the fact that a university employee allegedly used the phrase "desecrating Allah" in a verbal conversation does not mean that "desecrating Allah" was what the SFSU students were charged with. They simply were not, in the world of reality, charged with that non-existent offense. I know you are bright enough to grasp the difference between a verbal remark in an interview and an actual "charge" that is typed on paper and actually furnishes the basis of potential disciplinary action. The fact is, you saw that remark quoted in some article, and then made up a false story that students were "charged with desecrating Allah." Shame on you.

Also, why did you not mention that the College Republicans were given due process by the university student conduct review, and, as a result of that due process, were exonerated and given no punishment? If this (non)story is really the best you can do as an illustration of why Americans should be terrified of American Muslims, I actually feel pretty reassured that all is well.

You know, Golden Boy, maybe it's all in how you spin it. To you, innocent students were dragged through the terrible inconvenience of a university student conduct proceeding (in which they were, um, exonerated) in order to appease the angry Muslim mob that was going to... to... well, whatever it was going to do. (Boy, those post-exoneration riots were something, huh?)

But as I see it, this affair was a ringing affirmation that, even in America's most left-wing metropolis, awash in political correctness and crawling with terror symps and raghead-lovers, an odious gang of right-wing nerd-thugs can stomp on Allah's very name in the public square, and their right to do so will be upheld. Forgive me if the "chilling effect" doesn't seem as scary-cold as you would like it to be...

I was in London last month, and was amazed to discover that when British soldiers die in Iraq, the London newspapers put their pictures on the front page. In color. Above the fold. With a story about who they were. Can you imagine?

We Americans "support the troops," though. We really do.

FYI, Egypt invaded Israel in 1973.

I read the article you linked to regarding "nasty" accusations of anti-Semitism. Do you agree with Jim Moran that the U.S. invasion of Iraq would not have occurred, but for American Jews who wanted America to attack Iraq on behalf of Israel?

To put it another way, do you believe that the U.S. is in Iraq because a small number of American Jews have taken control of the U.S. government and are traitorously directing its foreign policy and military operations adversely to America's interests on hehalf of a foreign country? Do you believe that George Bush and Dick Cheney are mere puppets of this small but all-powerful group of Jewish traitors?

It seems incontrovertible that Jim Moran believes the above propositions, based on the quotations in the article. If you share those beliefs, I won't call you anti-Semitic, but I would like to know if that is indeed what you think.

CarolynC, it may be that Moran's comments were taken out of context in the article Glenn linked to, although I personally did not find Rabbi Lerner's parsing to be persuasive. It sounds to me like Moran meant exactly what he appeared to mean. But I don't care what Moran thinks anyway. I do care what Glenn thinks, and he linked to that article as an example of "nasty" accusations of anti-Semitism. So I'd still like to get his answer (if he reads this, and if he has time & inclination to respond) to this question:

Do you agree with [those who believe] that the U.S. invasion of Iraq would not have occurred, but for American Jews who wanted America to attack Iraq on behalf of Israel?

Iokannan, your distinction re the 1973 war is a fair one, I guess. How about, Eqypt launched a full-scale conventional military attack against Israel in 1973, but failed to successfully invade Israel due to the latter's good fortune in having a sizable buffer zone.

GG: "It's possible to be wrong without being a bigot, even where Israel and Jews are concerned."

That is absolutely true (and thank you for responding to my question). I am certain that in all my internet discussions of Israel & Jew-related topics, including some vehement disagreements, I've never accused anyone of anti-semitism. Your above-quoted statement goes to why it is a pointless inquiry in any event. In my travels through the left blogosphere, I have very rarely encountered anything I would consider anti-semitism. I've enountered many statements about Israel and/or its partisans that I regarded as inaccurate, unfair, misinformed, fanciful, gratuitously harsh, or downright bizarre. But I don't assume that such remarks are the product of a generalized animus against Jews. Nor do I even care, for the most part.

For a few of us, unfortunately, anti-semitism has come to mean anything anyone says that pisses off a Jew. That is quite tiresome to me. But so is all the whining and bitching by Israel's critics about how the mean ol' Jews keep calling them names. As Digby would say, boo fucking hoo.

My wife's late grandfather, a Jewish man, served in combat in the U.S. Army in World War II. If he had been killed, and if some sub-moronic ghoul was poring over the names of the dead in a depraved search for "evidence" to support his or her clownishly bigoted theories, my grandfather-in-law's surname would not have provided any clue to his ethnicity. Just saying.