Is editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998, David Remnick, Jewish? Yes he is a Jew who, per Wikipedia, was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, the son of a dentist and an art teacher and raised in Hillsdale, New Jersey, in a secular Jewish home with, as he has said, "a lot of books around."In a Comment called, "Special Relationships" Remnick reviews Barack Obama's extensive connections to Jewish friends and the Jewish political establishment in America and his substantial commitment to the state of Israel.
Remnick has little patience for the current right-leaning Netanyahu government in Israel and lays at his doorstep the blame for any perception of present coolness between the US and Israel.
The essay is a welcome reiteration of Obama's friendship towards the Jewish community and Israel. From what we know, Remnick does not strike us as any expert in middle eastern affairs nor as any particularly close confidant to Obama. So what one New Jersey born Jew says remains to us evocative, perhaps a tad reflective of wishful thinking, not in any way prescriptive or even officially descriptive of any aspect of current White House policies.
Great, indeed, must have been a collective shudder of the Jews after this Administration's unprecedented public scolding of an Israeli Government's plans to build a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem (its very name synonymous with Zion, btw), if Remnick had to resort to this same old "Some of my best friends are Jews" defense line.
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