a black President, God only knows what is next.

But America did elect Obama and, no matter what they do, he is up there with Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Reagan and the rest. And that has literally driven them crazy.

Someone needs to do a psychological study of the Israeli and Jewish right.

They are terrified by one man, the great human rights advocate, Justice Richard Goldstone, because he wrote a report revealing what everyone knew anyway -- that the Israelis committed war crimes in Gaza.

The report came out months ago and, to be honest, it did not change much of anything. The Israelis are still occupying the West Bank and still strangling Gaza.

And yet the right is obsessed with Goldstone. In his home country of South Africa the rabbis and the rightists even got together to try to ban Goldstone from his grandson's Bar Mitzvah.

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The shift in Jewish opinion on Israel has finally happened. As predicted (by me, among others) all it took was a Democratic President who made clear that he is going to push Israel hard to make peace precisely because he is pro-Israel.

And American Jews, given the choice between the President they voted for 80-20% and a self-appointed Jewish "leadership" are backing their President. It doesn't hurt that younger Jews (like other young Americans) just don't buy into the ethnic solidarity line. They think for themselves and they see that the Jewish "leadership" is recommending policies that are harmful to America and to Israel.

It also doesn't hurt that J Street came along when it did. Who would have thought that Jeremy Ben Ami could take on AIPAC and win? But he has with Barack Obama leading the way. (Congress will lag behind until it grasps what has happened).

Of course, this wouldn't be happening but for the disastrous Gaza war, the endless occupation, and the takeover of Israel's government by the religious right.

The Jewish "leadership" also deserves blame, or credit, for this shift.

It is so defensive, so quick to label anyone it does not like an "anti-Semite," it is so ethnically chauvinist that it essentially no longer has a constituency.

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Jeff Goldberg of the Atlantic is a little young for the "oy, the goyim are coming to kill us" disease. Marty Peretz didn't contract the disease until his late 50's while Ed Koch and Alan Dershowitz didn't become afflicted until fairly recently.

None of those guys would have dreamed of enlisting in the IDF in their early twenties. Koch was in the American army and came home to reform the Manhattan Democratic party. Peretz was anti-Vietnam war organizer at Brandeis and then Harvard. Dershowitz was hard at work becoming an expert on the US Constitution. In other words, they were fairly typical Jewish liberals who became reactionary and parochial as they aged.

But Goldberg is another breed of cat. Goldberg emigrated from the United States to Israel in his early 20's, and joined the Israeli army. There he served as a prison guard, inflicting punishment on, in Goldberg's words, "so-called [Palestinian] administrative detainees. They had been put in jail without charge and without trial, by military order, for a six month term, renewable at the discretion of a military judge, who did what the Shabak [Shin Bet security service] told him to do."

Unlike other right-wing defenders of the occupation, Jeff Goldberg didn't just talk the talk. Goldberg walked the walk.

He enforced the occupation which he now defends in his writings.

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I don't watch Bill Maher so I didn't see this clip until Andrew Sullivan cited it in a positive way.

I like Sullivan so I checked it out.

And, frankly, it's appalling. In the excerpt Maher says that all religions have their fanatics, but, when it comes to Muslims, they are all fanatics. ("But before I conclude, it should in fairness be noted that in speaking of Muslims, we realize that of course the vast majority are law-abiding, loving people, who just want to be left alone to subjugate their women in peace.")

This is nothing new for Maher, a guy who openly adores Binyamin Netanyahu and has featured Brigitte Gabriel.

In his film Religulous, Jews and Catholics (Maher is half and half) came out fine. Fundamentalist Protestants were made to look like morons and Muslims came off as crazy people.

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Add Brad Sherman (D-CA) to the list of those supposedly liberal Democrats who, when it comes to Israel, are to the right of Rush Limbaugh and Bibi Netanyahu.

Chuck Schumer, Anthony Weiner, and Jerry Nadler are old news. They wear their hypocrisy on human rights issues as badges of pride.

I haven't paid much attention to Brad Sherman because he is not especially prominent. But he is a Democrat and a self-styled populist. He's a quieter Alan Grayson. Populist, seemingly a liberal good guy but a down-the-line supporter of everything Israel does (like the Gaza invasion and blockade).

And he assumes (probably correctly) that his constituents won't find out that he believes that one must suspend progressive and human rights standards when it comes to Israel.

On May 6, in Room 2261 Rayburn House Office Building at 2 PM, Sherman will host a session on the subject: "If terrorists Are Glorified, How Can There Be Peace?"

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The neocons AIPAC, its think-tank (the Washington Institute of Near East Policy), and the rest of the usual Israel-can-do-no-wrong crowd is now harping on the question of dual loyalty. Are American Jews being accused of being more loyal to Israel than America?

The "dual loyalty card" is suddenly being played by neocons to argue that those who oppose the lobby are accusing Jews of dual loyalty. Lately they have seized on a remark by some anonymous White House aide who said that Obama aide, Dennis Ross, "seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu's coalition politics than to U.S. interests."

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I don't know what we would do without Al Jazeera. Like the Israeli media, it goes where the American media fears to tred.

Check this out.

The occupied areas of Israel (including Arab East Jerusalem) have a segregated road system.

Beautiful new roads to get Jewish settlers to work and back with ease.

And roads running just parallel to them for Arabs, to make getting to work and back (or to the doctor, school, or shopping) a miserable experience.

Even 1950's Alabama never had anything like this, not even close.

This is far from the worst aspect of the occupation. By Israeli-Palestinian standards, it's a minor inconvenience. But imagine having to live this way.

Here is why Congress does not protest this, or the infinitely more onerous aspects of the occupation.

My nephew. Jeremy Gruenbaum, wrote this in response to an excellent piece by Noah Millman in The American Scene, Check it out. I'd like to think Jeremy is wrong about my generation but, in the 24years I've known him, he has been invariably right about pretty much everything.

After reading your post "Who closed the conservative mind?" I felt compelled to write. To introduce myself, I'm 24, Boston born and raised, a Kennedy/Obama Democrat, and Jewish to boot. I've probably read your writing in the past, but I'm not familiar with your work.

That post is the best distillation I've found of what led to the current state of the conservative movement. I think people like me who follow the movement from the left and know the history have our basic understanding of what happened, but the key insights about the movement come from people who identify with conservative philosophy as opposed to the conservative movement.

Clearly the separate explanations you posit (blame the south/money/frum memo/iraq war/times) are all part of a comprehensive explanation set out in the post, and you're right that the times are the key element. It's something I've thought about a lot.

I was a month away from my 16th birthday on 9/11, so my life as a political junkie basically began when I heard about Monica Lewinsky in middle school. Until 2006, I'd never cheered my party on as it won an election, and by then, it felt too late. Out of that experience, I came to understand that modern America is defined by the bitterly divided Baby Boomer generation, my parents' generation, and that division has cost America dearly since they were born.

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The President's speech at the memorial service in West Virginia reminded me (yet again) why I love this guy.

It wasn't just that his speech was pitch perfect. He understands, as few Presidents seem to, that the sheer majesty of the office can be used to not only to his benefit -- but to the benefit of Americans, of all kinds, who are in pain.

He understands what it means for him, the President, to read out the name of each miner, to call a family directly without being announced by a White House operator, to invoke local customs and common faith, and to describe the lives of ordinary people without pretending that he is one himself. And above all he knows how to invoke our common identity as Americans.

The fact is that Barack Obama himself has a bearing that we haven't seen in the White House since JFK and FDR. (One does not have to be born rich to have it. I've met kids from the hood and Palestinian refugee camps who have it). In West Virginia, he demonstrates how he can use it to maximum effect.

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In Sunday's Times Elliot Spitzer offers a succinct guide to whether or not your representative is any good.

Toughness is not the issue. It's easy to be tough if the selection of one's target is driven by politics. The real test is, do you take on the battles that have been unpopular and perhaps seem impossible to win but are important to take on?

Think of that when you praise your favorite liberal for being "great" on equal opportunity, climate change, choice, marriage equality, the banks, the economy or whatever. And then ask, "isn't that that an easy call for someone from the West Side of Manhattan, Cambridge, West LA, South Florida, etc?" I

And then check the names of those Representatives and Senators who yielded to AIPAC and signed their letter earlier this month designed to put them on record behind Netanyahu, not Obama and which states, flatout, that there must never be any "space" between Israel's positions and America's. Here is the AIPAC House text. Here is the AIPAC Senate text.

File the names of those NOT on these last in your "Profiles In Courage" folder. As for the ones on the list, some are pretty good but "tough," I don't think so.

A half a dozen of the progressives listed (maybe as many as 10) actually believe the balderdash in these letters (like Henry Waxman). The rest won't say no to AIPAC. As for the Republicans, they do believe this stuff. Like Schumer (see my post below this one), God tells them to sign these letters. What choice do they have?

On Friday, I posted about Chuck Schumer's warnings to the President not to dare challenge Binyamin Netanyahu's settlement policy.

Pretty ugly stuff and, happily, the White House slapped him down.

In fact, Schumer is no great Zionist. For him, it's just politics.

At least, I always thought so.

But now this from New York magazine. Here is Schumer explaining that he defends Israel because Hashem (Orthodox for God) tells him to.

You know, my name .... comes from the word shomer, guardian, watcher. My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States senate, is to be a shomer -- to be a or the shomer Yisrael. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body ...

Rick Santorum could not sound nuttier.

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