Edward Alexander writes in the New York Post of "Leftist Jews' Hateful Obsession", which makes an excellent companion piece to Rachel Neuwirth's article published here two days ago. The pieces are complimentary, not redundant. An excerpt:

TOO many writers and pundits today are obsessed, almost pathologically, by the conviction that Israel is the most evil country that ever has existed, and that its removal from the family of nations is a precondition of world peace.

Such lethally utopian dreams are not strictly the playground of anti-Semites, but also the common coin of much liberal Jewish writing and speechifying about Israel. As Brit George Steiner put it, "Might the Christian West and Islam live more humanely, more at ease with themselves, if the Jewish problem were indeed 'resolved' (that is, endlosung or final solution)."

In his recent study, " 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the new Anti-Semitism," published by the American Jewish Committee (www.ajc.org), professor Alvin Rosenfeld demonstrates how licentious references to Israeli "apartheid," "racism," "colonialism" and "Nazism" have become "part of standard discourse among 'progressive' Jews."

Although much that Rosenfeld describes is familiar, his study has touched a raw nerve among its targets, especially following a Jan. 31 New York Times article about Rosenfeld's conclusions.

Hysterical denunciations of Rosenfeld quickly followed in major publications including the London Observer, the Jerusalem Post and the Forward.