Last week an issue that has simmered for some time in private conversations burst out into the open—in a very unpleasant way. At the Jerusalem Post conference in New York on June 7, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew offered a stirring defense of the White House’s proposed nuclear deal with Iran—and was nearly booed off the stage mid-speech. It wasn’t civil or nice of the audience to do this, as many pundits have already noted.
Then again, many would say it’s not very nice of the Obama Administration to keep trying to sell the currently configured Iran deal to the pro-Israel community as if it’s good for Israeli security, which is what Lew was attempting to do at the conference. Some tried to slough it off as a predictable occurrence in an aberrantly unfriendly venue. “Well, of course U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was heckled at a Jerusalem Post conference,” Tweeted the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. “Have you read The Jerusalem Post lately?”
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