Earlier this month, Jonathan Chait posted at New York magazine's Daily Intelligencer a response to the popular notion among environmental crowds that conservative aversion to accepting the reality of anthropogenic global warming is due to descriptions of AGW in liberal terminology and that conservative terminology would help them realize what is actually at stake. Ultimately, Chait's conclusion that conservative's real impediment to following the science of climate-change is that they get their news about the issues from their party elites, and that Republican Party elites almost unanimously declare that climate change is a hoax.
Such is a factor in liberal opinion about the Arab-Israeli conflict. In elite intellectual circles in the West, the mark of Seriousness in relating to Middle East affairs is to declare that Israel's denial of the Palestinians of their legitimate rights to self-determination is the core issue behind all conflicts in the Middle East. To be considered Serious in Israel-Palestinian negotiations, one has to accept that because the international community has accepted Jordan's conquest of 1949, Israel has to accept that Jewish rights end at Jordan's 1949-line of conquest. Aggravating this, western reporters look for truthy rather than true depictions of the conflict, meaning that facts showing Israel doing to the Palestinians what the narrative says it does are highlighted or embellished while facts contradicting the narrative are suppressed. In the meantime, just as the Right uses derisive language to describe anyone who promotes the scientific understanding of human effects on climate, the Very Serious People on the Middle East dismiss anyone who tries to call attention to facts contradicting the narrative, such as the large number of terrorists matched to names identified as "civilians" by the Gaza
