text: Thank you Dick. The conflation of religion and politics does from all directions, but as Alan pointed out above, Judaism is more than a religion. It is an ethnic and cultural identity. That doesn't necessarily mean any connection to Israel, though, and while Lingle is Jewish, her support for Israel has as much (if not more) to do with her party's platform as her Judaism. I, like many other Jews, stridently disagree with her politics. Like any cultural group, there's no unanimity of opinion (get ten Jews together and you'll get ten different answers to a yes or no question). What Patricia did was to conflate a cultural identity with a nation's policy; she would probably say she's not anti-Semitic without quite grasping the implicit bigotry of her post (to give her benefit of the doubt). This is also not the first time she's used CB as a platform to inveigh against Israel, and it's unfortunate she chose a story about Jews in local government as another stone on which to grind that axe.