Cries of antisemitism are becoming increasingly nonsensical

Our press is not being muzzled, of course, but the dictates of what constitutes politically correct conversation about the Middle East are being tightened to the point that American leaders of all stripes increasingly seem to be in a contest to see who can pander most to American Jews. On the right there is Dick Armey, who went on MSNBC last week to say that Israel should "grab the entire West Bank" (and then tried to rescind his own taped words, much as he had once denied calling Barney Frank "Barney Fag"). Among liberal Democrats there is John Edwards, the presidential candidate, who on "Meet the Press" last Sunday seemed so fearful of losing a single Jewish vote or contributor that he answered straightforward questions about the Middle East with self-contradictory gobbledygook.

I can be as paranoid as the next guy, so I wonder about "friends," especially politicians, who only tell me everything they think I want to hear. And while I am grateful that evangelical Christians are both ardent and sincere in their defense of Israel, I can't ignore their theological self-interest in a Second Coming, either. This is what Gershom Gorenberg of The Jerusalem Report calls "apocalyptic foreign policy," in which Israel is supported "in order to bring on doomsday and, by the way, the conversion of the Jews." Indeed, one of Israel's loudest current American supporters is the Southern Baptist Convention, which only three years ago provoked a rare, unified protest by rabbis of all Jewish denominations against its use of "deceptive" tactics in a mass conversion campaign timed for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

from http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/11/opinion/11RICH.html