Max Blumenthal, the son of the Clinton family confidant Sidney, began his career as a fairly run-of-the-mill—if not particularly discerning—left-wing journalist, with his first book being an assault on social conservatives. But sometime thereafter he turned his attentions to Israel, in 2013 producing a book so viciously anti-Semitic that even the leftist columnist Eric Alterman of the Nation couldn’t approve of it. Then, as Bruce Bawer recounts, he took another turn for the worse:

Much of the journalism [Blumenthal] produced during the [early years of the Syrian civil war] conveyed a strongly anti-Assad message. In 2013, he reported for the Nation from a refugee camp in Jordan, where, he wrote, every single Syrian he interviewed supported a U.S. military strike on their homeland.

But then something happened. We don’t know exactly what it was. All we know for certain is that in December 2015, Blumenthal traveled to Moscow—all expenses paid by the Kremlin—to attend a gala dinner, hosted by Vladimir Putin himself, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of RT, the international TV network owned by the Russian government. When he returned to the U.S., his position on Bashar al-Assad—and on U.S. intervention in Syria—had turned around completely.

Only a month after the RT bash, Blumenthal founded something called “The Grayzone Project,” which describes itself as “a news and politics website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on war and empire.” Basically, however, Grayzone is a one-stop propaganda shop, devoted largely to pushing a pro-Assad line on Syria, a pro-regime line on Venezuela, a pro-Putin line on Russia, and a pro-Hamas line on Israel.

Implicit in pretty much every item at the website is that it’s impossible to be an opponent of Putin or Assad or Nicolás Maduro without having nefarious motives—either you’re working for the CIA or Mossad, or you’re tied up with some terrorist group, or you’ve taken dirty money under the table. . . . In a 2016 article, he denied the incontrovertible fact that anti-gay prejudice is intrinsic to Islam, calling the idea a product of “talking points . . . first honed by the Israeli government and its international network of supporters.” . . . Blumenthal has also denied that Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite.

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.