Anti-Semitisim in Ha'aretz?

Remember when New York Times columnist David Brooks made the case that the critics of the neoconservatives are anti-semitic? ([C]on is short for "conservative" and neo is short for "Jewish")

Brooks's lede was about how stories of a "tightly knit neocon cabal" were appearing in the world press: The Asian press had the most lurid stories; the European press the most thorough. Every day, it seemed, Le Monde or some deep-thinking German paper would have an exposé on the neocon cabal, complete with charts connecting all the conspirators.

It seems that we can now add Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz to the list of foreign newspapers peddling anti-semitic conspiracy theories to the full-moon crowd. In an opinion piece entitled "Ending the Neoconservative Nightmare," Daniel Levy writes:

In 1996 a group of then opposition U.S. policy agitators, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, presented a paper entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" to incoming Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The "clean break" was from the prevailing peace process, advocating that Israel pursue a combination of roll-back, destabilization and containment in the region, including striking at Syria and removing Saddam Hussein from power in favor of "Hashemite control in Iraq." The Israeli horse they backed then was not up to the task.

Ten years later, as Netanyahu languishes in the opposition, as head of a small Likud faction, Perle, Feith and their neoconservative friends have justifiably earned a reputation as awesome wielders of foreign-policy influence under George W. Bush.

(via Josh Marshall)