I don’t want belabor my dispute with Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic, but I note that another one of the Atlantic’s liberal bloggers agrees with me. Although Matthew Yglesias accuses me of flinging “hysterical accusations” at Goldberg, he actually agrees with my chief accusation: that there is not a shekel’s worth of difference between Goldberg and Mearsheimer-Walt on the questionof American policy toward West Bank settlements. Yglesias writes:

Goldberg . . . charges AIPAC with preventing the United States from putting any meat on the bones of its policy against Israel’s West Bank settlements. Walt and Mearsheimer agree with this. Goldberg argues that unless Israel removes those settlements, it will increasingly find itself becoming an apartheid-style country where a Jewish minority rules over a disenfranchised Arab and Muslim minority. Walt and Mearsheimer think so, too. The difference is that Goldberg primarily sees this as bad for Israel whereas Walt and Mearsheimer primarily see it as bad for the United States but surely it can be bad for both! And even if not, the disagreement here is about something relatively minor with both sides agreeing that the American failure to apply pressure is a bad thing, and both sides pointing the finger at AIPAC.

For my part, I disagree with both Goldberg and Mearsheimer-Walt. What’s keeping the settlements from being dismantled is not the views of AIPAC but the views of most ordinary Israelis who, for the time being at least, have given up hope that territorial concessions can win peace from the Palestinians. Why Goldberg feels compelled to use this issue as a cudgel against AIPAC and other groups is a mystery to me, especially when he has otherwise been a stalwart critic of the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis. He would better direct his rhetorical fire at the Palestinians, who are once again proving the validity of Abba Ebban’s famous quip: “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”