There is no way that two cultures with such vastly different amounts of power can be assigned the same amount blame for such problems. It just cannot be done.

This is completely incoherent. What does power have to do with blame? Osama Bin Laden isn't as powerful as the United States Military, or any military in the world, but he is a terrorist killer.

Israel is perhaps the only country in the world being asked to give back land it acquired in a war it didn't start. No one asks the United States to give California or Texas back to Mexico. Why not?

There are two types of criticisms of Israel -- the first is legitimate political criticism of Israel as a country.

The second is a inchoate rage towards Israel that those expressing it can't even fully grasp where it comes from. It is an extension of deep historical and cultural notions, embedded in the discourse, that Israel, by nature of it's Jewish state, is fundamentally illegitimate.

It's like Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ. Gibson just wanted to express the love of Jesus, in his mind he wasn't conscious of the embedded rage against the "Christ Killers" that informed his portrayal of Rabbis as Jesus slapping hook nosed devil consorting villains.

What we must always be vigilant about, and yes this IS unique to Israel because in many ways the Jews are unique to Western Christian history in terms of the anger they provoke merely by existing, is to parse the difference between legitimate criticism of Israel, and those motivated by embedded anti-Semitic rage.

The republicans exploit this by using the latter to tar-brush those who are expressing the former (as with Dean).

But where people like Glenn err is in ignoring that just because some abuse the truth of anti-Israel anti-Semitism as a political ploy, the truth doesn't exist.

Glenn wants to parse this discussion so we only talk about how republicans abuse charges of Anti-Semitism to silence discourse, but that's impossible without also discussing the small minority on the far left who give credibility to the wingnut distortion by marching "End the Occupation!!" and screaming about Israel's "war crimes" at every anti-Iraq-War march.

The difficulties in parsing legit criticism from anti-Semitic rage (because it means you must examine motivation, and not language) is what republicans exploit for their benefit, but it's also a difficult truth of the nature of the Israel discussion itself.

Israel has committed many sins. But the Palestinians, under the leadership of the vile Yasser Arafat, threw away the greatest give back offer in the history of victorious war borders, and unleashed their response in the form of nail bombs in pizza parlors and on school buses.

I see little equality in the blame here. I see a militarily dominant country that refuses to round up and kill the minority people on the land they occupy (as we did to the Native Americans), and instead offered them weapons and self-government. The Palestinians responded with cries of "death to Israel" and over 600 terrorist attacks on Israeli streets in the years 1999-2002.

Do I blame Israel for throwing away the path to peace after the second intifada? Not really. It's exactly what we would've done if bombs were going off every day on our streets, killing civilians and children with nails through their head.

Gator, you raise an excellent critique. It seems Israel is the "persecution complex" we have on the left, where everyone whines that some great, mysterious force is stifling debate on Israel with zero examples of it actually happening.

The Neo-Cons and clowns like O'Reilly constantly whine about "political correctness" stifling debate, meanwhile the airwaves are filled with the most politically incorrect (if that term even has any meaning anymore) banter.

Everyone loves a mythical "Man" holding them down. It's one of the great straw-mans. Claim the mantle of the persecuted/victim to strengthen the need for your voice to be heard.

Glenn's point about certain points of view being held off network news is correct, however. But this is simply the larger silencing of "left" viewpoints because of corporate media, and has nothing to do with Israel as an issue specifically.

No one's career has been hurt for criticizing Israel and/or offering support for the Palestinian's suffering. Barack Obama did exactly that and he's our nominee.

Far more likely is the Occam's Razor explanation -- most politicians actually believe what they say on Israel, and unlike some on this board's paranoid fantasies, it is not some giant conspiracy to silence based on hidden AIPAC funding and mysterious shadow figures moving in the darkness.

Howard Dean's career was not "harmed" by his comments on Israel, as has been pointed out. He's head of the DNC and one of the most widely respected democratic voices today, as he deserves to be. Barack Obama correctly made the point about working with Palestine on a two-state solution, and while he's being excoriated by the neo-con frauds (as usual), it is hardly harming his political career. Barack Obama will likely be our next president.

I agree with Glenn that there is a right-wing media structure that uses Israel the same way they use Dean's scream, Kerry's "effeminacy" and John Edwards's hair -- as a tool to brand democrats "fags," "queers" and "America haters."

But I fail to see where politicians actually suffer from disagreeing with far-right dogma on Israel.

We don't see a lot of politicians differ from the dominant political positions on Israel, but I see this as general philosophical agreement rather than an enforced propaganda clampdown on free speech by a secret shadow conspiracy (presumably financed by the banking and Hollywood industries).