Obama runs away from Soros

Obama runs away from Soros on AIPAC:

a) Well, what did you expect? Obama is a pragmatic politician who is running a genuine campaign for president. Is anyone who could possibly be president any braver?

b) Kind of proves Soros' point, dontcha think?

The Soros piece is here, and Joe Lelyveld's excellent discussion of the Jimmy Carter controversy is here. And when you think about pro-Israel bias in the media, consider this for a second. The Washington Post's Book World gave Carter's book not only to someone who's Jewish, not only to someone who worked for the Forward during its days as a neocon outfit, but to someone who served in the Israeli army. And nobody thinks anything of it. Can you imagine the kvetching you'd here from Abe Foxman, Marty Peretz, Alan Dershowitz, etc., if Carter's book had been given to someone who'd fought for the Palestinians and got his start writing for a pro-PLO newspaper? I get a headache just thinking about it.

I was asked by an academic journal last year to peer-review a paper comparing the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in The New York Times and Ha'aretz. I thought it was quite revealing -- and yes, the Times is way more biased toward the hawkish Israeli point of view -- but I don't think it was ever published, which is a shame. It had problems, but was overall quite compelling. If anyone has heard of it since, let me know, pelase.