- Paul Wolfowitz - I can't really argue with this choice.
- Abraham Foxman - The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, and the ADL, has gotten under my skin frequently over the years for seeing anti-semitism behind every tree. Yes, Abe, anti-semitism still exists, but it is not the pervasive force or sentiment of days of yore (of course, it is a renewed problem in Europe). If you want to know what I am complaining about, read Tim Cavanaugh's excellent expose on the anti-defamation industry from December's Reason magazine.
- Yechiel Eckstein - the unofficial ambassador to the Evangelical Christian community from many American Jewish groups, as well as Israeli politicians. That the Forward puts him this high on the list may mean they have started to accept that the evangelicals do not have to always be feared or loathed. Welcome to maturity, Forward!
- Thomas Friedman - The NYT columnist's political stances vary ocaisionally, but he is about as intelligent as it gets at his paper, and among most journalists. His low point for the year (which he will mistakenly presume is the high point) was when he pushed the Saudi plan for peace in the Middle East, which was more his idea than theirs ... and it showed in how much support they lent to it...
- Andrea Levin - Who? Oh, she is head of the Committee on Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, CAMERA. I am sure she gets a lot of attention, but the real grass-roots media bias bashers, who do it much more frequently than Levin's outfit, are Honest Reporting.
- Norm Coleman - Poised to become the most public face of Jewish Republicans, the Senator-Elect from Minnesota describes himself as a "Jewish kid from Brooklyn married to a nice Catholic girl from Minneapolis." Good enough for me.
A lot of the names on the rest of the list are unfamiliar to me, though the organizations they lead sometimes ring a bell. And I must admit I have no idea Christopher Hitchens was Jewish...
To my wife, please note that the Forward did include Jewish Olympic figure skaters Sasha Cohen and Sarah Hughes...
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