'The Israel Lobby' Continues to Poison Leftist Politics

(Note: When I place "The Israel Lobby" in quotes like that, I'm referring to the Mearsheimer and Walt smear thesis of a Jewish interest group section that dominates U.S. policy making toward Israel. I thought I'd put this up at top so there's no misunderstanding about my meaning at the title.)

There's a ferocious backlash against Thomas Friedman's latest New York Times column, "Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir."

Instapundit has the link to Jennifer Rubin's essay hammering Friedman, and see also Power Line, "Tom Friedman Goes Mearsheimer and Walt."

And still more from Jonathan Tobin at Commentary, "Thomas Friedman and the New Anti-Semitism-Part One":

The notion that the only reason politicians support Israel is because of Jewish money is a central myth of a new form of anti-Semitism which masquerades as a defense of American foreign policy against the depredations of a venal Israel lobby. This canard not only feeds off of the traditional themes of Jew-hatred, it also requires Friedman to ignore the deep roots of American backing for Zionism in our history and culture.

Friedman goes on to embarrass himself by contrasting the reception Netanyahu received on Capitol Hill to the one he might get at a center of leftist academia such as the University of Wisconsin. There’s little doubt he would not be cheered there. But the same would be true of most American politicians or thinkers who deviated from leftist Orthodoxy. The notion that liberal campuses are more representative of opinion about Israel than Congress is laughable. It is the sort of whopper one has come to expect from the liberal chorus on the Times op-ed page and shows Netanyahu may have a better feel for what Americans think than Friedman.

And continued here: "Thomas Friedman and the New Anti-Semitism-Part Two."

Meanwhile, check yet another installment of Mondoweiss thanking God for Mearseimer and Walt, "Why did it take 6 years to talk about the Israel lobby?"

My good friend Norm tells me that these people hate, that progressive especially hate Israel, and that it's not going away. But I can't stop shaking my head at the enormous chasm I see whenever I read this stuff. Mondoweiss (and I mean Phillip Weiss) argues that "The Israel Lobby" smear has now gone mainstream and that it's "safe" for journalists like Chris Matthews to come aboard the good ship anti-Semitism. I guess that it's just that I'd not realized how exterminationist is the left-wing project. So, I shake my head partly out of my own naïvity. There's a war going on, and it's fully enjoined on the question of the defense of Israel. Game on, I say. And give no quarter to these f-kers.

Anyway, more from Elliott Abrams, "Mr. Friedman’s Diatribe Against Israel."