Updated: "Liberal" neocon trashes Carter's new book (without reading it) ...

Just as Jerry Seinfeld had Newman (Newman!), so too do I have a nemesis. He's David Lublin, and he's a scholar who writes for the Gadflyer, as well as on his own blog, Maryland Politics Watch (which he promised would have a "a Democratic and DC suburban point of view" -- finally white suburban Dems get a voice!).

Anyway, Lublin hates liberals and Arabs, likes to use the word "Islamofascism," supported the war in Iraq and can be counted on to classify any criticism of Israel as an outpouring of anti-Semitism. What's not to like?

We get into flame wars, which I generally don't bother AlterNet readers with -- I'm happy to encourage his obscurity. But today, Lublin came out with a hit piece on Jimmy Carter's new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and I want to highlight it because it's such a good example of the kind of knee-jerk reaction that can be expected when one asserts that Palestinians may have some legitimate claims.

Lublin admits he didn't read the book, before lighting into it. I haven't read the book either, so I can only look at who he sources in his smear of Carter.

Dennis Ross is one -- he doesn't like Carter's thesis. Ross, Lublin says, is the author of "the most detailed report on [the second Camp David] talks from someone who attended them who was not Israeli or Palestinian." That's true, but as Ann Lesch noted:

Ross ignores the perspectives of other participants in these negotiations. This comes across as breathtaking egotism. Only his own opinions and recollections count; there is no need to double check or cross-check them against the memoirs of others. Thus, although he cites in passing James Baker's The Politics of Diplomacy, Clinton's press secretary George Stephanopoulos' All Too Human, and Israeli ambassador cum Syria specialist Itamar Rabinovich's The Brink of Peace, he fails to comment on or assess their viewpoints. Moreover, one searches in vain for mention of and critiques of the discussion of Middle East issues in George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft's A World Transformed, Bill Clinton's My Life, Warren Christopher's Choices of a Lifetime, and Madeleine Albright's Madam Secretary: A Memoir, much less articles by his fellow diplomats Martin Indyk, Daniel Kurtzer, Rob Malley, Aaron David Miller, and Edward (Ned) Walker. The result is a version of history that privileges not only an American perspective but one specific perspective: his own. [Read more of her critique here].

And while David presents Ross as just an impartial observer -- dismissing Carter's claim that "representatives of Jewish organizations who would be unlikely to visit the occupied territories" were the leading critics of his book -- he skips over the fact that Ross is currently Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a hawkish Israeli-American think-tank started by Martin Indyk (himself a former research director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee).Ross's colleagues at WINEP are Joshua Muravchik, who recently wrote that "WE MUST bomb Iran," Indyk, Martin Kramer, a neo-McCarthyite who writes for the National Review and David Horowitz's Frontpage Mag (and is a supporter of Campus-Watch and an advocate of HR 3077) and Moshe Ya'alon, a former IDF Chief of Staff, briefly wanted in Australia for war crimes, who's famous for his claim that "The Palestinian threat harbors cancer-like attributes that have to be severed."

As rightweb notes, "WINEP aims to cultivate close ties among senior military officials in the United States and Israel, as well as in Turkey and Jordan…"

When he's not working his regular Fox News gig, Ross is also the first chairman of a new Jerusalem-based think tank called the Institute for Jewish People Policy Planning, which is funded by … yup, the Israeli government.