If Al Franken speaks for American liberals, then American liberalism died with Abbie Hoffman. What higher cause can American liberals serve than in trying to save countless lives and much property by opposing unnecessary wars? And at the cost of the very social institutions that liberals have historically championed: civil liberties, social security, and the bell-curved possibilities of class mobility? Franken straddled the fence when American liberalism was most direly needed to avert a widening economic gap, to demonstrate the power of American civil liberties, and to affirm the ideals of democracy through opposition to a senseless war whose costs will by far exceed a degraded American credibility.

In his book titled Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Al Franken wrote tongue-in-cheek “if there’s one thing I associate with Liberalism, it’s anti-Semitism” 1. Franken, like his conservative counterparts, was implicating the Egyptian song “I Hate Israel” with anti-Semitism. Like Franken’s seriously flawed projection of anti-Semitism on that popular Egyptian song, it appears, the substance of Franken’s liberalism is not marketed by the values it espouses but by how it is stylistically differentiated from conservative spin, and thus Franken’s book on conservatives’ lies bellies irony.

Albert Einstein’s quite noteworthy aversion to war is reflected in the quotable principle that “it is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs.” While he is no Einstein, Franken should not be celebrated as a liberal either. Failing to uphold his convictions when tested, Franken’s book on conservative lies is at best an indulgence in immodest rhetorics. At worst, Franken’s book is a collection of gossip columns, caricatures, and empty slogans, and no slogans are more at odds with liberal values than those that Franken relates to Israel.

In other words, as Israel executes its plan of quartering the Palestinian’s quite meager third, which eliminates even addressing the human rights of Palestinian refugees, Franken broadly categorizes general Arab feelings about Israel and about its policies as anti-Semitic.

Ironically, the discussion of Israel has evolved since Abbie Hoffman marched against the Vietnam War from an ‘Israel can do no wrong’ perspective to a qualified introspection. A random selection of Internet postings related to Israel produced a Rabbi Janet Marder who stated “while I do believe that anyone who denies Israel’s right to exist is an Anti-Semite, it’s neither helpful nor true to brand as an Anti-Semite anyone who criticizes Israel, supports the idea of a Palestinian state, or questions the current administration’s blanket support of the Israeli government.”2

Rabbi Marder, however, pulls no punches in describing criticism of Israel’s role in the US invasion of Iraq as anti-Semitism. It appears that only a Zionist costume, tailored to fit Israel’s tactics along its strategic designs, patterns acceptable criticism of Israel. It therefore shouldn’t be surprising that the knee-jerk tendency to clothe critics of Israel with a latent desire to destroy the Jewish state will continue to mutate and stifle most reasoned analyses of the subject. Israel has historically followed a strategy of territorial expansions and tactical consolidations that has allowed concessions at a net territorial gain, giving Israel the appearance of compromise in the face of intransigence, and Israel’s present strategy explicitly affirms that trend. Thus substantive criticism of Israel’s policies is now, as has been, equated with extremism in the face of Israel’s fashionably manufactured moderation.

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