Klein vs Commentary

Thursday, 26th June 2008

In case you missed it, Klein is also mired in an unsavoury argument with neoconservatives Max Boot and Jennifer Rubin on the subject of Iraq and Israel. Rubin accused the Time writer of using a ploy "from the anti-Semitic playbook". Klein responds:

I must say that's rather thrilling coming from the Commentary crowd. You want evidence of divided loyalties? How about the "benign domino theory" that so many Jewish neoconservatives talked to me about--off the record, of course--in the run-up to the Iraq war, the idea that Israel's security could be won by taking out Saddam, which would set off a cascade of disaster for Israel's enemies in the region? As my grandmother would say, feh! Do you actually deny that the casus belli that dare not speak its name wasn't, as I wrote in February 2003, a desire to make the world safe for Israel?
Why the rush now to bomb Iran, a country that poses some threat to Israel but none--for the moment--to the United States...unless we go ahead, attack it, and the mullahs unleash Hezbollah terrorists against us? Do you really believe the mullahs would stage a nuclear attack on Israel, destroying the third most holy site in Islam and killing untold numbers of Muslims? I am not ruling out the use of force against Iran--it may come to that--but you folks seem to embrace it gleefully.