A few highlights from our friends in the Jewish Blogosphere:

Jspot tips us off to JCPA’s blog, and Jewish voter disfranchisement in Nevada.

Over at Jewlicious, Y-Love tackles incendiary comments found on the NY Daily News website after they published an article about New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind’s (D-Brooklyn) inauguration of the “Blacks & Jews Together” alliance (JBA). themiddle chomps on antisemitism in an op-ed written by Arun Gandhi and published in the Washington Post, in which Gandhi, surprise surprise, conflates all Jews with Israel, and writes that “Israel and Jews are the biggest players” in creating a culture of violence. Gandhi later wrote an apology, although, arguably, the apology is still lacking.

Now, I am feeling themiddle on tackling this op-ed and what’s become of when folks try to talk about antisemitism, but what I’m still thinking about is…can we really be surprised to see people conflating Israel with Jews, or being Jewish?

I mean…we don’t know anyone who does that, do we? Hem, hem…No, no, I mean, the latest study by Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman–BEYOND DISTANCING:. Young Adult American Jews and Their Alienation from Israel–wasn’t completely framed around the idea that to be a young Jew in the U.S., and be distanced from Israel, was a bad thing, was it? Nah, nah…I mean, we didn’t see an op-ed published, right after the report by it’s main funder, Charles Bronfman, touting Birthright as THE answer to what the mainstream organized Jewish world loves to call “Jewish continuity,” did we? Nah…(I should say it’s more like a full-length essay with how much space Bronfman was given to write).

Before anyone starts, let’s be clear, I’m NOT condoning what Gandhi wrote. What I AM saying is that the issue of Jews and Israel being conflated, thus at times making it difficult to talk about antisemitism in necessary and critical ways, isn’t only imposed on us by the outside. We’ve got some cleaning up to do in house on that one.

Over at Jewschool, BZ posted a moving post by guest blogger Shira Levine on her time in Hebron, and Rooftapopper Rav is outraged that Bush is costing Israel $25,000 an hour.

Mixed Multitudes gives us a lesson of the Jews, from Roseanne nonetheless, and exposes, if you didn’t already know, Ron Paul’s deep-seeded bigotry. From the looks of Jewlicious’ poll on the elections, looks like there are quite a few who don’t.