From Marty's Mouth

Marty Peretz, that is, on the Van Jones fiasco:

...last but in this case least: Wouldn't you know it? Jones also has been bitten by the anti-Israel bug. In the old days, when the Russians grasped that Zionism was the one force that could compel the exodus of British power--they called it imperialism--from the Middle East, the communists were for the restoration of the Jewish nation to its territorial home. As soon as the British left, the communists wavered in their support of the return and then they stopped wavering. All the way down to today. Jones' vulgar hatred of Israel is, alas, also a hatred of Jews.

...The correspondent, writing from San Francisco, sets the context correctly: "Mr. Jones was forced to resign when it became clear that he was a complete crackpot who has for years and years said a lot of really crazy, stupid loonie-bin stuff. Very much like the kind of stuff, in fact, that Barack Obama's former pastor used to say each Sunday."

This raises an awkward issue. Part of the electoral enthusiasm for Obama came from just such people drawn to loonie-bin politics. That happens in every campaign. The difference is that, say, in Bill Clinton's race they were marginalized. And they certainly were kept our of office after the electoral victory, maybe even by Rahm Emanuel. And you didn't have to be from the far-far left to be shunted aside...With Jones, we were dealing with someone more like Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright. And an utterly ignorant Rashid Khalidi...