Paul Waldman suggests we stop calling people “pro-” or “anti-Israel”:
Think about it this way: When was the last time you heard the designation “pro-Israel” or “anti-Israel” and found it a useful distinction that added to rather than subtracted from the discussion at hand? Ever? Instead, the terms are used almost exclusively as ad hominem, a way of shutting down debate by proclaiming that someone’s intentions are sinister and therefore their arguments can be dismissed out of hand without addressing their substance.
There’s no other country in the world we talk about in this way. No one asks if you’re “pro-Canada” or “anti-Costa Rica.” Even countries with which we have sometimes adversarial relationships, we don’t use those terms. For instance, The Atlantic‘s James Fallows lived in China for a few years and has written a couple of books about the country. If someone asked, “Is James Fallows pro-China or anti-China?” you’d immediately say that person is an idiot, because the question is meaningless. Framing things that way does nothing but obscure and distract from any actually interesting question we might have.
The Dish 