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How the Irish can liberate us!

John F. Kennedy once used to talk about how much he wanted to solve the Palestinian refugee problem, and any number of presidents and cabinet members have stressed the importance of a political solution to the I-P conflict. But until yesterday, I’ve never heard a high ranking American politician say something that implied some genuine […]

John F. Kennedy once used to talk about how much he wanted to solve the Palestinian refugee problem, and any number of presidents and cabinet members have stressed the importance of a political solution to the I-P conflict. But until yesterday, I’ve never heard a high ranking American politician say something that implied some genuine emotional engagement with the Palestinian cause.

Yesterday that changed: Patrick Leahy, long serving Vermont Senator and chairman of the Judiciary committee, compared the plight of the Palestinians to that of his Irish ancestors in the 19th century. This is huge in American politics; everyone loves the Irish (or at least pretends to). The comparison is very apt: it is made by Ian Lustick in his monumental and scholarly “Unsettled States, Disputed Lands” and much less rigorously by journalists like yours truly.

How long before Jeffrey Goldberg and John Podhoretz claim that Leahy is a rabid anti-Semite?

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