I once asked you if there was any criticism of Israel on UT that was not, in your opinion, anti-semitic?

Of course. Most of it wasn't. Some of it was. Ugly, ugly stuff.

Let me reverse the question: Was there any criticism of Israel on UT that was, in your opinion, anti-Semitic?

Is it possible, when seeking out the hidden "power structure" at work that's ruining America, to stumble into a fictional but very appealing story that's been told many times before without knowing it?

To Greenwald, this is an "attempt to silence" by disingenuous liars, presumably right wingers who abuse charges of "anti-Semitism" to silence legitimate argument.

While there is no doubt some clowns like Bill Kristol and Marty Peretz abuse charges of anti-Semitism,

While your "gotcha" nonsense shouldn't merit a response, I'll leave you with this basic concept: The fact some abuse a criticism does not mean the criticism does not exist.

The response of the criticized to use the false criticism to pre-emptively dismiss all criticism is just as fraudulent as the false critic.

Greenwald uses the fraudulence of the Neocons to shield himself from all critique. This is the Boy Who Cried Wolf fallacy.

Sometimes the sheep are actually being eaten.

The fact the boy cried wolf too many times does not prove that sheep cannot be eaten by wolves. It just gives wolves the cover they needed to perpetuate their sheep eating.

Try and grasp that, and get back to me.

What are the rules for a self-respecting Jew criticizing Israel? Given that Israeli interests are, by definition, not identical to American interests.

The "rules" are the same for anyone criticizing Israel, Jew and non-Jew alike. Understand the complexities of the region and that the failures of the state of Israel to reach some lofty "ideal" are similar to the failures of every other country on earth, including our own.

Where criticizing Israel slips into pathology is when Israel is held to a standard no other country has been held to. Every country has gained land through wars, the displacement and murder of indiginous peoples, and the violations of whatever lofty aspirations it once held.

Our country had slaves for hundreds of years. We massacred millions of Native Americans. We stole Texas from Mexico. We rounded up Japanese and put them in internment camps three years before Israel was formed.

This is not to excuse Israel's many abuses towards the Palestinians. It is only to seek real world context.

The seductive narratives are plentiful, and appear on this board all the time. That Israel is a country of evil snarling supervillains, founded by corrupt global banking industries working through America, abusing the tragedy of the Holocaust for financial gain, working through secret teachings in the academic institutions and control of the international press, through Hollywood imagery, to enslave the poor, innocent Palestinians, etc. etc.

When it starts to sound like an issue of "X-Men." When the complex tragedies of both the Israelis and Palestinians are reduced to either/or simplicities, is when the ancient myths rear their ugly heads.

Greenwald's premise was that Israel was militarily abusing Gaza, without any context for the why, the where, the result of Hamas's military smuggling, etc. Greenwald's second premise was that American support for Israel is one-sided, against our national interests, and the preeminent reason why "they hate us."

This convenient bogeyman -- the foreign country with its secret agents working in Washington -- is as laughably cartoonish as it is powerfully seductive. I don't wonder for a second why this binary has appeal. But it does great damage to the real world complexities of the problems in the middle east.

And when it invokes the notion of media "control" here at home, by foreign agents unseen, it treads into very dangerous historical ground.

Most of these narratives were around long before the concept of Israel was a spark in Herzl's mind, as you'll see in the Dearborn Independent, the recordings of Father Coughlin, the 1920s immigrant restriction acts or in Mein Kampf.

Israel just becomes the real world talisman to fixate the pre-existing myth structures on. This is damaging, because when zealots like Greenwald don't bother to check themselves for prepetuating this nonsense, they obscure the ability to legitimately criticize Israel on the merits, and give fuel to liars like Bill Kristol to dismiss the real underlying critiques.