The New York Times has forever ended the debate over whether it’s fair or right to count Jews in positions of power. A story in yesterday’s Times examined the Jewishness of the politicians opposing the Iran Deal, and the Jewishness of their constituencies. “Jewish?” the graphic asks– a verbal tic usually reserved for private conversation.

The Times later altered the graphic because of criticism, but the criticism is hypocritical, because so many people openly count Jews on this vote. Dylan Williams of J Street counts Jews, Ron Kampeas of the JTA counts Jews, I count Jews, so does Laura Rozen of Al Monitor. We do so because Jews have more power on this issue than other groups. Partly because they care more: “as a Jew, I feel a deep bond to Israel,” Senator Al Franken said yesterday, in supporting the Deal today, and then said that he has worked as a senator to “strengthen” U.S. support for Israel.

The Iran Deal has altered forever the view that Israel and the U.S. are joined at the hip, but that assumption is the core principle of the Israel lobby, and politicians such as Franken are the heart and soul of the lobby: empowered (often otherwise progressive) Jews who care about a religious state halfway round the world. Because of that special bond, the Iran Deal has often seemed like an intra-Jewish discussion. Obama did a webcast for Jewish Americans; he put his visit to Israel’s Holocaust memorial at the top of his “Foreign Policy” page, and he sent Wendy Sherman and Adam Szubin to the Hill to defend the Deal, two Jews.

Democratic chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz choked up on CNN when announcing her support for the deal, saying that as a Jewish mother she has an obligation to make sure that Israel is there forever. Senator Chuck Schumer told a Jewish audience that Jews have a different view of the Iran Deal than non-Jewish Americans.

“If you are president of the United States, president of one of the European countries, or an American, an average American, you say that’s pretty good to me… “But because a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel, if you’re prime minister of Israel or an Israeli citizen or for that matter an American Jew or at least some American Jews, many, you say I can’t live with a 5 percent chance that Israel will be annihilated…. So there is a basic difference in viewpoint.” Schumer then justified the special Jewish attachment because American Jews have to look out for other Jews, as they had failed to do during the Holocaust.

The Times was merely being honest about something everyone is talking about. As Joshua Keating of Slate wrote, “it seems willfully obtuse to pretend that the position of the Israeli government and the views of at least a prominent faction of the American Jewish community aren’t a factor in this debate.”

The Jewishness of journalists also comes into the discussion. Times deputy Washington editor Jonathan Weisman, in defending the article, stated that he is Jewish:

As I said, I take responsibility for graphic & don’t apologize. We kept data, just put it into intro. I’m Jewish