I didn’t go to the pro-Israel demonstration in DC today, but a few friends who did gave me reports. What stood out to me was that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz was roundly booed.
Some of this, clearly, was in response to recent administration policy generally. But apparently what really touched it off was his discussion of the creation of a Palestinian state as part of administration policy. Another boo line was “innocent Palestinians are suffering and dying as well. It is critical that we recognize and acknowledge that fact.”
For starters, this was certainly a situation Wolfowitz never thought he’d find himself in — jeered as pro-Palestinian at a pro-Israel rally.
I don’t have a brief for Wolfowitz. But the booing itself filled me with feelings of anger and shame. What he was saying was nothing less than reality. And the thought that someone as pro-Israel as Wolfowitz could get booed speaks to something sour and curdled and blinded in the crowd that booed him.
Getting cheers was Benjamin Netanyahu, a hustler and an opportunist of the most dangerous sort, who said “Yasser Arafat is nothing more than Osama bin Laden with good P.R.”
Righteousness can become intoxicating — this rally, apparently, becoming a case in point.
