Omooex writes:

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This is the point exactly. They do not want to be involved. I don't think Glenn was trying to say that Americans are more supportive of Palestinians than Israelis. I'm sure that's not true. They do not, however, hold the same opinion as their representatives, who claim that the US will support Israel in whatever tehy think proper.

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This is nonsensical, and shows the great logical fallacy that makes the usually brilliant and on-point Greenwald sound like a raving lunatic on the Israel issue time and time again.

Glenn claims the US wants evenhandedness, and therefore our politician's support for Israel's recent military response to the shelling from Gaza is at odds with the "evenhandedness" that Americans supposedly desire.

Glenn makes two distinct idiotic logic leaps to reach his predetermined conclusion that American politicians are not expressing the will of the people on the Israel issue.

1. That supporting a military response to military provocation is somehow not even-handed.

2. That American support for military non-intervention BY AMERICA equals words of support for another country's military action.

Clearly the American people do not want American military involved in the middle east for either Israel or the group we call "Palestinians" (a nebulous term invented in 1967 for the Jordanians, Syrians, Lebanese and Egyptians who refused to move, or were prevented from moving, to Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt by Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt).

Glenn leaps through a logic pretzel to conclude the American public therefore don't support Israel's military response IN THIS CASE, and concludes that because most government officials support Israel IN THIS CASE, this is proof positive that American government officials are neither even-handed nor ever critical of Israel.

It's the logical consistency of melted butter.

Obviously the facts of this case could provide both the American public and our government officials with objective even-handedness, and since America's military is not engaged, little relevancy to Glenn's cherry picked quotes showing this great American uprising against pro-Israel policy.

It's beneath Glenn, but apparently, on this one issue, Glenn likes to take leave of his senses and rant away like Bizarro O'Reilly.

Better he stick to torture, NSA and the other issues he so coherently engages. Israel seems to reduce him to a five year old throwing a tantrum because they dare to respond to months of mortar attacks.

That would work if you, like Glenn, enjoy making the logical fallacy leap that support for Israel's military response represents "unbalanced, unequivocal support" and is at odds with the American public.

Our government spent the 1990s legitimizing the terrorist Yasser Arafat as a legitimate world figure, forcing Israel to acknowledge and negotiate with him. This was a vital step in the peace process, but this can hardly be called one-sided support only for Israel, as it would be in Glenn's unhinged imagination. This country's policy was to support a TWO STATE SOLUTION. We pushed the Israelis to give up land, offer guns to Arafat's "police force," and willingly remove their occupation even at the risk of Israeli security.

Palestine's response? The Second Intifada. Hundreds of nail bombs set off on Israeli streets, buses and schools.

Has our government tended to side with Israel's military actions since 2000-2001 when nail bombs were exploding by the day on the streets of Israel?

Yes.

Does this mean America doesn't support Palestine's right to nationhood? Not even close.

America's role has been to push for Palestinian nation-hood even as "The Palestinians" are essentially a constructed ethnic group that doesn't exist (except as a mish-mash of other ethnicities whose native countries refuse to absorb them as Israel did to global Jews).

Glenn is correct to note that American government officials have supported Israel's military actions uncritically in the past ten years. Anyone who remembers the Second Intifada can see why.

The missiles shot off from Gaza over the past three months justify a military response from Israel according to any understanding of a nation's right to react to provocation. Hamas's cowardice, their hiding behind and within civilian areas, means that any response will also kill civilians. This is what Hamas wants.

Glenn's reach, to imply American government officials can't question Israel because of some "doctrine" at work rather than as an authentic response to real world events, is inane.

Glenn rightly condemned the American media's critiquing of Russ Feingold's opposition to NSA in 2006 when the media claimed Feingold only did that to position himself for a presidential run. Glenn rightly asked why it was never considered that Feingold acted out of genuine belief.

Now Glenn will have us believe our government officials are clearly positioning themselves for his own "presidential run" (AIPAC funding, I suppose, although Glenn never specifies).

Glenn never considers that the political response to an ally's military response to terrorism could be authentic. It has to be some cultural lattice-work of bias, or some such nonsense.

You have no clue what you're talking about. Israel is not a singular political monolith, it is as complex as our government. We sided with the liberal faction of Israel's government, which believed peace with Arafat was the only way. Rabin gave his life for that belief in 1995. In what world was American support in the 1990s this "Israel Love It Or Leave It" nonsense that Glenn keeps peddling?

Our officials have gone out of their way to advocate a two state solution. Obama has been cautious in responding to the latest military incursion.

How is any of this at odds with the American public?

Answer: It isn't.

Our allies have the right to militarily respond to provocation. This is why our invasion of Iraq is completely indefensible, while Israel's reaction to the Gaza attacks is defensible, and why when Glenn conflates the two, he does a disservice to the legitimate critiques of the former, and an accurate context of the latter.