Fund on Cole

Juan Cole can defend himself; however, it's worth noting how silly this column by John Fund actually is. I can't even figure out this paragraph:

"Mr. Cole says that he is often unfairly attacked for being anti-Semitic, when in reality he claims he is only critical of Israeli policy. But Michael Oren, a visiting fellow at Yale, notes that in February 2003 Mr. Cole wrote on his blog that 'Apparently [President Bush] has fallen for a line from the neo-cons in his administration that they can deliver the Jewish vote to him in 2004 if only he kisses Sharon's ass.' Mr. Oren says 'clearly that's anti-Semitism; that's not a criticism of Israeli policy.' (Exit polls showed that 74% of the Jewish vote went to John Kerry.)

The word "fallen" clearly conveys the sense that the line in question is untrue, so I'm assuming this is the old idea that referring to people as "neocons" is itself anti-Semitic. If that's the best Fund has to go on, and it's up against such things as Cole's suggestion that American policies in Iraq may have made factionalism worse and contributed to instability and questioning the influence of Likud ideology on some policy-makers, that just shows that they really don't have anything substantive to demonstrate Cole's alleged anti-Semitism.