Atlantic writers are apparently deciding between their earlier Jews are "indoctrinating" Palin line and this new smear. Particularly rich from the side whose guy has Palestinians in Gaza working the phones for him. Which is the same guy who just got done meeting with the same Palestinians who are now mursing about handing over the West Bank to Hamas. Obama's behavior during those meetings is particular instructive, since Abbas had just gone out of his way to celebrate a terrorist child murderer.

And yet:

A representative of the McCain campaign on Monday accused a blogger on the Atlantic website of libel in response to a blog on the website entitled "Palin endorses Hamas." The blog mocked McCain running mate Sarah Palin's difficulty answering a question from Katie Couric, in which she gave a sweeping endorsement of democracy in the Middle East. Michael Goldfarb of the McCain campaign issued a statement to the Atlantic Monthly on Monday saying "Governor Palin did no such thing, and your title is nothing short of slander. Having read your work for some time I doubt that you believe Hamas qualifies as "those who seek democracy." That you would put those words in Governor Palin's mouth is libel." In the post, Jeremy Goldberg mocked Palin's inability to issue a nuanced response when Couric asked "What happens if the goal of democracy doesn't produce the desired outcome? In Gaza, the U.S. pushed hard for elections and Hamas won."

Sarah Palin has problems reconciling democracy promotion with Arab and Muslim radicalism? Wow. That makes her exactly the same as every other honest conservative who wants a solution to the Middle East that stops short of mass Palestinian deportation and/or a Great Powers war in the region. Liberal foreign policy experts don't have that problem because they just unblinkingly assert - against all evidence - that moderation is right around the corner. Convenient for them, but not much help to the rest of us.

No wonder the foreign policy left smears Palin. It's either that or a discussion about how deeply hostile their entire worldview is to the US-Israel alliance. According to their understanding of the Middle East, all problems inevitably come back to Israeli misbehavior - misbehavior to which the US is either implicitly or explicitly linked. So even when Obama claims to be pro-Israel - and even when he's not either incoherent on the subject or about to take it back - his support still comes in spite of how Israel is the root of the problem.

Iranian nuclearization, for instance? It's a problem, but mostly because Israel might overreact. And that's not an isolated example: this way of thinking runs through Obama's entire approach to foreign policy, up to and including linking Israel to the entire breadth and depth of Middle East instability. The breathtakingly clear blockquote on that, plus more on Obama's foreign policy team, is behind the jump.