Unfair to Andrew Sullivan

Goldblog reader Joshua "Khan" Yunis writes:

In regard to Andrew Sullivan you write: "People who don't like Israel very much hold it to a special standard, created for one scapegoated country alone. On this count -- and only this count, so far as I can tell -- Andrew sometimes fails the test. There are times lately when he seems to single out Israel for special excoriation, and times when he holds Israel to a double-standard."

I don't know about this.  Sullivan expends far more energy over America's torture regime and its violation of the Geneva conventions, etc. than he does over Israel.  Whatever excoriating he does, he saves the worst for the United States. 

Furthermore, he always stresses that his criticisms of Israel are of a Western democracy, which is far different from other repressive regimes in the Middle East.  He was (rightly of course) far more obsessive and critical in his coverage of the protests against the Iranian regime.

Yes, sometimes he exhibits some troubling  paranoia on the issue of the Israel lobby.  But I think criticizing him for holding Israel to a double-standard is off the mark.  What he does is far, far different from the intellectual and moral hypocrisy of Naomi Klein and her ilk (see Toronto Film Festival, for example).  That is holding Israel to a double-standard, and if not anti-Semitism, its something just as troubling.  But that's not what Andrew Sullivan does--he doesn't call for boycotts or use the language of apartheid.  For these reasons, I think it's unfair of you to accuse him of the cursed "double-standard."