I used to think that this guy was a mendacious hack who sniveled pathetically when forced to confront the anti-Semitism of his vicious leftist friends. But now I'm beginning to think that he's merely a garden-variety idiot:

Supporters of the status quo had better get used to it. The American approach to the Middle East is changing and the shift in the media is just one sign of it. Most important of all, America has changed... Obama's America is going to be even-handed in the Middle East not only because that is what Obama is, but because it is what most Americans today expect and want. Younger people, in particular, cannot even imagine that anyone would suggest that even-handedness is bad. To them, that is like saying that the best referee is one who bends the rules to favor one team. It is offensive to assume that even-handedness is bad for Israel. To decry even-handedness as intrinsically anti-Israel is to argue that any fair observer will always choose the anti-Israel position. That is as perverse as it is wrong. And it is insulting to recommend that the United States be anything but an honest broker in the Middle East...

No matter who is elected [Israeli] prime minister, he or she will try to get along with our new President. What choice do they have? They know that George W. Bush, with his utterly destructive "support" for Israel, is gone. It's a new day and, for Israel, that will mean dialing down the rhetoric. Far more significantly, it means changing policies -- starting with an end to the settlement enterprise. That is what Israel's friends here want -- an end to the occupation and the full implementation of the two-state solution now, before it is too late.

Actually, when one side is objectively more to blame - when one side makes territorial concessions and the other responds with rockets, when one side uses human shields and the other minimizes civilian casualties, when one side is willing to accept a two-state solution and the other is controlled by genocidal fanatics - then "even-handedly" blaming both sides is in fact "bad." But at least Rosenberg is "Israel's friend." It's true that he vehemently disagrees with Cast Lead, an operation supported by the Israeli government, the Israeli military, and the Israeli people. But his parents and teachers always told him he could be whatever he wanted, and he decided to be "pro-Israel." So there.

My favorite part was actually a little earlier:

In one area, Israel clearly lost: public opinion. In the past, a distinction could be made between how America reacted to a Middle Eastern war and how the rest of the world did. Judging from media coverage, this time there was little difference between America and everywhere else... The impact on public opinion has been striking. Other than within the more conservative segment of the pro-Israel community, there was little show of support for this war. In New York, a city where crowds of 250,000 have come out for "solidarity" rallies in the past, only 8,000 came to Manhattan for a community demonstration on a sunny Sunday. The same skepticism about the war was true elsewhere and Israelis noticed the break with past patterns.

First of all, the majority of Americans supported Israel's response to Hamas's war crimes. Only leftists consistently opposed Operation Cast Lead. But don't get distracted by the factual sleight-of-hand, lest you miss the article's full elegance: since Americans find Israeli self-defense distasteful - which is actually just his fantasy, but whatever - because of that Israelis should embrace US pressure to do things they oppose. The unseemliness and implicit thuggishness of the reasoning aside - it's just dumb.

Rosenberg and his J-Street allies are more anti-Israel than countries that are dedicated to wiping out Israel. Fair enough. But their "anti-Israel partisans won so nah nah nah" strutting - the slightly-too-exuberant swagger of the scrawny kid who just got assigned Hall Monitor - is already obnoxious. No need to also make it offensively stupid.

References and previously after the jump...