nonsense.

anyone who doesnt think iran and all muslims should be destroyed will never be "acceptable' to that crowd.

Where was the part that mentioned Freeman accepting money from the Saudi government in that quote? You took a pretty huge leap there from sympathizer to "bought and paid for." Besides, Bush was in bed with the Saudis and the Israelis at the same time, so even if one accepts the assertion that Freeman is pro-Saudi, it doesn't mean that he can't deal fairly with the Israelis.

Goldberg makes a serious accusation that requires some support. Laying aside the association game for the moment, what evidence do we really have that Charles Freeman is hostile to Israel?

Admittedly, I need to familiarize myself with Freeman's work. So far I have found these comments before the Pacific Council on International Policy from a year and quarter ago:

This will be a politically painful process, requiring us to take an entirely fresh look at many American assumptions and policies with deep political roots and much emotional investment. The obvious need to change our approaches to both Iraq and Afghanistan is a case in point as is our contempt for the constraints of international law. These have become major force multipliers for our extremist enemies and inhibitions on cooperation from allies. They need radical adjustment. We must also subject our reflexive support of Israel's policies to critical examination. The default on the independent exercise of American judgment on this and other issues has not worked to the advantage of either the United States or Israel. The Holy Land is not advancing toward peace but sinking into an ever more bitter struggle for land and identity. Israel is not more secure or accepted in its region, but less. Options for a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict are narrowing, not widening. Once a menace only to Israel and its immediate Arab neighbors, the blowback from the Arab-Israeli conflict has emerged as a major threat to our security and that of our allies. It is the principal factor radicalizing the Islamic world.

We have much in common with Israel and many human ties to it, but Israel is not an extension of the United States or our values and does not see itself as such. Israel is a foreign country, inhabited by foreigners, with many interests that are foreign to our own. Contemporary Israeli values increasingly diverge both from ours and, in the opinion of many, from the humane ethics of the religion the Jewish state was established to safeguard. In our own interest, as well as in the interest of securing Israel's long-term existence from the brilliantly short-sighted policies its government sometimes follows, we must recover the ability to exercise our own judgment. We must be able to discuss Israel's policies and our relationship to them in the robust democratic manner with which these matters are debated in Israel itself. Serious strategic questions that are vigorously disputed among Israelis do not become instances of anti-Semitism when Americans also seek to debate them. It is particularly anomalous that Jewish Americans who feel free to speak out when in Israel are intimidated from doing so in their own country by self-appointed thought-police.

Watchdog politics and media censorship imposed by political action groups through the moral blackmail of promiscuous charges of anti-Semitism or lack of patriotism on the part of those who raise controversial matters for public discussion should have no place in our democracy. Such defamatory agitprop has become a blight on our civil society. Calumny is not an acceptable response to issues that are central to protecting the domestic tranquility, managing the common defense, and securing the general welfare of all Americans. Our inability to carry out an honest and objective discussion of issues of great moment endangers us. We can no longer afford the narrow intolerance of political correctness. The thought control it attempts to impose imperils the very interests it purports to defend.

Al Qaeda draws its strength and its recruits from the grievances of Arabs and other Muslims. Whether or not these grievances are justified, denial will not cure them. It is in our interest both to analyze them and to reduce them to the lowest possible level. This cannot be done without honest examination of how our actions appear to those they affect, unimpeded by prejudice, stereotypes, or the enforcement of political taboos. We need to understand what we are up against as it is, not as it is politically expedient to explain it. Only then can we hope to develop policies that reduce tensions and end the conflicts in the Holy Land, Iraq, and Afghanistan, not aggravate or perpetuate them.

Controversial, perhaps (I personally find his repeated references to Israel and the Palestinian Authority as "the Holy Land"); worthy of intelligent discourse, definitely. But hostile? I don't see it.