The same logic should be used about people who aren't Zionist patriots. Zionism isn't Judaism. And because there are anti-Semites who hate Israel doesn't mean all critics of Israel are bigots.

But you are revealing a classic bigotry mind-set in your capacity to generalize. Take a different approach.

I don't believe in ethnic litmus tests, Obama also needs an Arab specialist on his Middle East team, and especially the team handling Israel-Palestine. As David Aaron Miller noted in A Much Too Promised Land, there were no Arabs on Clinton's team, and virtually everyone was Jewish. At times, he wrote, they acted as "Israel's lawyer."

I know an Arab doesn't represent "the Arab view" and a Jew doesn't represent "the Jewish view," because there is no one "view" for either. But we need an Arabic speaker who is a realist, who can articulate Arab views inside the team, while being fully committed to the Obama team's initiatives. Shibley Telhami, maybe?

(Yes, observant Jews proselytize to non-observant Jews, but that's different, and a good many of those proselytizers aren't even Zionists.)

I know I'm reading your comment literally, and that's perhaps not how it was meant. But it still gives the sense of an encroaching menace, and that has unfortunate historical overtones.

Ultimately, I think one can critique Israeli policy and ideology by sticking to basic issues of human rights, civil liberties, and democratic values, and leave religion out of the discussion. It muddies the waters. And with Israel-Palestine they're muddy enough already.

FlyOnTheWall asks "Since when is mopping floors a stereotype associated with Arabs?" Answer: in Israel, from the founding of the state until the mid-'90s -- that's when. Arab Israelis were often reduced to performing menial jobs in the Jewish state, and after 1967, residents of Gaza and the West Bank did jobs in Israel that Jewish Israelis didn't want. For Emanuel the elder's generation, Arabs were the inferior laborers. (After Oslo, which ironically tightened restrictions on movement in the territories, that job's been taken over by Asian migrant workers.)

Unfortunately bigoted views of Arabs are not uncommon in Jewish Israeli society -- and it's not very hidden, which is likely why Benjamin Emanuel believed he could say such a thing and it wouldn't cause a fuss.

I suspect people who believe B. Emanuel's comment is void of racism also believe there is no occupation, that Palestinians are not a people, and other fun stuff.

MJ -- yes, it's a good thing the apology came. But the fact that there was over a week of silence since this story broke is disappointing. Imagine substituting "Mexicans" for Arabs in the quote: there would have been a repudiation within a day, I bet. Why did it take an ADC letter?

It's true that Rahm isn't responsible for his dad's statements, but as a public official he is responsible for distancing himself from outrageous statements from a close family member (or allying himself with the statements, if he chooses.)