Jews no prepared for attacks from the left...

It's the left that is now totally against Israel....

My National Review colleague Byron York reported on last Saturday’s anti-war rally on the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. The main message of the rally was President Bush’s evil and stupidity—fair enough, in a two-party system—and the main instance of it was Iraq. The warriors of the anti-war movement—Joan Baez, Ramsey Clark, Cindy Sheehan—were front and center.

A secondary text of the rally was Katrina; weather, the perennial joke of the newsroom, has become a main event. But another theme was anti-Zionism. As Mr. York reports, kaffiyehs outnumbered American flags. George Galloway, the left-wing M.P., wore one around his neck. Occasionally, the themes were weirdly conflated: One group of college kids chanted, “From Palestine to New Orleans, no more money for the war machine.”

Now, on the one hand, this is fringe stuff, as many liberals and war opponents themselves recognize. The liberal Daily Kos Web site was filled with negative comments on the rally, seeing it as an off-message distraction from the duty of beating Republicans. But the fringe itself, including the Jew-bashing fringe, is perilously close to the center. Who else in the Democratic Party has passion, or ground troops, these days?