Will a recent attack on progressive journalists help spark a sea-change in the debate over Middle East policy?
December 16, 2011
When Josh Block, a former communications director for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), sent an “oppo dump” about a group of progressive journalists and bloggers at the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Media Matters to a list-serv of conservative journalists and asked them to push the narrative that the writers were echoing “the words of anti-Semites,” he probably didn't think much of it.
After all, this is how self-identified “pro-Israel” activists have long policed the discourse surrounding the Middle East conflict and the “special relationship” that exists between the United States and Israel.
In 2009, an influential Israeli think-tank carefully cherry-picked posts from the Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Salon, quoted them out of context and concluded that “progressive blogs and news sites in the United States are a new field where Jew-hatred, in both its classic and anti-Israeli forms, manifests itself.”
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