In an excellent rejoinder to Cole here, Tony at Across the Bay writes:

Needless to say, that regardless of his Arabic and his book on Shiite Islam, Cole’s non-academic writings are for the most part shrill and rarely insightful, amounting to little more than a pessimistic news round-up, as we’ve shown several times on this blog (which is why most everyone has dismissed Cole. Even Michael Young called his site “overrated!”). Besides, Cole knows no Hebrew, can’t read Israeli papers, knows nothing whatsoever about Israeli society, and yet pontificates constantly on Israel, Sharon, the Likud, etc. His opinion on these issues, by virtue of his own logic, matters not. Yet he graces us with it regularly.