Jews Not-necessarily For Jesus (Or Endless Occupation, For That Matter)

I wanted to quickly quote this letter from the comments on a Glenn Greenwald post from earlier this week:

I am a Jew who has had the opportunity to live and work in Israel.

God, I hope that the people who read Lieberman's garbage do not think it represents the thinking of any but the most minute fringe in Israel.

I never met anybody in Israel who believed this sort of junk.

Lieberman is a sick, perverted man with no sense of honor or decency. When he says things like this, he speaks neither for the Israeli government nor for the Israeli people.

-- Carl from L.A.

The letter is in response to a post by Greenwald in which Greenwald dissects the strange bedfellows of AIPAC activist and cheerleader Joe Leiberman (I-CT) and frothing-at-the-mouth Rapture lunatic Reverend Hagee.

I commented on this earlier this week in the LJ Atheist Community here: http://community.livejournal.com/atheist/1445891.html.

My point being, I know that not all Israelis are evil Zionists, rabid Likudniks and in fact most of them are reasonable, moderate people living in one of a very few Social Democracies in the Middle East (ironically, Iran is much more democratic than our allies Saudi Arabia or Egypt). But American politicians like Leiberman play to the worst extremes of pro-Zionist politics, and Israel gets a bad rep as a result (and reactionary pundits will go after politicians like Senator Obama, who are a voice for moderation when they address the very real plight of the Palestinian people; right-wing Israeli politics are endemic and ubiquitous among the Beltway elite).

What is it about our system of government, and our media, that give the biggest audiences the loudest and most extreme veiwpoints?