Thanks for posting the Juan Cole piece. I stopped reading him a couple of years ago, so I would have missed it otherwise. Adler I need to read some of. He ties together some thoughts I've had about poisonous politics that have been brewing for a while.

Cole's exegesis is interesting, but I think it's a serious stretch. First, I don't think La Palin herself has the political or historical awareness to make the kinds of rhetorical choices Cole is crediting her with. Maybe her speech writers do, but I doubt it. I think it more likely that they heard the phrase used by some other conservative media outlet (I hear the WSJ used it earlier) and decided that it sounded both good and inflammatory, with little understanding of its historical context or its potential impact, and lobbed it out there as carelessly as they lob other incendiary language. Besides, as Susannah Heschel points out, Palin's defense of herself was so full of pretzel logic (we have the right to say whatever we want to, but don't pin this blood libel on me--I'm innocent of provocative talk!) that the kind of forethought Cole seems to be arguing for is beyond any conceivable deliberate decision-making.

And I have trouble taking seriously anyone who calls the Palestinians innocent without some sort of caveat. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians are innocent in the conflict in Israel. It's not a black-and-white issue, and anyone who sees it that way is being willfully naive.