This is outside the Middle East, I know, but relevant none the less. The American magazine, Commentary, is described in the New York Times as a small-circulation journal with an outsize influence. One commentator has even gone so far as to say that "no other journal of the past half century has been so consistently influential, or so central to the major debates that have transformed the political and intellectual life of the United States" – though today it is probably less influential than it was.

Founded in 1945, and originally published by the American Jewish Committee, it began life "as a voice for the marginalised and a feisty advocate for civil rights and economic justice. But just as American culture moved in its direction, it began – inexplicably to some – to veer right, becoming the voice of neoconservativism and defender of the powerful".

One of its former employees, Benjamin Balint, traces this journey in a new history of the magazine, "Running Commentary: The Contentious Magazine That Transformed the Jewish Left Into the Neoconservative Right". The book is reviewed here by Scott McConnell in The American Conservative. 

In its early days, Commentary even published anti-Zionist articles, but by the 1980s it "could be counted on to slam critics of Israel as antisemitic". McConnell continues:

By the 1990s, advocacy for Israel and alarmist pieces about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction were Commentary staples.

To his credit, Balint treats the debates swirling about the magazine in the age of 9/11 with considerable dispassion. He claims it is a “canard” that neocons cared more for Israel than the U.S., but quotes without sneering many of those who make the charge. 

In his epilogue, he adds this assessment from the late paleoconservative essayist Sam Francis: "What neoconservatives have done is to design an ideology ... that offers ostensible and plausible rationalisations for the perpetual war in which Israel and its agents of influence in the US government and media seek to embroil the United States (and which all too many American conservatives, out of a foolishly misplaced patriotism, are eager to support) without explicitly invoking the needs and interests of Israel itself."