I do think it's worth noting in light of the media coverage of the past few days, that Glenn Greenwald's original thesis from January 2nd has now been proven to be total poppycock.

Glenn wrote about the "debate" on Israel/Gaza. Those quotes around "debate" are Glenn's quotes. Glenn feels there is no real debate, either in Washington or in our corporate media.

Glenn's critique of the lack of debate over Gaza was then published in a national newspaper. Glenn then cited a congresswoman who spoke pretty definitively against the bombing (with no reprisal to date).

Glenn then repeatedly implies that democrats think like he does -- the bombing was unjustified -- but refuse to say so. What their motives for lying are remain unspoken. Perhaps AIPAC funding is behind their lies. Perhaps alien mind control.

All we know is Glenn believes that democrats are not telling the truth when they state support for Israel, as seen here:

Much more notable is the fact that Democratic Party leaders -- including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi -- are just as lockstep in their blind, uncritical support for the Israeli attack, in their absolute refusal to utter a word of criticism of, or even reservations about, Israeli actions.

Refusal to do something. And again, when Edwards spoke out:

That's much further than most national Democrats have been willing to go.

Never considered by Glenn: That democrats actually support Israel on the merits. They are not "willing to go" to a place that Glenn believes is fact. To Glenn, this is black and white. For democrats not to speak out about Israel is to be "unwilling" to do something. Reasons for this unwillingness? Left untheorized, but not for his readers (secret Jewish funding from rich bankers buying off our politicians is a popular one).

As a good lawyer, Glenn's framed a classic "When did you stop beating your wife?" proposition. It is impossible to answer him without confirming the premise: that politicians and our media are unable to criticize Israel.

And of course the last three days has seen CNN, MSNBC, Fox and numerous papers do exactly that. Today's New York Times writes about the invasion as a potentially disastrous mistake. Criticizing Israel is not only not anathema to our media and politicians, it's happening right before our eyes.

But in Glenn's conspiracy theory mind, criticizing Israel is verboten.

We shall see.

Glenn also argues that the United States is using "all of its resources" to defend Israel:

It's one thing to argue that Israel is being both wise and just by bombing the densely populated Gaza Strip. It's another thing entirely to argue that the U.S. should use all of its resources to support Israel as it does so.

People arguing America should use "all of its resources" to help Israel? Zero.

Total American casualties in Israel fighting for the Israelis: Zero.

Glenn is right on one point, lets debate the 3 billion a year we give to Israel. Lets debate the 2 billion a year we give to Egypt and the 1 billion to Pakistan. I'm sure Glenn is even more outraged that we're funding the latter two.

Oh wait...

Glenn is not a journalist, but he is a media voice with an exremely large, national reach. When he whines about the "mainstream media," it's only because he hasn't quite grasped that he *is* the mainstream media.

O'Reilly does the same thing and it's infuriating. I'm sure Glenn will be on MSNBC explaining how no one on cable is allowed to criticize Israel. And now the left can have people in the media whining about the media not talking about what they're talking about.

I'm sure both Olbermann and Maddow will spend significant time this week critiquing the Israel attack (as they have every right to) and I also expect numerous newspapers will allow anti-Israel voices to be heard. I have NY1 here in New York, and numerous Palestinian protesters were given voice on the local news. Glenn's quotes around "debate" are nonsensical. His argument that in the Self/Other binary of subject/object identification that Israel is the "Self" and Palestine the "Other" is laughable. Maybe Glenn's family identifies with Israel, but the rest of America sure doesn't.

Linking to a propaganda media clip from 2005 mislabeled as "Israel attack on Gaza 2008" as his evidence of the tragedy of the attack, and then offering some mealy mouthed backtrack betrayed every bit of Glenn's determination to use heart-tugging visuals to make the argument his facts can't. It was pathetic, proven even more so when it was exposed as mislabeled pro-Palestinian propaganda.

I'm frustrated with Glenn on this because I consider him perhaps the most important media critic at work on the National scene right now. He is indispensible on so many issues, and then plunges into pathological sneers and rage whenever Israel comes up. It detracts from his important work on so many other issues.

His notion that because blood-thursty neo-con cowards cheer the murder of Palestinians that this therefore invalidates the morality of the attack itself is inane logic. Pro-war lunatics and anti-Muslim racists will cheer every military attack, right or wrong. That does not mean every attack is automatically wrong. Attempting to discredit an issue by citing guilt-by-association is an intellectual con game.

By all means the morons on the right deserve scorn and contempt for their disregard for the death of innocents. They are pathetic human beings. Glenn is right to excoriate these people. But to use their ravings as "evidence" that the attack itself is therefore as illigitmate as the Iraq War is a logical shell game. It feeds off the legit critical analysis of the Iraq invasion and uses that capital to smear-by-association the acts of another country. Critique Israel on its merits. Not because some chickenhawk said something stupid. Those are two distinct issues.