By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 20, 2006; 7:34 AM

Does an opinion writer have to have an opinion on everything?

More to the point, does such a writer have to weigh in on the Middle East?

Let's be candid: The war between Israel on the one hand and Hamas and Hezbollah on the other--along with the roles played by Iran and Syria, the question of U.S. influence and the 5,000-year history of animosity in that region--is complicated business. If there were any easy answers, someone would have found them long ago.

So while a blogger might have gut feelings about the Mideast mess, are those necessarily worth sharing with the rest of the world?

I raise this because apparently some lefty bloggers have been shying away from the subject, and the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum offers up an explanation:

"Matt Yglesias suggests that I address the topic of why the liberal blogosphere doesn't write very much about Israel-related subjects. I can only speak for myself, of course, and my own reasons for light blogging on this subject are both predictable and banal. Still, here they are:

"1. It sparks unusually vicious comment threads, something this blog hardly needs since comments here spin out of control often enough anyway. Needless to say, this phenomenon is fairly universal. For examples, see here and here. . . .

"2. The fight between Israel and the Palestinians is over half a century old and seems intractable. It follows the same rhythms decade after decade, full of hypocrisy and posturing from both camps, and there seems little to say about it that doesn't eventually boil down to, 'Both sides need to ratchet down the rhetoric and rein in their own extremists.' Aside from being pointless, there are only just so many ways you can say this.

"3. The conflict is fantastically complex, and the partisans on both sides are mostly people who have been following events with fanatical attention to detail for many decades. Ordinary observers can hardly compete in this atmosphere. . . .

"4, As with the conflict itself, punditry is heavily dominated by extremists on both sides. . . .

"5. Posts that display any sense of sympathy for the Palestinians run the risk of provoking . . . accusations of anti-semitism...

"I'd add that liberals have a bigger problem here than conservatives. As near as I can tell, most conservatives simply take the uncomplicated stance that Palestinians are terrorists and that Israel should always respond to provocation in the maximal possible way. The fact that this hasn't worked very well in the past doesn't deter them. Liberals don't really have a similarly undemanding position that's suitable for the quick-hit nature of blogging."

Kos takes note of the Drum posting, and offers his own take on why punditry matters little:

"Me? I grew up in a war zone. And there was one clear lesson I learned -- there will never be peace unless both sides get tired of the fighting and start seeking an alternative.

"It's clear that in the Middle East, no one is sick of the fighting. They have centuries of grudges to resolve, and will continue fighting until they can get over them. And considering that they obviously have no interest in 'getting over them,' we're stuck with a war that will not end in any foreseeable future. It doesn't matter what we bloggers say. It doesn't matter what the President of the United States says. Or the United Nations. Or the usual bloviating gasbag pundits.

"When two sides are this dead-set on killing each other, very little can get in the way."

That drew a ruler across the Kos knuckles from Matthew Yglesias at TPM Cafe:

"I don't really think this is a viable position for people to take.

"For one thing, like it or not the United States is involved. We give an awful lot of money to Israel, and we also give a nice chunk of change to Egypt to help underwrite the Egypt-Israel peace accords. Our policy to Jordan is also linked to Jordan's relatively favorable attitude toward Israel. Conversely, the two countries in the region with whom we have the most hostile relationships -- Syria and Iran -- are not coincidentally the two countries that support rejectionist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.Israel issues, in other words, aren't just Israel issues. They link up with the other topics in the key region of the 'war on terror.'"

Drum feels compelled to respond as well:

"It's one thing for an individual blogger to feel inadequate to the task of commenting on any particular subject, but I don't think that means it's OK to throw in the towel entirely and give everyone else a pass at the same time. As past officeholders have shown, it does matter what the president of the United States says (and does), and it does matter what the UN and other international actors say (and do). After all, even if they can't pull lasting peace and harmony out of their back pockets, they always retain the possibility of making things worse."

See, even when bloggers say they don't have much to say, they've got plenty to say.

In a similar vein, the Nation's Ari Berman says:

"I almost never write about Israel. Someone who supports the Jewish state but opposes the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, as I do, generally gets flack from all sides. Too many on the left are reflexively anti-Israel. But too many in the so-called American mainstream are too quick to back whatever military excursion Israel undertakes--no matter how unproductive or misguided.

"Nowhere is the knee-jerk support of Israel more clear than in the debate in Congress this week--or lack thereof--over the Israeli bombing of Lebanon. Leaders of both parties have been quick to forcefully condemn Hamas and Hezbollah while offering unconditional support for Israel's bombing of civilian Beirut."

You don't usually see this headline on a liberal Web site: "Don't Blame Bush." But Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg --who recently returned from a trip to the Israeli-Lebanese border, funded by AIPAC--exonerates the president:

"We don't really know why Hezbollah chose the moment it did to end this fragile truce by launching a raid that killed three Israeli soldiers and resulted in the kidnapping of two others. . . .

"We do know enough, however, to divide responsibility for the current war among these players: Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. This has not stopped many analysts in Europe and the United States from laying blame for the violence squarely at a less obvious doorstep--that of the Bush administration. . . .

"There are three basic criticisms. The most familiar is that Bush encouraged the Arab-Israeli conflict by neglecting the peace process championed by Bill Clinton. The problem with this line of reasoning--which comes mainly from the liberal side--is that negotiations were at a genuine impasse when Bush arrived in office. . . .

"A second case against Bush, which comes from advocates of diplomacy and negotiation as the solution to all the world's problems, is that he failed to directly engage with Syria, Iran, and Hamas, leaving them to their mischief. Like the first objection, this one confuses the process of foreign policy with the substance. It has been a hallmark of Bush's approach to isolate rather than engage rogue regimes. . . .

"You can blame Bush for a lot of mistakes, and I do, but not for the latest turn in the seemingly eternal and eternally depressing Arab-Israeli conflict."

Weisberg shows he's not a knee-jerk partisan. But wouldn't it have been better if Slate, and not a pro-Israel lobby, had paid for his trip?

This stem-cell debate would have been huge if it wasn't being overshadowed by two wars, but Bush finally took out his veto pen yesterday:

"President Bush bluntly and swiftly defied a bipartisan majority in Congress and a strong current in public opinion and exercised his veto power for the first time today to block an expansion of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research," says the Los Angeles Times . "Within hours of Bush's announcement, a House effort to override the veto fell 51 votes short of the required two-thirds majority, effectively killing the bill for the rest of the year. The vote was 235 for the override and 193 opposed, with 51 Republicans siding against the president. "Bush cast his legislative triumph as a victory of conscience, not a setback for science. He said the veto will discourage research that involves the destruction of human embryos to extract the stem cells that scientists believe can generate vast varieties of healthy cells that can replace diseased cells in humans."

Of course, it's hard to declare a "triumph" when 63 senators, in a chamber controlled by your party, vote against your position. "The issue underscored the weakening hold Bush has on his party, as he failed to persuade GOP leaders -- unlike many earlier occasions -- to send him only legislation he finds acceptable. But his stalwart opposition to the bill provided a reminder that even a weakened second-term president retains enormous clout in the veto power that Bush has been so restrained in using."

Says the New York Times : "By defying the Republican-controlled Congress, which had sent him legislation that would have overturned research restrictions he imposed five years ago, Mr. Bush re-inserted himself forcefully into a moral, scientific and political debate in which Republicans are increasingly finding common ground with Democrats. . . .

"Beyond the principles involved, the White House had clearly calculated that it would have been more of a political mistake to sign the bill. Social conservatives, the heart of Mr. Bush's base, had demanded the president keep his promise to veto any measure that altered the careful compromise he articulated in 2001. With Mr. Bush's approval ratings hovering at about 40 percent, conservatives are more critical than ever to the president, and he cannot afford to arouse their ire."

The Chicago Tribune looks at Dr. Rove's role:

"When White House political adviser Karl Rove signaled last week that President Bush planned to veto the stem cell bill being considered by the Senate, the reasons he gave went beyond the president's moral qualms with research on human embryos. In fact, Rove waded into deeply contentious scientific territory, telling the Denver Post's editorial board that researchers have found 'far more promise from adult stem cells than from embryonic stem cells.'. . . .

"But Rove's negative appraisal of embryonic stem cell research--echoed by many opponents of funding for such research--is inaccurate, according to most stem cell research scientists, including a dozen contacted for this story."

There's still lots of chatter about the Bush/Merkel encounter. James Wolcott says it's no joking matter:

"Most of the commentary I've seen regarding President Bush's impromptu shoulder-rub/aborted massage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G8 summit has treated the incident as a light, wacky divertissement, much like Bush's goofball attempt to make a dramatic exit from a press conf in China only to be thwarted by a locked door. Certainly there's something intrinsically comic about a freelance prowling masseur looking for flesh to knead. . . .

"Bush's behavior crosses more boundaries, and not just because the Leader of the Free World doesn't normally lay his playful hands on the opposite sex in his high-powered public forums. Put simply, what Bush did is a very odd way for a married man to behave under most circumstances, even odder under these...

"He wasn't giving Merkel a massage, he was taking possession of her, letting everybody know, "This little lady's mine." I wonder what Merkel's husband thought of Bush's handy familiarity. I can't imagine Laura Bush was too thrilled."

Tony Snow stiff-arms Helen Thomas at a White House briefing. Crooks and Liars has the transcript:

THOMAS: We have gone for collective punishment against all of Lebanon and Palestine. And what's happening -- and that's the perception of the United States.

SNOW: Well, thank you for the Hezbollah view, but I would encourage you. . . .

THOMAS: Nobody's accepting your explanation. What is it say, to call for. . . .

SNOW: I'll tell you, what's interesting is people have. The G-8 was completely united on this.

There have been similar studies, but here's the pdf file of a San Jose State University poll of network viewers. It says 50 percent of Californians who rely on the broadcast networks for news are Democrats, as are 51 percent of those who rely on CNN and MSNBC. Among those who choose Fox News, 71 percent are Republicans and only 19 percent are Democrats.

Has one of the contributors to the anonymous blog Strumpette (which I wrote about yesterday) outed herself ? Norah even includes a picture.

Finally, Philly Inquirer columnist Tom Ferrick is getting a little hot under the collar:

"I don't get this weather. It's crazy.

Have you noticed it keeps getting hotter and hotter?

"It seems to happen this way every year, especially in July and August.

"I can't understand it.

"Here at the paper, we are trying to understand it, too.

"We sent out a team of reporters yesterday, who fanned across the region.

"When they came back, they reported: It is hot everywhere! Very hot!

"The city editor said: You mean everywhere?!

"They said: Yes, everywhere!

"He said: This is front-page news!

"And so it was done.

"Ditto television.

"Counting overtime, the stations probably spent $250,000 yesterday to tell you that it is summer and that it is hot."