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Maureen Dowd’s Repellent Slime
- Abstract
Maureen Dowd’s Repellent Slime
The debate about Israel’s demand for “red lines” relating to the Iranian nuclear threat was revelatory: It showed that many of those who criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appeals care less about the danger Iran poses and more about the possibility of an Israeli response. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was just the most conspicuous of those who sought to demonize Netanyahu and American supporters of Israel for seeking some kind of limit to the Obama administration’s failed policy of reliance on dead-end diplomacy and loosely enforced sanctions.
That one of the Times’s star writers would be allowed to accuse prominent Jews of playing “puppet-master” to Republicans in order to give their fellow Jews room to “invade and bomb Israel’s neighbors” illustrates the way the “Israel Lobby” canard has been adopted by mainstream liberals. That some among the chattering classes are willing to promote such smears is an indication of how easily many on the left buy into anti-Israel conspiracy theories. When you combine that with the administration’s refusal to issue red lines that might help avoid the use of force, it’s no wonder that Iran believes it has little to worry about from the West.
About the Author
Jonathan Tobin is senior online editor of COMMENTARY.
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