Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Shake Hands with the Devil

Okay, there's always been people out there who have asserted something like the following: "asking Israel to give up the settlements in Gaza and the West Bank makes you an anti-semite." These people are usually kept in a small corner of right-wing discourse, and sane people on both sides of this (obviously very heated) argument have been able to ignore them.

Let's ignore for the moment that most Jews, by this definition, are anti-semites. It also happens to be the stated official position of most governments around the world, including the American government pre-Dubya, that Israel should in fact abandon the settlement enterprise and live within it's acknowledged borders.

It also happens to be the opinion held by Merrill McPeak, former USAF General and Barack Obama advisor. For this, Sen. Clinton's campaign is calling him... an anti-semite. (And yes, pushing an article written by someone else that calls him an anti-semite is the same bloody thing.)

Time's up. First Wright, now this. Ring the gong, get the hook, whatever. I've defended a lot of hardball on the part of Sen. Clinton's campaign, but this really is too much. This is also the first piece of evidence I've seen that suggests to me that Clinton is actually trying to poison the well -- trying to ruin Obama's chances in the general election, whether she can win or not. I'd been deeply skeptical of this notion before now, but this is making me reconsider.

1 comment:

That guy said...

Er, are we sure that Armbinder's got this story right? It's not sourced, and it's not clear to me who in the Clinton campaign is distributing the article.

Mind you, I'm not saying it's impossible, but there's been so much muck thrown around in those primaries that it's damn hard to see clearly.