A pretty memorable New York Times op-Roger Cohen’s latest opinion column is an off-putting muddle of contempt for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Cohen’s legacy as a public intellectual on the topic of the Middle East has long been mixed; in 2009, he played the useful idiot when he concluded, during a trip to Iran, that the hospitality he received as a Jew there, was a sign that the country was misunderstood. The 25,000 Jews living there (remnants of the once 80,000-strong community) were proof of Iran’s plurality. When the election-rigging regime cracked down on democratic dissidents a few months later, Cohen expressed his support for the demonstrators as they were beaten, silenced, and shot into submission.
