Time Magazine columnist Joe Klein has expanded the targets of his venom. Not content with insulting the Tea Party Movement, Fox News, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and the average American “dodo,” Klein is now going after the state of Israel and its supporters.
Klein has recommended that Obama should “engage” Hamas, the terrorist thugs running Gaza, in dialogue. Here is what Klein wrote in his most recent Time Magazine column:
the best way to resolve Gaza is for the U.S. to quietly convince Hamas that if it gives up Shalit [the kidnapped Israeli soldier] — a huge issue for the Israelis — the U.S. would work to persuade Israel to lift the siege. The trouble is, the U.S. won’t talk to Hamas. But if Obama’s policy really is about engaging our enemies, he needs to engage Hamas — and Hamas needs to respond. Quickly.
Klein believes that the Obama charm offensive will convince Hamas to release the kidnapped Israeli soldier after years of attempts by Egypt and other intermediaries have failed. For that slim hope, Klein wants the United States to ignore Hamas’ failure to renounce terrorism and its refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Hamas is still committed to destroying Israel and is re-arming to do so.
Jonathan Tobin, the executive editor of the Jewish political affairs magazine, Commentary, criticized Klein’s suggestion on Commentary’s blog yesterday:
what Klein fails to understand is that no matter who sits in the White House, it is not in America’s interest to rescue the killers of Hamas. Rather, it should be our policy to isolate and hopefully oust them from power.
Klein couldn’t stand being called out on his ludicrous position, so the swamp dweller reverted to his usual tactic of ad hominem attack in his Swampland blog:
The neocon extremists over at Commentary have wasted no time responding to my column with their usual bile and bullying. The piece is loaded with inaccuracies and Israel-first stupidity…anything that doesn’t conform to their half-crazed macho crusaderism is seen as either anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. Their constant fury, their slightly-veiled calumnies against the President–and against the very notion of diplomacy–would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous and disgraceful.
Suffice it to say that every time Klein writes like this he demonstrates his own ignorance and mean-spiritedness. He is so impressed with himself that he got to speak with President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad while he was “wandering about the West Bank” this week he ignored that, in Commentary’s words, neither they nor Hamas have “any interest in learning to live with a Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn.”
How do I know that Commentary is right about the Paletinians’ rejection of any notion of Israel surviving as a Jewish state? Because this Joe Klein (yours truly) asked Prime Minister Salam Fayyad that very question at a press briefing at United Nations headquarters last September. The supposed moderate Palestinian responded that a Jewish state was not part of the Palestinian’s agreement to recognize Israel’s right to exist. By the way, even Joe’s hero Barack Obama had specifically referred to a Jewish state living side-by side peacefully with a Palestinian state during his UN General Assembly speech the previous day.
The next time that Joe Klein wanders about the Middle East on Time Magazine’s dime, he might want to actually play the role of journalist and ask some meaningful questions rather than crudely attack the supporters of the Jewish state of Israel.
