My good friend Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute Berlin, recently gave an interview for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. His commentary is as deeply disturbing as it is informative. Gedmin talks about his personal encounters with anti-American and anti-Israeli critics, many of whom claim to champion the cause of tolerance while at the same time yelling at him and telling him to go home. Once, Gedmin confided to me, a man in a car rolled down his window and shouted to him up close, "Du Arschloch!" (You a--hole!)

"Can you believe that?" he asked. I replied, "It's unbelievable. This guy doesn't even know you and he's using the informal tense!"