About Israel or Jews and just fall back on "taken out of context" or "not my intent."

It's like the discussion of a gay issue and within their first fifty words the conservative says "Pedophilia", but they didn't intend to make any linkage or insult.

I'm very much with you on this one Glenn. It's appalling to think they can still get away with it. American liberals, I think, empowered by Obama's win are coming out more, even and especially those of Jewish background who have had enough. The insanity of the rights's "prophecies" protecting Israeli intransigence is especially galling to men of reason.

The problem is the latest election--and that no "Obama" came to the fore. Is this the equivalent election to '04 in the US? What happens now is going to have to happen behind closed doors. I don't doubt that Hillary will stand up to them--so there is at least that.

The attack on Gaza showed their true colors for many people in the world. The tide has indeed turned. Now the question is how long the rhetorical attacks against opposition will continue.

The Republican NO strategy, or strategy of NO should see a tide turn very quickly.

Even when they collapse, I am amazed by how long positions endure and how they can come up again. I never thought I would hear that Roosevelt did not turn the tide on the depression, nor that Clinton caused the current economic down turn.

The collapse of an empire is never pretty.

It's interesting that Jeffrey Goldberg, a cross-dressing, hermaphrodite and pedophile, wanted in Utah on bestiality charges, would recklessly throw around baseless character slurs.

THEN: Neocons would belch fire and brimstone over Israel and all would run for cover.

NOW: We've learned to recognize flatulence when we smell it. Time for us to do as the little children do and laugh at the absurd fart jokes the neocons make.

BTW, the dinosaur analogy is demeaning to dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were a step on the path to more advanced species. Neocons are an evolutionary dead end.

....is like watching an old, dying dinosaur sadly trying to breathe mighty fire from his mouth but collapsing in a debilitating coughing fit instead

...overly hasty in asserting that the neocon influence is dying, but I like the image. OK, my scientific side is bothered by the fire-breathing dinosaurs.

Hamas immediately responded to the visit by delivering a letter to UN staff, which was passed on to Senator Kerry. The letter was addressed to Obama. This can only be viewed as a very positive development, even though Kerry's statements during his visit to Israel and Gaza were incredibly inept...

http://oxdown.firedoglake.com/diary/3746

Another aspect of the fight to open US middle east policy to open debate is to stop mindlessly terming various entities as "terrorists", and then shutting the door to any further interaction with them. The Hamas letter to Obama clearly shows how easy it may be to begin meaningful communication with the Hamas leadership. In spite of the ravings of the far right wing in both the US and Israel, Hamas is not an irrational organization of mindless hate, incapable of negotiation. They can communicate, they can reason, and they can negotiate.

The same is true of Iran. One would think that SOS Hillary Clinton is now disadvantaged in her dealings with Iran because as a senator, she voted affirmatively that the bulk of Iranian armed forces were legally a "terrorist organization". That is simply not the kind of positioning that enhances communication--but rather freezes it.

Your comment is preposterous.

Israel has lost support because of the Gaza invasion and no amount of "rocket" talk can balance the awful destruction to life and limb recently suffered by Gazans and shown by Jeremy Bowen on BBC's Panorama.

I just have one question: why can't Pres Obama answer Helen Thomas' question : which country in the Middle East has nuclear weapons? The day an American President can give a direct answer to that question we will see the beginnings of a change in our policy towards Israel.

Thank you thank you thank you!

What you are doing is actually pro-Israel...people who try and prevent a public discussion of Israel's behavior (which everyone else around the world sees clearly) are both anti-American and anti-Israel.

"The argument of the piece is that the perfidious Zionists still seek a "Greater Israel." Anyone who has spent more than ten minutes studying the beliefs of Rabin, Sharon, Olmert, Livni and Barak knows that this is bunk, but why would Mearsheimer care about facts? He has proven his distaste for reality already."

I think the most obvious and telling point of this asinine quote of Goldberg's, is that he left out the name of the guy campaigning for Prime Minister on a pledge to never return stolen territory and expand West Bank settlements.

The guy who just won. Guess Goldberg should have spent ten more minutes on research.

For deleting that asshole's posts.

Good article today, by the way.

Larry

Yes indeed, Goldberg is another die-hard "boy who cried Fox(man)", if I may twizzle the metaphor.

Speaking of which, I'd be surprised if this thread didn't attract the gang of Usual Hasbarists, unself-consciously hewing to the very blighted and obscene tactics Glenn's piece so thoroughly discredits.

to me is this:

Their trivialization and misuse of those terms have severely diminished the ability to stigmatize and attack real anti-Semitism, because legitimate accusations of anti-Semitism are now conflated with and discredited by the neocons' cynical attempts to wield it as a cheap debating weapon.

I've never fully understood what people like Goldberg are actually defending. They know, or should, that criticism of Israel on the basis of expansionist policies and aggressive, cruel and inhuman waging of war against a defenseless population, is understandable and legitimate.

It's a peculiar psychology that defends the indefensible by forever seeing the specter of annihilation as being just around the corner. Yet they fail to see (or perhaps they see it all too well and are merely just crass manipulators--I don't know) that their support for those policies generate the very anti-semitism they "fear"; no sooner had the Gaza onslaught begun when there were reports of attacks on Jews in Europe as well as desecrations of synagogues.