As one of my most brilliant friends, a noted retina surgeon, says: "We're all crazy."

Glennnnnnnnn is more subtle about it than "Dershbag Looser," who goes on a daily rant about the hateful "Zionists" here, but there is something pathological there.

Maybe Mister G grew up in an anti Israel household or had some especially rough encounters with arrogant or bigoted Israelis.

I grew up in a household of German Jews, who really did not like Israel. I have never been a devoted Zionist, and have never even been to Israel. I rub shoulders with Jews who run the entire spectrum from peaceniks to hawks.

I think there is really something fishy about the leftist Jews like Glennnn, who always side with Israel's sworn enemies, and who demand an impossible level of restrained and ultimately suicidal behavior from the government of Israel.

It is as if they live in some kind of fantasy land which is my take on "pwogwessives" in general. Never mind thousands of years of human experience. They adamantly ignore the sad lessons of history. They are locked up in some foolish notion that somehow, this time, an entire nation could and should embrace an attitude of pacificism in the face brutality and certain death.

There are "foreigners" on the internet? How so?

May I ask what operating system you are using?

There are no serious, regular commenters here who have said otherwise (heru-ur is a nut).

Look you stupid idiot; to say that no government anywhere in history has the right to exist over the right of the people to exist is certainly correct. Else prove otherwise you ignorant slut.

Thanks as usual Glenn for giving voice to this issue, as well as the resolution passed in the Senate which I didn't see any other coverage of yesterday.

You prompted me to write both my Senators and House Rep and (I know, even more pointless) the White House about this, urging greater neutrality from the US in Israel-Palestine relations and that we use our influence to push for a cease-fire. Hey, I guess it's "progress" that we only abstained from, rather than vetoed last nights UN Security council resolution right? I wish I felt more optimistic that our elected officials were listening to the people, rather than cynically gauging which way a given vote will give them a boost, or having already staked out positions that will never be reconsidered.

I did catch one quiet voice on NPR this morning, Aaron David Miller, who "has been a Middle East adviser to six secretaries of state." He was also making the very basic point that the US used to have greater influence in the region, and with Israel and this particular conflict, BECAUSE we maintained greater neutrality and thus Israel and other nations did not view us (and write us off) as 100% unquestioningly supportive of anything Israel would choose to do.

As a hopeful but anxious Obama supporter, I suspect Mr. Obama understands this quite well, but it will be one of his first tests to see if he can carve out a position that differs substantially from the current adminstration and weather the critics who will say is not a staunch enough ally of Israel if he does so.

Of your 3 general points, the ONLY one that I mentioned was the second, and related it ONLY to the posts on this blog entry (and I read them all). There are at least 10 posters who have argued that Israel is illegitimate and using Hitlerian or Apartheid tactics to accomplish either ethnic cleansing or genocide. Of the posts after the first 150 or so, they may well constitute a majority. And you go after NONE of them. Nowhere did I accuse critics of Israel of anti-semitism. So you are doing exactly what you are accusing me of doing. And you once again do not respond either to the history that I discussed (i.e. that there has to be a 2 state solution because the Arabs refused to live with the Jews in peace), the utter failure of Hamas to rule competently, and the question of what Israel is to do when Hamas sends rockets at Israel. How about discussing the substance of the problem rather that taking making an ad hominem attack on those that disagree with you. I tried to discuss the reasons for the problem, the current disaster and how to resolve it. You simply harp on the issue of attrocities in wartime. Well, come on Glenn, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Make a suggestion if you were the new American envoy. How do we get out of this?

There are at least 10 posters who have argued that Israel is illegitimate and using Hitlerian or Apartheid tactics to accomplish either ethnic cleansing or genocide.

Permalinks, you chickenshit bastard.

(sorry, tommy1733.)

Still doing some research, different machines, different browsers, etc. So far the results vary a bit, but Firefox on XP pretty consistently delivers a mess. Mind you, I haven't gone in naked yet (no ad & flash blockers, no Vidalia, etc.)

These tactics are as transparent as they are discredited. If you have to lie about what other people are arguing in order to refute it, that's a pretty good sign that you have nothing worthwhile to say.

-- GlennGreenwald

Don't forget WinSmith's new fabrication of what "everyone who comments here thinks" (as if he could even know that). He has decided that everyone who claims to be concerned about the welfare of Palestinians is full of crap and doesn't really care about them. It conveniently feeds his persecution complex (everyone is so out to get Israel that they would pretend to care about the death of innocents to further that end), but is completely without basis in reality. He just created it out of whole cloth -- this claim that all of these people are straight up lying -- in order to further his argument. Which is ironic since it's a lie. In addition, I find it completely offensive to have some stranger strutting around telling me what I think and feel. This guy has some nerve.

I also found it hilarious that he claims that you can't be unbiased in your reporting because you want to treat Israel "like every other country." I'm not sure it gets more bassackwards than that.

What is it about the discussion of Israel that makes people completely unable to be rational?