With the New Year approaching, it’s a good time to take stock of the U.S. government’s response to the political upheaval throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Government officials continue to grapple with how best to balance American security interests with support for expanding democratic rights in the region. In recent important speeches, however, Hillary Clinton layed out the U.S. intention to support these transitioning countries and their citizens.

Notably absent from the conversation, though, is how the State Department and other key U.S. foreign affairs agencies can do a better job detecting –- and responding to –- crisis and conflict writ large. Such tools are essential given the increasing regularity with which political instability can emerge anywhere in the world.

As the first-ever Quadrennial Defense and Development Review noted, “With the right tools, training, and leadership, our diplomats and development experts can defuse crises before they explode.” Indeed, as political dynamics around the globe continue to shift unexpectedly, preventing and responding to expensive and destructive global crises will need to be incorporated as a cornerstone of our foreign policy — not an afterthought. If the United States wants to become a more effective international player and avoid costly engagements, our diplomats and development experts need to possess the right skill set. And let the price of the just concluded Iraq war underscore the huge price to be paid when we get our analysis wrong.

While the bulk of Americans probably assume their diplomats and development experts are the best trained, they would be shocked to learn how little training these officials actually received, especially compared to those who serve in the military. In fact, former Secretary of State Colin Powell noted that he spent 6 out of his 30 years of service in the classroom. With better and more regularized training, diplomats and development experts can help advance democracy, galvanize economic growth, and strengthen the rule of law before a conflict emerges — not after. Without it, they are left making ad-hoc and reactive decisions that end up costing a whole lot more.

The newly upgraded Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations is a tremendously important first step in the State Department’s effort to “get ahead of change” -– particularly with Rick Barton as its inaugural Assistant Secretary. But if the bureau is going help ensure crisis prevention is a core consideration of policy making, it must be underpinned by a more broad-based comprehensive training initiative.

A new joint report from the Center for American Progress’ Sustainable Security Program and Humanity United — entitled “It All Starts with Training” — delineates the profound need for improved training courses and professional development opportunities at core U.S. foreign affairs agencies. As the paper makes painfully clear, the current state of conflict prevention training at both State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) remains shockingly limited, ad hoc, and uncoordinated. In fact, training has little or no link to career advancement, as opposed to our military branches, and is often seen as an inconvenience rather than an asset.

Expanded and mainstreamed crisis prevention training is certainly no foreign policy panacea, but with such a high number of countries around the globe at risk of unrest and wholesale violence, it’s high time we ensure American diplomats and development experts at least have the right tools to respond. Unless the United States can get ahead of this curve and does a better job in crisis prevention and mitigation, the costs to America — and its national interests — will remain untenable.

[SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE NOVELS TO FOLLOW]

I think the biggest question for me will be how the second season of the show handles the themes of governance that are so important to A Clash of Kings. Other than Jon Snow’s attempts to reform the Wall, the struggle between Joffrey and Cersei on one side and Tyrion on the other over how to run King’s Landing — and by extension, the realm — is one of the few experiments in and debates over governing philosophies we ever see in action. Cersei’s devoted all of her efforts to bolstering the hard power of King’s Landing, recruiting new men into the City Watch, spending coin on wildfire, displaying heads on walls, and paying for it all with a tax that’s throttled already constricted trade. Tyrion comes in and shifts the balance, opening up trade, making a deal with the city’s armorers that both bolsters their trade and lets him prepare to wage unconventional warfare, and takes the heads off the walls in an effort to make the regime less savage. He institutes actual diplomatic relations with Dorne, which you think someone else might have considered at some point earlier, given their utterly badass reputation.

He’s not perfect, of course. The riot that sweeps the city is an augury that neither Tyrion or Cersei read fully (much to the latter’s dismay later) — it always surprises me that Cersei and her advisers are caught off-guard by an upswing in religious fervor during times of insecurity. The fact that even the Lannister who loves learning, who actually has the intellectual curiosity to want to see the end of the world, can’t accept what Ser Allister Thorne is telling him about the White Walkers on the border suggests something powerful about the limitations of our collective ability to grapple with the monstrous and unthinkable. And Tyrion is too personal when it comes to reforming the Small Council, failing to appreciate Maester Pycelle’s abilities and connections (and given the scene the show gave us of his secret vigor, I wonder if he might not resist Tyrion more strongly than in the novels).

All in all, it’s a parable for the dangers of allowing your governance to become personal. Tyrion is doomed to failure when his rule becomes as much about discipling Joffrey and proving his father wrong about his abilities. Both are futile tasks. Joffrey’s already a hopeless sadist with an elevated sense of his own wisdom by the time Tyrion gets anywhere close to him. Tywin ultimately turns out to be flexible, but not in ways that lend him strength or reason. King’s Landing might have turned out to be genuinely salvageable, the unbreakable link in a chain of Lannister defenses. But disciplining these three generations of Lannisters or restoring them to decency isn’t a project worth Tyrion’s considerable talents.

In the absence of photography, painting played a critical role in documenting everything from gift-giving rituals to assessing military positioning. Surveyor Robert Mabon made jewel-like portraits of the presents that were part of diplomatic exchanges like the one to the right here and of techniques for saddling horses complete with painstakingly detailed notes. Warren Hastings, the British governor of Bengal, commissioned William Hodges to paint the fortresses controlled by Raja Chait Singh so he could assess the strength of the forces behind a rebellion — the results included both military useful information and an impressionistic sense of Indian landscapes. And art even became part of British and Indian diplomatic traditions. To both meet the requirements of their budgeteers and to avoid the perception that they were being corrupted by establishing the lavish, jeweled gifts that were traditionally exchanged in the Mughal court, British diplomats created a new tradition of exchanging portraits, creating a new Indian market for British painters.

And even when they weren’t creating art for the purpose of cultural exchange in Indian, British artists constantly wrote themselves into the images of India — and some of those portraits may have been more revealing than they were intended to be. In Thomas Danielle’s painting of Sir Charles Ware signing a treaty in 1770 with the Maratha Empire, British officers are seated on the floor of a palace in the style of their hosts, displaying attitudes that range from ease, to extreme dignity, to wondrous excitement at the circumstances. Painter James Wales wrote that Charles Warre Malet told him of his 40-day journey to see the Taj Mahal that “at first sight how well his journey was justified.” It makes sense that the British would want to see their efforts, even a more than a month-long site-seeing schlep, as worth the work, no matter how strenuous. Bathazar Solvyns, a Belgian who wrote a dubious anthropological survey of India, revealed as much about himself and his gaze as he did about his subjects when he wrote of dancing girls he observed that “their movements are confined, being either extremely rapid or solemnly slow, and their attitudes or gestures, which are sometimes graceful, are almost always indecent, there therefore disgusting; their general object is to excite desire, and where they succeed, there are not to be found much to envy.” In Arthur William Devis’ “Portrait of a Gentleman,” lawyer William Hickey both smokes a hookah and handles a letter of business — has he corrupted himself by going native? Or are the temptations of India no match for England’s energy in commerce?

And in Samuel Howitt’s 1807 “The Tiger at Bay,” British men load, aim, and fire at a tiger, while Indian men control the elephants that let the British get close to their quarry, an interesting if unintentional foreshadowing of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, made possible in part by tensions in the military forces made up of Indian soldiers and commanded by British officers. There was only so much that British self-portraits in India, especially those sponsored by British government and commercial organizations, could capture — and only so much that they could see into the future.

But neither will anyone else in Congress.

Greenwire reports today that only one Congressional staffer and zero members — yes zero — have plans to attend the COP 17 climate conference in South Africa next week. With the press prematurely declaring the talks all but dead, members of Congress seem to have latched onto that storyline:

This year’s talks did not even appear to be on members’ radar as they prepared to leave for Thanksgiving recess last week.

“It’s awful to say, but I haven’t focused on them at all because first of all we’ve hit a wall here for now on climate change,” said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), adding that Congress’ focus is now on debt and economic issues.

International climate issues are “basically happening through the administration now,” he said, “although I think Congress has to stay involved.”

Waxman, who sponsored a cap-and-trade bill that cleared the House in 2009, said he “hoped for the best” from Durban.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t thought about it.”

“It hasn’t been brought to my attention,” said Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Asked whether she planned to go, Boxer said she could not. “I’m too busy here,” she said.

The Durban conference starts on Monday. Many journalists and pundits have already written off the conference, believing that nothing will happen. If past experience is any indication, the chances of a comprehensive deal of carbon emissions are next to zero. But there has been a lot of progress in putting together packages for helping fund mitigation and adaptation projects in developing countries — an important piece that will be central to the negotiations.

Andrew Light, coordinator of international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, says that the absence of Congress may be a good thing, as it will make it less likely to bring politics into play:

Two things make it appropriate that we’ll see a smaller congressional delegation at Durban than in previous years at the UN climate summit.  First, gridlock in Washington has made it virtually impossible for congress to take a meaningful role in shaping national climate policy so there are fewer messages for staffers to bring to the negotiations by way of representing U.S. efforts and fewer parts of the process that will be of concern to their members.

Second, and more important from the perspective of the negotiations, there are good reasons to believe that success in Durban will mean a continuation of the step-wise approach started in Cancun last year with slow but steady progress on the building blocks of a new international climate regime.  Like Cancun I hope to see a quieter productive meeting rather than a loud and contentious one.  This is the best hope for getting a future climate agreement rather than putting all our bets down on a big win in one meeting as we did in Copenhagen in 2009.  This meeting should be a venue for diplomats, and increasingly finance and treasury ministers.  It will likely make more progress if it’s not used as soap box for anyone’s political agenda

Members did said they would consider sending staffers if the negotiations started taking off. But it’s likely that the politicking won’t be very intense. We hope.

Spoiler alert: Greenwire reports that Inhofe may actually go if there is progress during the talks.

Chairperson Ros-Lehtinen

The restriction in the amendment basically criminalizes U.S. diplomacy. At Democracy Arsenal, Heather Hurlburt lists a few very recent contacts with Iran that would be considered illegal under Ros-Lehtinen’s restrictions:

U.S. and Iranian diplomats have been sharing a conference room discussing the political future of Iran’s neighbor Afghanistan this week. The New York Times reported that the Administration had quietly reached out to Iran to attempt to bring it into a political discussion around Afghanistan’s future stability. No more of that.

And the number three official at the State Department, Bill Burns, had a meeting with an Iranian counterpart that, among other topics, proved important in releasing the first of the three American hikers from Iranian custody.

So those contacts — banned, as far as the House Foreign Affairs committee is concerned. What, after all, “vital national security interests” are served by ending the imprisonment of one of the U.S. hikers?

Furthermore, Georgetown professor and former top intelligence analyst Paul Pillar points out that the restrictions could prevent progress on the most contentious issue between Iran and the West, the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, potentially heightening the likelihood of war:

It would prevent any exploration of ways to resolve disagreement over that Iranian nuclear program that we are supposedly so intensely concerned about… And it would prevent any diplomacy to keep U.S.-Iranian incidents or crises—the kind that retired joint chiefs chairman Admiral Mullen expressed concern about—from spinning out of control, unless the crisis conveniently stretched out beyond the fifteen-day notification period.

And the 15-day notification seems outrageously long. The National Iranian American Council’s Jamal Abdi wonders, “What if Kennedy had to wait 15 days for Congress’ permission to meet with the Soviets to prevent the Cuban Missile Crisis – which lasted 13 days – from ending in nuclear war?” Indeed, Jim Lobe adds that the bill “eliminate(s) any doubt that its proponents want to involve the U.S. in yet another war in the Middle East.”

The Good Wife takes on issues of diplomatic immunity as two college-age sons of diplomats – one Dutch, one Taiwanese – are accused of raping and murdering a young woman at a stoplight party on a booze cruise. (Quick term definition for those as old and out-of-touch as I am: on the booze cruise, passengers paid $50 for unlimited beer, and the “stoplight party” means that passengers choose cup colors based on their relationship status: red means “in a relationship,” yellow means “choosy,” and green means “open.”) Diplomatic immunity is often portrayed as something all-encompassing and very cut-and-dry, but Cary, in his zeal to prosecute, manages to find a variety of loopholes. He surprises everyone by taking the young men into custody, arguing that he’s allowed to investigate the crime, just not to prosecute them. Presumably the technicality here is that if they were cleared, Cary would know to look for other suspects, but he never seriously looks at anyone else. Once he’s forced to let the Dutch suspect go, he points out that he can prosecute the other suspect because Taiwan is the one country that doesn’t enjoy diplomatic immunity, because of the One-China policy. As happens so often on this show, what first appears to be a philosophical question ends up being decided based on who has more influence and connections: Eli first uses his ex-wife’s connections at the State Department to have them push for dismissal, but then one of Cary’s colleagues uses her own family connections to have this position reversed. And Cary finally discovers that the Dutch suspect is no longer a full-time student, so he doesn’t actually have immunity through his father in the first place.

The cases of the week are becoming still less central on the show, though, and this week, we don’t even see the final courtroom showdown – Cary just mentions in a throwaway line that he won. Instead, the cases are designed to illuminate things about the characters and their relationships, and one of the focuses this week was on jockeying for position, especially among the newer attorneys at both the State’s Attorney’s office and at Lockhart/Gardner. Cary thinks his supervisor is out to get him – but at the end of the episode he instead gets a promotion from Peter. Meanwhile, Alicia is dealing with Caitlin, the new associate she was forced to hire last week. Caitlin is pretty naive, and doesn’t know what she’s doing, but Alicia seems to like her more than expected. Caitlin also seems to be flirting with Will – or maybe she’s acting as a spy for her uncle? Either way, Alicia is a bit territorial, but she shouldn’t worry, because Will’s not biting. And when Caitlin blithely comments that everyone at Lockhart/Gardner is just so nice, Will deadpans: “Yeah. Lawyers. Nicest people in the world.”

One way this show has always impressed me is with its dedication to showing how often and to what ends people actually use technology, especially cell phones. Shots are often framed by people staring at their phones as they walk or wait for elevators. This episode, they got things exactly right with the ubiquity of cell phone pictures of events popping up on social networking sites, but they missed slightly with the “Rape App.” The witness’s friend said they “had the app installed” on their phones, but obviously it would have been something they just downloaded themselves. And I’m a little suspicious that the app would have been approved with that title, though the concept – friends can track each other via their phones’ GPS and send distress calls if necessary – seems realistic enough. The ongoing technology issue of “What’s going on with the computers?” had some progress this week – I guess – as Zach showed Alicia how to transfer files to her work laptop, which promptly bluescreened. An IT consultant yells at her for trying to do unauthorized things herself, but Zach says the IT guy himself is corrupt – charging the firm extra for their own data storage, somehow – and causing the problem. And then Eli’s computer bluescreens, so…again, I keep suspecting that someone, maybe Grace’s tutor, installed some sort of spy software that’s now spreading between the computers, in an effort to bring Peter down, but maybe I’m reading too much into it. But if that is what’s going on, then this plotline is redefining “slow-burning.”

Over on the spinoff-within-a-show, as James Poniewozik calls it, Eli’s ex-wife Vanessa tells him that she’s considering running for state Senate and asks him to check out a campaign manager who approached her. The guy is obviously a complete buffoon, full of jargon and buzzwords, and as soon as he says he’ll rely on “micropockets of committed citizen online journalist bloggers,” I realize what Vanessa’s actually doing: She’s not serious about the campaign manager, and is just using him to manipulate Eli into helping with her campaign himself. Eli has Kalinda vet Vanessa, and discovers that while she was married to Eli, Vanessa had an affair with one of Osama Bin Laden’s cousins. Eli is furious but insists he doesn’t even know why he cares, and he’s not so furious that he stops peppering his political dialogue with references to Rod Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel, thank goodness. He finally confesses to Vanessa that he’d “just thought [he'd] done two years of [his] life well.” Poor Eli. He’s like Kalinda and Will: Behind all his bluster about not caring, he actually cares about everything too much.

Will runs into that issue himself as he meets Alicia’s son Zach and has a realistically awkward conversation with him. Will obviously cares deeply that he made a bad first impression, and offers to formally meet the kids, but Alicia keeps telling him it’s not necessary. Will pretends that he’s happy he doesn’t have to do it, but once Alicia leaves, the audience can clearly see that he’s disappointed. By this point, I think Will is pretty aware of his own feelings, but does Alicia really know what she wants? If she honestly just wants a temporary rebound relationship, using someone who has loved her for years just seems cruel. But if she’s saying she wants to keep things casual because she thinks that’s what she should want or what Will wants, then there’s an even better chance of all of this exploding in someone’s face – probably Peter’s, once the next campaign gets going, and Alicia’s own, if she’s actually considering that political career Eli suggested. It’s not coincidence that an affair is ultimately what’s disqualifying Vanessa from running for office, after all.

Kate Linnea Welsh is a New Hampshire-based writer and taxonomist. (No, that doesn’t involve dead animals.) She’s a senior editor at TheTelevixen.com, on staff at Vampire-Diaries.net, and writes about other TV shows, books, and more at her blog (http://katelinnea.blogspot.com). She’d love to talk to you on Twitter: @katelinnea

SANTORUM: That’s not — Iran was a sovereign country. It was not a terrorist organization, number one.

[...] They’re — they’re — they’re a sovereign country…

PAUL: He negotiated for hostages.

SANTORUM: There’s — there’s a role — we negotiated for hostages with the Soviet Union. We’ve negotiated with hostages, depending on the scale. But there’s a difference between releasing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay in response to a terrorist demand… then — then negotiating with other countries, where we may have an interest, and that is certainly a proper role for the United States, too.

But just the following night on Fox News, Santorum was singing a different tune. Asked by Bret Baier what President Santorum’s Iran policy would be, the former senator concluded:

This government will not and cannot be negotiated with. They are radical Islamists. They are theocrats. They are mullahs who believe it is their destiny to fulfill the prophets and the 12th Imam’s vision of having global control of the world for radical Shia Islam.

Watch the video:

In the past, Santorum has called Iran “evil” and “Islamic fascists,” and in the same speech celebrated Reagan calling the Soviet Union the “evil empire.” At the debate Tuesday, he supported talking to both Iran and the Soviet Union as “proper” when there was a U.S. “interest” at stake. But when he wasn’t put in a position to defend Reagan’s actions, he leaned toward a more ideological position that precludes any talking irrespective of national interests.

But the tide — even among conservatives — has begun turning in favor of Ford’s confirmation as he’s established himself in a critical role as the Syrian government’s continued a months-long deadly crackdown against non-violent anti-government protests. The change came when Ford put his own life on the line to reach out to the Syrian opposition, even going so far as to join protesters in the street in a “show of solidarity.” Ford has also become the lynchpin of a U.S. policy now looking beyond the rule of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.

The latest conservative turn toward Ford came from Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). Inhofe was one of a group of Republican senators that signed a May 2010 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arguing that any engagement with the Syrian regime constituted a “reward” for Assad’s government. But as Ben Birnbaum reported in the Washington Times today, Ihofe’s changed his tune:

“I really changed my mind on this,” said Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“He has done some things that are just really impressive. He’s gone to places where the protesters are. He’s been roughed up a few times. I had the impression that he wouldn’t be quite strong enough, and I’ve been proven wrong.”

In an interview with Birnbaum, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) went even further, accusing those opposed to Ford’s continuing presence in Damascus of verging on being pro-Assad:

I would say now, because he has become such a symbol of American support for the Syrian people, that it would actually be a defeat for the cause of freedom in Syria – and almost a victory for Assad – if we don’t confirm Robert Ford.

With tons of even neoconservatives — usually reliably hawkish on the Middle East and against diplomacy in countries considered U.S. adversaries — now coming out in favor of confirming Ford and allowing him to stay in Damascus to continue his work, one wonders how long the final holdouts like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and potentially others can cling to their obstructionist position on an up-or-down vote for the ambassador.

Lieberman asserted that states that are composed of different “nations” continue to experience conflict. The Ambassador noted that the United States maintains its diversity without experiencing such conflict.

In the memo, titled “RIGHT-WING LIEBERMAN UNABASHEDLY ADVOCATES TRANSFER OF ISRAELI ARABS,” Lieberman was short on specifics for his proposals for Israeli-Palestinian peace. In what he called “creative” solutions, he proposed shifting the borders of future Israeli and Palestinian states to include Palestinian villages within Israel in a Palestinian state and Israeli settlements in the West Bank within Israel. But the cable noted that Lieberman did not address settlements like Ariel, which is deeper into the West Bank, or the fate of mixed cities inside Israel, which the now-foreign minister acknowledged were “more complicated.”

Lieberman also proposed to Jones that Israel institute a “loyalty oath” that would strip citizenship from those who refused it. Lieberman acknowledged that most Palestinian citizens of Israel would never accept it, accusing them of only wanting to retain their citizenship because of the “social benefits” they receive from the state. Just such a bill was introduced in the Knesset last fall by a legislator from Lieberman’s party. It was watered down on its way through parliamentary procedures before failing to pass. (HT: Joseph Dana)

The Senate still must confirm Ford if he is to remain at his post. His visit last month to the Syrian city of Hama — which has recently been under assault by the Syrian military — drew wide praise. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who opposed Ford’s confirmation last year, now says he supports it and he is urging his colleagues to follow suit. And as The Cable reported yesterday, “Congress is warming to the idea of confirming” Ford. Or is it?

A Coburn aide told ThinkProgress that the Oklahoma senator “continues to stand by the concerns outlined” in the May, 2010 letter to Clinton. Moreover, the same aide did not respond to repeated inquiries into whether that statement meant Coburn still opposes having Ford as U.S. ambassador or that he will again block his confirmation. ThinkProgress also contacted most of the Republicans that co-signed the letter to Clinton asking if they still oppose sending Ford, or any other envoy, to Syria and none responded.

Giving some insight into the GOP’s thinking, the Cable reported that “[s]ome on Capitol Hill don’t like the optics of the United States confirming an ambassador to Syria while other countries withdraw their envoys as a means of registering their opposition to Assad’s crackdown”:

“Senator Lieberman is one of the great national security leaders of this generation, and Robert Ford is a skilled diplomat, but it makes no sense to have an American ambassador in Damascus now,” one senior GOP congressional aide told The Cable. “It’s a sad day when the Saudi king has greater moral clarity than the president of the United States.”

While it’s unclear how exactly having an ambassador in Syria means President Obama lacks “moral clarity,” the neocons at the Foreign Policy Initiative offered a similarly confusing explanation as to why Ford should be recalled. “It is doubtful that, if confirmed by the Senate, Ford will be allowed by the Assad regime to be an effective voice for the United States,” FPI executive director Jamie Fly wrote yesterday, adding, “unless the administration is prepared to use Ford as a proactive envoy to the Syrian people, the White House should seriously consider keeping him in Washington.”

But as evidenced by his visit to Hama, and his Senate testimony last week, Ford is already a “proactive envoy to the Syrian people.” Ford is not there to be “an effective voice for the United States,” as Fly said. As Ford said last month, “This is not about Americans, it is about the way the Syrian government mistreats its own people.” And he told the Senate last week, “It’s really important now to give Syrians an ear and to amplify their voices especially when the international media is barred from Syria.”

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) also opposed sending Ford to Syria. “I felt that dispatching an ambassador to Damascus would be a mistake given [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad’s failure to alter any of his outrageous policies,” Lieberman writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today. But now, Lieberman has changed his mind and is calling on the Senate to finally confirm Ford. He explains why:

Rather than being an envoy to Assad, Mr. Ford is now first and foremost our ambassador to the Syrian people and a bridge to the democratic transition they demand. This is a role for which Mr. Ford—an innovative and tough diplomat with extensive experience in the Middle East—is uniquely well-suited.

The ambassador’s important and powerful visit last month to the city of Hama — where peaceful protesters had seized control, but where Syrian forces now are engaged in a gruesome campaign of violence — was an example of the kind of forward-leaning, gutsy diplomacy that our Syria policy now needs. It was also a powerful reminder that, while we cannot dictate the outcome of the struggle in Syria, U.S. leadership is pivotal –and Amb. Ford provided it.

Indeed, Ford told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that he needs to be in Syria for exactly the reason that Lieberman laid out. “It’s really important now to give Syrians an ear and to amplify their voices especially when the international media is barred from Syria,” he said, adding, “I think we owe it to them to remain supportive and it try to build that support wisely.” U.S. officials said Ford’s contacts there are “the most important sources of information in assessing the Syrian scene.”

Ford has drawn wide praise from analysts here in the U.S., and even from the Syrian pro-democracy activists themselves, for his dramatic visit to Hama last month. And like Lieberman, it has caused some to rethink their view that the United States should not have an ambassador in Syria. Yet the neocons remain unconvinced. Last month, the Foreign Policy Initiative called on Obama to recall Ford from Damascus.

Israeli Embassy Spokesperson Jonathan Peled

The liberal American Jewish group J Street came down hard in a statement:

J Street condemns the Knesset’s passage yesterday of a law making the call for boycotts of Israel or the West Bank settlements illegal, as a clear and unabashed violation of the fundamental democratic precept of freedom of speech.

This bill is part of a disturbing anti-democratic trend that undermines its purported purpose by giving fodder to Israel’s critics and alienating many of its friends.

The statement served as the latest salvo of the ongoing tensions between the right-wing government in Israel and J Street, which has drawn the ire of the right-wing pro-Israel lobby for criticizing Israeli policies such as settlement expansion. The Israeli ambassador to the U.S. rejected an invitation from J Street to attend its first ever policy conference in 2009, and this summer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who usually welcomes Diaspora pro-Israel groups, refused to meet with a J Street delegation.

But J Street’s condemnation of the anti-boycott law brought the war of words to a new level. Speaking to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Jonathan Peled, a spokesperson for Israel’s embassy in Washington, compared J Street to the Klu Klux Klan:

I think our approach to J Street was correct. We disagreed on many issues, but we didn’t boycott them. They are a unique example because they are a Jewish organization that calls itself ‘pro-Israeli.’ To bring some extreme example, if the Ku Klux Klan suddenly proclaim themselves pro-Israel, will it mean they are pro-Israel, or does it contradict our own understanding of what pro-Israel means? They are entitled to their views, but it doesn’t mean we want to invite them to our home.

Reached by ThinkProgress for comment, an official in the embassy’s press office passed along a non-apology “clarification” from Peled:

During my personal conversation with Ha’aretz, I was not intending to compare J Street to an extremist or offensive organization.

I regret any misunderstanding. Such a comparison would be clearly inappropriate and unacceptable.

The comments do not reflect the view of the government.

J Street seemed less than thrilled with the non-apology. Director of media relations Jessica Rosenblum gave a terse statement to ThinkProgress, saying, “We appreciate the clarification and take it at face value.”

The embassy spokesperson’s comparison of J Street to the KKK seems especially out of place because, in the same interview, Peled said that Israel welcomes all points of view. “We are interested in a big tent,” he said.

That was Peled’s dodge of a question about whether or not the government welcomed former Fox News personality Glenn Beck’s rally in Israel. Beck, who recently said Netanyahu had “evidence” to prove his conspiracy theories and addressed the Knesset, just moved his rally — which is to be attended by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) — away from the Temple Mount because it coincides with a holiday when 40,000 Muslims are expected to be worshiping in Jerusalem. Beck intimated that the Muslims might try to kill him and were looking for any excuse to start “World War III.” So it seems that there’s room for Beck in the Netanyahu government’s “big tent,” but according to Peled, J Street doesn’t appear to be welcome.