Sort of related to The American Conservative article linked below, this Joe Klein post offers an interesting example of how blogs open up the discussion on topics like, but not limited to, Israel. Given the limitations of a print magazine, where you only have X number of pages a year and need to choose them carefully, there's neither the time nor the space nor the incentive to push back against folks you're basically friendly with. So it's very unlikely that Joe Klein would have ever used a paragraph in a column to point out that it's absurd to suggest that the median Palestinians isn't worse off than the median Israeli -- no matter what you think of the actual settlements that should be reached, or who's to blame. The Israel issue is so fraught that, given the nature of print and the firestorm articles on it spark, a throwaway pushback like that would have to come wrapped in a long, meticulously detailed, heavily-qualified, feature piece on the situation. So it probably never would have happened.
Further, most of the pundits on this issue don't have particularly differing views on the policies that should be pursued in Israel. The arguments are really over what constitutes rhetorical excess (i.e, is Barack Obama out of line to say that the Palestinians are suffering more?), and whether AIPAC's clout is under-discussed, and how the Israel Lobby responds to criticism. And when magazines run articles on Israel/Palestine, rightly or wrongly, they don't want the subject to be meta-political disputes in the domestic debate over the issue -- they're not likely, in other words, to devote space to conversations about the conversations. Blogs, lacking space issues, have no such compunction.
