Whatever

"If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this," said [Rep. Jim] Moran [D-Virginia], whose remarks were first reported by the Reston Connection newspaper. "The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should." --CNN.com

Maybe I'm actually some kind of bigot, but I don't see how this can be called anti-Semitic. Replace the words "Jewish community" with "oil lobby" or "Republican party" and see what you get. You could call in uninformed or oversimplified, and it's certainly an opinion rather than a fact. I can see people saying, hey that's not true and you should make some statement that retracts what you said. I can also see him saying, screw you, I think it's true and I'll stand by what I said. These things would be okay with me. With the proper discourse in the papers and other news, people could decide if they think he's the man they want representing them. But to ask him to resign for stating a political opinion, just because it offends someone, and for him to actually backpeddle... well, doesn't it seem to you that the "Jewish community" might have some kind of power then? These days it seems like there's Jewish, the religion, and Jewish, the political party. And I think making political comments about the power of political Jews cannot be called anti-Semitism. That be like if my boss said to me, "Alexia, we don't like you because you're unattractive," he'd be anti-Alexia. If he said, "Alexia, I question your judgement on this month's expenditures," I couldn't say he was anti-Alexia. Now, were he to say, "Alexia, I question your judgement on this month's expenditures because you're so unattractive," that's an anti-Alexia attitude. Get it?