It was Howard Dean's unremarkable remark suggesting that the U.S. be "evenhanded" in mediating the Israel/Palestinian dispute that marked the beginning of what would prove to be unremitting hostility from the press, an hostility that culminated in the laughably absurd suggestion by many in the press that the "Dean Scream" was evidence that the man was not stable.

It is a virtual certainly that Obama will win the Jewish vote overwhelmingly. His problem is that the neoconservatives and AIPAC have a monopoly on this issue in the media, and their hysterical attacks on Obama will not meet any resistance. The broadsides from Kristol, Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg and Max Boot will be reinforced by confirmations from Ignatius, Hoagland and Brooks that yes, Obama has an "Israel problem", and not a word of defense from Dionne, Krugman, Herbert or Robinson will be forthcoming. To the extent there is any debate at all over whether this is a legitimate issue, it will be a very lopsided affair. And it is safe to say that any discussion of the issues Glen raises regarding neoconservative demands for political obeisance to Israel will never appear in the op-ed pages of our major newspapers.

McCain has said that (or versions of it) at least twice, most recently on The Daily Show. It scares the daylights out of me. He's promising that any foe of Israel will automatically be a foe of the U.S. if he's elected. Why are we handing over control of our foreign policy to Israel? I don't have a vote there. Firstly, he's abandoning any attempt on our part to act as objective mediators between the Israelis and Palestinians (a role badly tattered in recent years, true, but there's no one else in the West or Middle East that can take our place. Are we going to have to wait for China to step up?). Secondly, ironclad oaths of allegiance sworn between individual states are the sorts of arrangements that made WWI inevitable. If an alliance doesn't have a degree of flexibility, then regional conflicts can blow up into global ones all too quickly.

Senator McCain, try running for President of the U.S. instead of anyone else, OK?

http://www.americablog.com/2008/05/good-morning-america-helps-promote.html

or click sig for linky

Robert Malley, who was an adviser to the Obama camp and an old Middle East hand, was forced to resign from the campaign because he admitted to talking to Hamas people during his research on the problems in the ME:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/sweet/943467,CST-NWS-Sweet11.article

It really has become McCarthyism now.

Thanks for going there, Glenn.

Just like he did with his race speech.

What did you expect? Obama is an establishment man to his core, a product of the likes of the CFR and The Trilateral Commission, no matter what kind of "change" he is trying to sell. That means the Lobby (aka Israeli interests) come first. Israeli influence over US policy and discussion of Israeli war crimes (or portraying Israel negatively at all) are taboo in the US. People are afraid to confront the lobby because they are afraid of the bigot label ruining their careers. That is why Stephen Walt knew what he was getting into when he coauthored The Israeli Lobby. To question or even mention the taboo means you become persona non grata, derailed, blacklisted:

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/04/the-interesting.html

A year or so back, Walt said to me that when he took the Israel lobby project on, he forswore high government service; he realized it would be out of reach for him if he attacked this issue. And he's right. If you look at all the names that are being bandied about for foreign policy positions in the next administration(s), you don't ever see Walt's name. "Almost by definition anybody in the foreign policy field who wants to get a job in government and not just be an academic will not be a profile in courage," Leon Hadar of the Cato Institute, who worked for Ron Paul's campaign, tells me. A lot of those folks work at the Kennedy School, where Walt was/is a star.

It is also a litmus test. Go along with and support Israel's bullshit and you show the establishment bigwigs that you have no morals or principals and that you'll go along with anything, most importantly the imperial agenda. If you can sell an agressive country with an illegal nuclear arsenal that is also an expansionist occupier as an innocent saintly victim, you can put lipstick on the pig, you can sell Iraq and Iran to the sheep. You've got the shill skills to pay the imperial bills.

God forbid anyone publicly opposes the Israeli occupation and not bend to the agenda of foreigners, i.e. warmongering Zionists, lest they be accused of advancing a "second holocaust" and be branded as antisemitic.

Maybe the Saudis will pressure Obama to claim 100% loyalty to them as well, since the establishment is trolling around for people to support the Arab Police States?

PW and ER, as it is inevitable anyway.

Obama (and the rest of us) hate Jews.

There. Now on with the thread.

Hillary Clinton saw her husband forced to repeatedly apologize for his sexual fling, repeatedly be denounced for "not" apologizing, and have to do it again and again, with increasing levels of debasement, to no avail. When it came time for Senator Clinton to "apologize" for voting in favor of Bush's AUMF, she refused to play the game.

Are you seriously comparing apologizing for a stupid personal decision that resulted in public embarrassment to apologizing for appaulingly bad judgment that helped enable a president to start a pre-emptive war and a years-long occupation? A war and an occupation that has resulted in thousands of troop deaths, hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, and hundreds of billions of dollars of debt?

Refusing to apologize for that is "refusing to play the game"?

A major reason that she's always been down near the bottom of my list of nominees is that she wasn't strong enough to apologize for her poor judgment on the AUMF. If she can't apologize for a whopper like that, how can I trust her to even privately acknowledge smaller mistakes?