I like Tigerhawk a lot, and so it's illuminating that even among such sober conservatives as he, the fact that Barack Obama has one foreign policy adviser sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view is creating an uproar. Robert Malley, the adviser in question, was one of Bill Clinton's Middle East negotiators, a key participant in the 2000 Camp David talks, and is now at the International Crisis Group, one of the most remarkable and highly respected international rights organizations around. But Malley has committed the grave sin of voicing doubts about Barak's generosity and negotiating tactics at Camp David, and that's more than enough to spin some on the Right into long and dark essays speculating on the radicalism of Malley's father and his ties to George Soros and 62 other sinister insinuations that don't make sense (my favorite was "advocated engagement with the fiercely anti-American Iraqi Moqtada al-Sadr," which is something noted America-hater General Petraeus has not only advocated, but done). Nor is Malley Obama's only foreign policy adviser. Noted Israel supporter Dennis Ross, whose book The Missing Peace provides much of the historical ammunition for those doubting Malley's account at Camp David, is also an Obama adviser. And this diversity of views on a conflict sustained by...a chasm-like diversity of views would, to most of us, seem like a good thing, evidence that the Obama team is serious abut working towards a settlement. But if you're of the school that believes Israel should exist in a constant state of virtuous struggle and needs, for that story, to see the small country as perpetually beset by unidimensionally sinister enemies, then I guess evidence that a presidential candidate was planning to try and end the conflict rather than better arm it would indeed prove unsettling.
