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headaches for themselves. Could they say what they really believe
and get reelected? Probably—after all, incumbents are very hard to
beat. But who needs the hassle?
“What we want to do next,” Fadi added, “is freedom rides, like in the
South. We’ll board settler-only buses and make them arrest us or beat
us up.” He mentioned that many American Jews had participated in
the civil rights movement. “So how will American Jews react if we
do this,” he asked? “Do you think we’ll get any support, given your
history?” I started to talk about the way American Jewish politics
actually works, about the gap between what people believe and what
they say, about the way people wall themselves off from unpleasant
realities, and then I stopped. It was too depressing to explain. Fadi
Quran has the right to dream.
Peter Beinart is associate professor of journalism and political
science at City University of New York and a senior fellow at the
New America Foundation.
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