An Hypothesis on the "Israel Lobby" Coverage

A writer for salon.com recently pulled an Alterman in mentioning only op-ed attacks on the "Israel Lobby" and not the ever-increasing amount of scholarly rebuttals, with the exception of Alan Dershowitz's much-publicized rebuttal.

I'm starting to sense a pattern here. The cynic in me says that, of course, "Israel critics" will only mention emotional attacks and ignore more temperate ones in order to set up a straw man of "hysterical ranting" on the part of Israel defenders. Still, I'm starting to think that there's a more prosaic reason for this behavior.

Put simply, the MSM only pays attention to itself. Only op-eds or newspaper articles, where there is very little space to conduct academic argument, are mentioned, as are "celebrities" such as Alan Dershowitz or "anti-celebrities" such as Norman Finkelstein. Rebuttals posted on non-MSM websites such as Jewish institutions or on (not necesarilly Jewish) blogs, are simply ignored - they don't count.

The fact that the author of the above-mentioned article makes no mention whatsoever of Martin Kramer's site, which has been covering the issue from day 1 and has provided at least two witty and informed rebuttals, says something about the self-contained nature of the MSM. It reminds me of similiar tendencies at academic conferences, where scholars repeat each other and refuse to actually step into the world, outside their little bubble.