[Fiji Hill]

The late Senator Robert Byrd was never an Israel enthusiast and anyone who associated him with the left had to be nuts.

Had to be nuts? As far back as 1964, Americans for Constitutional Action, which analyzed the voting records of legislators and rated them as to how they conformed to conservative principles gave Byrd an overall rating of 15 and a rating of eight for the year. In contrast, Senator Barry Goldwater rated 100 for the year and was in the mid-80's overall.

Maybe the writer confused him with Sen. Harry F. Byrd (D-Va.).

[katana]

I suspect her understanding of American politics is as superficial as 99% of ours is about British politics. But her point is clear. European anti-semitism is not a matter of left or right, it's a two thousand year old reflexive response to the "other" and it crosses all the usual political borders.

Americans have from the founding been influenced by a (largely Protestant) religious ethos which reveres the Old Testament (Torah) as much as the New. You can see the respect for the Jews in the writings of the Founding Fathers such as Washington and Franklin. How much that had to do with their Masonic beliefs and teachings is another interesting question.

But here in America, with notable exceptions like Pat Buchanan, and the raving nutcase Aryan Brotherhood, KKK, etc,. it is mostly the left (leftist Jews included) that is anti-Israel and the non-Jews among them tend to be virulently anti-semitic in turn.