In the world of politics, especially that of Israeli policy and related activists worldwide, there is a constant effort to demonize the other side. Nowhere is this more evident than in the small cottage industry that has grown up to “monitor” human rights groups.

This industry is led by groups like NGO Monitor and UN Watch, and, while their role is certainly needed and acceptable, their tactics often fall well short of civilized political discourse.

There is nothing wrong with “watching the watchers.” It is not only fair but necessary for the work of human rights groups – whether international ones like Amnesty or Human Rights Watch, or domestic Israeli groups like B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence or Gisha – to be scrutinized closely. But there’s a difference between scrutiny and pursuing an agenda to delegitimize all criticism of Israel.

NGO Monitor is headed by Gerald Steinberg, the chair of the Political Science Department at Bar-Ilan University. The group spends its time examining all criticism of Israel, mostly from human rights groups both in Israel and abroad. They trace the funding and rely on a blanket label of “anti-Israel” to describe both the activities of Israeli and international NGOs as well as such funders as the New Israel Fund, European Union charitable funds, Oxfam, the Canadian International Development Agency, and USAID.

NGO Monitor says that by funding such groups as B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, these governments and foundations “…contribute to conflict, and in some cases to incitement.” They also use innuendo, such as listing a host of groups “some of which support boycotts, divestment and sanctions” while intentionally including groups who do not support such measures.

This sort of chicanery is meant to not only shield Israel from unfair criticism, which is a laudable goal, but also to discredit legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and actions, which is not. But in fairness, they couldn’t do that if they weren’t getting a lot of help from human rights and other groups.

Israel is in fact unfairly singled out, for example, at the UN Human Rights Council, as the only country in the world under permanent review. Israel’s very real human rights violations are often used cynically for political gain, much as Israel’s own complaints about Arab human rights violations are.

Additionally, Israel has its own very well developed human rights community, part of a larger and vibrant Israeli civil society. Israel’s human rights violations are thus held up to scrutiny more than other countries. The US frequently contends with the same issue. Still, if the violations weren’t so severe, Israel would not have so much to worry about.

NGO Monitor turns this stunning example of the reality of Israeli democracy into a smear against those Israelis who try to hold Israel to the standards of its own high ideals. By asking why such groups as B’Tselem, Gisha, Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence and others do not raise issues of intra-Palestinian violations (which some of them do, often), they are intentionally framing these Israeli groups as having an innately Palestinian agenda.

In fact, those groups, as well as Israeli peace groups like Shalom Achshav or Gush Shalom, are distinctly Israeli, and act as the critics any democracy needs to function properly. Naturally, being Israeli groups, they focus much more strongly on Israeli human rights violations because their task is to improve Israeli society and policies.

Consider, for example, NGO Monitor’s criticism of B’Tselem: B’Tselem categorizes suicide bombings and rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians as "war crimes" and "a grave breach of the right to life", according to international humanitarian law. Yet its political agenda is evident in the minimal attention it gives to intra-Palestinian human rights abuses (including torture, extra-judicial executions and abductions).

One need only look at B’Tselem’s web site to see it is a leader among non-Palestinian groups in criticizing intra-Palestinian abuses (see: http://www.btselem.org/English/Inter_Palestinian_Violations/), some even argue they are more so than an Israeli group should be. But indeed, B’Tselem focuses much more on Israeli violations and this does shed light on B’Tselem’s “agenda”: it is, primarily concerned about the actions of its own country, of strengthening the democracy it is part of. Its reason for existing is not primarily the good of the Palestinians—that is for Palestinians to pursue. It is for the good of Israel, because no democracy can sustain itself while turning a blind eye to its own behavior.

A major feature of NGO Monitor’s work is tying their criticisms (which are, to be fair, themselves a mix of distortions with a few legitimate complaints) to the network of governments and foundations that fund NGOs. This has come to the fore in recent weeks with the group Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the Dutch government to review their funding of Shovrim Shtika in the wake of the group publishing testimonies of soldiers who fought in Gaza earlier this year and reported human rights abuses. He has also publicly blasted the group.

Operation Cast Lead as a whole has been a storm for Israel to weather, and one that is unlikely to end soon. Israel’s refusal to launch a credible, independent investigation of the accusations that have been made about its conduct in Gaza, or to cooperate with any outside investigations, makes it impossible to get past the issue and ensures it will continue to be raised.

So instead, try to attack the funding.

Israeli NGOs are particularly vulnerable to such attacks. Funding for Israeli groups comes in very great measure from outside the country. That’s true for all Israeli groups, right to left, across the political and ideological spectrum. Israel lacks the sort of vast philanthropic network that, for instance, the United States has. Nor does the government allot significant sums for non-profits as one finds in Europe. In the US, lower taxes and tax breaks sustain a culture of philanthropy, while in Europe, higher taxes means the governments take more care of charitable giving. In Israel, though, the higher taxes pay instead for a massive defense budget.

So, just as foundations and other community sources in the US are the primary source for many right-wing groups in Israel, so too are international foundations the source of human rights and left-wing groups’ funding.

This isn’t foreign interference in Israeli affairs, it is the system of non-profit operations Israel has set up. And the attack on only one side of this system is unfair. NGO Monitor and similar groups should indeed be there to “watch the watchers,” but not to defend the Israeli government in any and all cases. Such groups should be there as part of the democratic system, and they should be there to ensure that human rights and peace groups’ work is of the highest standards, as those groups do with the government.

Until they stop pursuing an ideological agenda, the “watchers” are not doing their jobs.

"Israel will not freeze settlement construction for natural growth, despite intense pressure from the Obama administration to do so," The Jerusalem Post, June 1, 2009.

The argument that “natural growth” is crucial to Israel's well-being is utter nonsense.  

Here are a few facts. 

First of all, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the population growth in the settlements is 5.6% annually. That is three-and-a-half times the rate of Jewish population growth in Israel. Forty percent of settler population growth is directly attributable to immigration, with a significant part of the rest due to the increased childbirths as a result of that immigration.

Second, there is no housing crisis in the settlements. There remain many vacant units. The idea that "natural growth" forces families to separate is simply counter-factual. Creating more opportunities and incentives for settlers to move back to Israel proper would be a welcome development, but barring “natural growth” contributes little, if anything, in this regard. It simply stops the settlements from expanding.

Third, the idea that a young couple or an expanding family should somehow have the right, guaranteed by the government, to live in the place of their choosing, irrespective of the housing market, is absurd. No one in New York, London, Paris, or anywhere else has such a guarantee, nor do people in Tel Aviv, Haifa or Beersheva. Young settler couples, like any others, must hunt for housing in the existing housing market, and sometimes that means they have to move to a nearby town.

Fourth, the implication that families will be “separated” if some members need to move back to Israel is ridiculous, as anyone who has ever travelled in Israel knows. Israel is a small country. If someone needs to move and finds a nice, affordable place in Israel, they are a short drive or bus ride away from their former community.

Fifth, the municipal boundaries of the established settlements are three times the size of the built-up areas. Therefore, allowing ‘natural growth” exceptions has enormous potential for major settlement expansion.

Sixth, the argument that Israel cannot legally halt construction once tenders have been issued, apartments sold, and work begun, is absolutely false. In 1992, when settlers sued the Rabin government over their decision to freeze work already begun, the High Court of Justice ruled that even after work has begun, the government can stop work due to its policy decisions. If losses are thereby incurred, they would be settled in civil court. Two different decisions agreed on this point, and there is no contradictory precedent in Israeli jurisprudence.

That adds up to the seventh and overriding fact: there is no reason or rationale for making any exception, including “natural growth,” to a settlement freeze. It certainly doesn’t serve Israel’s interests; the settlements are a terrible strain on Israel’s budget, with housing subsidies, increased security, and the need for new infrastructure to supply electricity, roads, water and other services to comparatively remote locales. That is a cost the budget, with education, health and other social services being strangled, cannot withstand.

Under these circumstances, it is astounding that the Minister of Internal Affairs Eli Yishai (Shas) is threatening to grab every shekel he can and pour them into the settlements while Israel’s social services die a slow death. The only reason to oppose a settlement freeze is to oppose ending the occupation of the West Bank. It is to oppose any move toward peace. Sadly, for some like both Yishai and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that is apparently far more important than the well-being of Israelis behind the Green Line.

After the Freeze

Whether he ever admits it publicly or not, Netanyahu is overwhelmingly likely to implement the settlement freeze the US is demanding. The real question is: what then?

A settlement freeze accomplishes two things: one, it buys some time for the Palestinian Authority and for a real, tangible peace process to be revived. But only a few months. In those months, it will be crucial that genuine progress is made on the diplomatic front, on the ground in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and in terms of Israeli security.

The second thing it does is to bring the confrontation with the hardcore minority of the settler movement closer to the surface. A frequent refrain of late has been that Israel is “a country of laws.” Unfortunately, this has generally not been the case when it comes to enforcing the law on the settlers. That will have to change, and the most radical settlers’ likely response to a full and genuine freeze on all construction in the West Bank will put law and order to its final test. Either Israel gets serious about applying Israeli law to the settlers or it will demonstrate that it is not a country of law.

But that’s the limit of a freeze’s effects. Some, including such notable figures in Washington as Daniel Levy and Amjad Atallah of the New America Foundation, have argued that a freeze is the wrong goal, and that the enormous political capital a freeze demands from the US would be better spent on pushing for dismantlement of settlements. They fear that once a freeze is obtained, that political capital will be depleted.

I see it differently. I believe that a freeze will be an investment of political capital, one which will generate great returns if successful and open up more opportunities, including opportunities to push for a rollback of the settlement project. It will give the Palestinian Authority the first evidence it has had that, in the age of Obama, their approach works and Hamas’ does not. The continuing ability of the Palestinian Authority's forces to keep a lid on terrorist activity in the West Bank, coupled with a settlement freeze, will create hope and support for next steps.

But Levy and Atallah are certainly correct that a freeze does nothing in the long run by itself. It must be followed quickly by serious steps toward a final resolution of this conflict. It will open the opportunity for such an outcome.

Benefits of a Settlement Freeze

A freeze will restore some credibility to the PA. If it is successful and Israelis see no decline in security, it will legitimize Obama’s approach and further discredit Netanyahu’s intransigence, particularly in the eyes of the Israeli public.

The ball will then be in Obama’s court, and the next step will be even more difficult. In order to capitalize on the freeze, he will have to get concessions from both Israel and the Arab world. He will have to continue to press Netanyahu to continue with the removal of roadblocks in the West Bank, to dismantle the “illegal outposts,” keep a moratorium on house demolitions in East Jerusalem and to find some way to allow reconstruction materials into Gaza without strengthening Hamas.

The danger is that if Israel is seen to be making all the concessions and getting nothing immediate in return, Obama will start to lose the unprecedented support he has right now from Congress and the pro-Israel community. The Palestinians will need to maintain and even strengthen their security apparatus and prove that they can maintain control in the West Bank.

But much more will be needed. Obama will have to get the Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, to begin to melt the ice between themselves and Israel. Nothing like full diplomatic relations, of course, which must wait until a Palestinian state emerges. But something is needed -- some kind of trade relations or an easing of the boycott of Israeli products.

It can’t all wait until the occupation completely ends. Obama has already begun pushing for some steps from the Arab world, and it will be crucial that he convince the Arab states to take them. One of the main problems with bilateralism is that the Palestinians have nothing to offer Israel that is tangible. The Arab states do, and Obama must obtain something to show Israel that peace is paying off for them as well.

That’s really the dance the President has to do now. When he gets the freeze (and I have no doubt he will get it if he sticks to his guns), he then needs to make sure it means something in the long term for the Palestinians and that it pays off for Israel as well. Not easy, but certainly possible. Obama has acted forcefully and boldly on this issue much earlier than most thought he would. He has earned some faith that he can take the more complicated steps before him. He’d better; because time is running short for a two-state solution and the obstacles in the region are perhaps as big as they’ve ever been.

Barely a week after Benjamin Netanyahu had his first meeting as Prime Minister with Barack Obama, the two are squaring off publicly over the issue of “natural growth” in West Bank settlements. One of the more interesting circumstances about this confrontation has been the silence of the Jewish groups who are thought of as constituting the “Israel Lobby.”

In 2007, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt brought all the theorizing and debating over the role of the “Israel Lobby” in US policy to the forefront. For many, their theory seemed to have too many holes. Those who approached the work of the two esteemed international relations professors critically but rationally pointed us toward the need of a much better understanding of the Lobby and what its effects and limits were.

The confluence of that ongoing debate and the recent direction of US policy illustrates the need for a book like Dan Fleshler’s Transforming America's Israel Lobby: The Limits of Its Power and the Potential for Change.

This is a book that should have been written many years ago. It is full of insight into the major Jewish organizations, as well as some non-Jewish ones, working on the issue of Israel. It’s also constructive, offering practical guidance as to how those of us whose passion for peace and desire for fair treatment of Palestinians is equal to our concern for Israel’s well-being might begin to blaze a new policy trail.

Fleshler dispassionately analyzes the depth and limits of the power held by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the major lobbying force protecting the status quo in US policy. Unlike Walt and Mearsheimer, who depict AIPAC as the spearhead of a virtually indomitable bastion of power, Fleshler, operating with a great deal of direct knowledge enhanced by discussions with those of us who work in the field, reveals the mix of real influence and mythology that gives AIPAC the influence it wields.

There’s a curious effect of anti-Semitism that paradoxically helps enhance the influence of the major Jewish organizations in Washington. Fleshler reminds us of Chaim Weizmann’s ability to convince British leaders that the Jewish community, thoroughly powerless at the time, could bring valuable support in exchange for British endorsement of Zionism. Weizmann capitalized on anti-Semitic myths about Jewish power and secret control. In some ways, AIPAC does the same, though I’m sure they don’t think of what Fleshler calls “power puffery” in those terms.

That is not to say that the organized Jewish community doesn’t wield considerable political power in the US. Fleshler does a masterful job of portraying the actual political influence that AIPAC and other groups wield, without either overblowing or underplaying it.

It is precisely this contextualizing of AIPAC that marks this book a success in all the ways that Walt and Mearsheimer fell short. The two professors, whose expertise does not lie in a Washington scene with which they have only a dilettante’s familiarity, can’t match Fleshler’s insight into the workings of Washington, much less the Jewish community.

Trying to analyze not only AIPAC, but also the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents, as well as the other side of the coin -- Israel Policy Forum, J Street, and Americans for Peace Now -- without any understanding of the community from which they spring is impossible. Walt, Mearsheimer, and most of the writers and bloggers who pontificate about The Lobby make this very mistake.

But it’s a community Fleshler has not only spent his whole life in, but has played a variety of key roles in. He is thus able to round out his analysis with an insider’s knowledge of the framework and a familiarity with the people he needed to interview for this book.

The particular strength of Transforming America’s Israel Lobby is that, despite his oft-stated and clear allegiance to the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” camp Fleshler largely speaks with familiarity and objectivity about the so-called “Israel Lobby groups” like AIPAC, the AJC, and the Conference of Presidents. As a result, the reader will get the insight into the mainstream Jewish community they need to understand how these institutions achieved their stature and why they pursue the policies they do.

Fleshler reserves his harsher words for extremists on both right and left. And yet, even here, his view is nuanced. When discussing one group, Jewish Voice for Peace, which straddles a line between the far left and Fleshler’s own chevra, he notes his frequent disagreements with them, but bemoans the fact that they and the groups he favors have not been able to find a way to work at some level with each other. Indeed, he’s correct—this is a serious weakness on the left, one the right experiences to a much lesser degree.

Fleshler also draws a clear line between the far right politically active groups like the Zionist Organization of America, more center-right groups like AIPAC and centrist groups like the AJC. Almost all discussions of “The Lobby” acknowledge that there is a variety of groups involved, but fail to actually distinguish between them. The differences are actually quite important.

Fleshler is driving at an alternative lobby to create significant political pressure for the course favored by most Americans, including both Jewish and Arab Americans. Polls have consistently shown that most American Jews support increased US engagement in diplomacy and pressure on both Israel and Palestinians if necessary. Yet the leadership of Jewish organizations do not reflect the views of their own constituents and members of Congress believe that Abe Foxman, David Harris, Howard Kohr and Malcolm Hoenlein represent the views of mainstream Jews. They don’t, according to virtually every poll published.

The reason for the misperception is that the segment of the Jewish community (and this is actually true of the larger American public as well) that they do represent is far more committed and active on the issue. Most who support an American policy closer to the one Obama has seemingly embarked on simply have other concerns that are higher priorities.

The “pro-Israel, pro-peace” camp needs to find a way to galvanize those people and to make Middle East peace a higher priority for them. Fleshler does a very good job of laying out both why this is so crucial and what most of the obstacles are.

And here is where I have my one nitpick with Fleshler’s book.  In his reading of the evolution of the politics of Israel in the US, he misses what I consider to be one of that history’s major turning points: Ehud Barak’s message that there is no “partner for peace” on the Palestinian side.

Fleshler does discuss the failure of the talks at Camp David in 2000. But he omits any exploration of the impact that Barak’s and Bill Clinton’s decision to lay all the blame on Yasir Arafat for that failure. It largely destroyed the peace camp in Israel and seriously impacted it here as well, despite the fact that Barak’s picture of Camp David is wildly inaccurate (see Martin Indyk’s comments here. Bill Clinton also later changed his story about Camp David, though with very little fanfare).  That needs to play a much greater role than it does in this book in mapping out a strategy for an effective peace lobby that puts the interests of both Israel’s future and Palestinian human rights together on the center stage.

That one flaw notwithstanding, from my perspective as someone who has worked in the field of Israel-Palestine peace for years, and writing from my office in Washington, it is clear that Transforming America’s Israel Lobby is the book we have been waiting for. Those of us “inside the Beltway” have long felt much of what Fleshler says.

And the way he says it is important too. AIPAC is not presented here as a monstrous behemoth, but as an organization with people who share many of the goals that the peace camp does, just with different ideas of how to get there. The alternative he calls for must be built, and what there is of it now must mobilize in support of Barack Obama.

For the first time in decades, a US President is leading a fight against the settlement enterprise. It’s long overdue, and those of us who care about Israel’s future, who care about Palestinians’ human rights, who care about peace need to do everything we can to support him. And, we need also to build for the future. Following Fleshler’s blueprint would be a great way to do it.

Benny Morris is the picture of the contemporary Israeli intelligentsia. In Morris’ work, we find the disappointed politics of the old Labor Party, once dominant in Israeli politics, now consigned to barely 10% of the Knesset.

In Morris one can also see the frustrated idealism of the Meretz party, once the conscience of the mainstream left and progressive activists to balance Labor’s mainstream pragmatism.

Morris, like his country, was born in 1948. He was a paratrooper in the army, and in 1969 was wounded during Israel’s war of attrition with Egypt. He worked for twelve years as a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, which was at the time a major left-leaning newspaper in Israel.

The historian again saw action as a reservist in Lebanon in 1982, but refused to serve just six years later in the West Bank, and was jailed for his stance. That same year, he gained national fame with his groundbreaking study, The Birth of the Palestinians Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.

Through the early 90s, Morris was regarded as an ultra-leftist and an icon of Post-Zionism. But as the Oslo years wore on and hopes for peace dimmed from the pinnacle they reached with the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn in 1993, like so many Israelis , Morris grew more pessimistic and disillusioned.

With the Al-Aksa Intifada’s violence leaving hopes shattered during the early years of this decade, Morris started speaking much more about “Arab mendacity” and the desire of Palestinians and all Arabs to sacrifice everything for the sake of destroying Israel. This was most evident in a 2004 interview in Ha’aretz, where Morris criticized David Ben-Gurion for not expelling all the Arabs from the nascent state of Israel, among other things.

His newest book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict illustrates the scope of Benny Morris’ work.

Benny MorrisMorris is an outstanding researcher. He digs down and assembles facts in minute detail. But as a polemicist, and in general as a thinker, he is not particularly adept. When he sticks to the facts, he has shown himself to be remarkably skilled at presenting them in an even-handed and thorough fashion, even when they do not support a view he holds. But when drawing conclusions or taking leaps of deductive reasoning, he tends to fall very short, with enormous, even prejudiced, bias coming through very sharply.

This too is well illustrated in his latest book. One State has three sections. The middle one which, though also flawed, is by far the best, details the history of both one- and two-state ideologies and strategies, from early bi-nationalism through to present-day diplomacy on the Oslo/Annapolis track.  

That history is not encouraging, with one solution after another being obstructed or rejected by one side or the other, sometimes both. But for Morris, the history is really two histories: one of pragmatic acceptance of partition of the land of Palestine/Eretz Yisrael on the part of the Jews, and the other the constant rejection of coexistence by Arabs.

Morris sets the tone in his first chapter, a review of the current rise of one-state thinking, largely among Palestinians and their supporters. He quotes, at some length, from Rashid Khalidi’s very worthy book The Iron Cage, accompanied by a flat statement that, despite Khalidi’s assertion to the contrary, Khalidi supports a single-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Morris offers no evidence for this assertion. He simply states it, based only on Khalidi’s exposition of the one-state position—an exposition that is clearly critical of the stance. And, one might add, an exposition that Morris himself would almost immediately imitate in this same book.

As Morris moves into his history of bi-nationalist ideas, notions of federated states and the various plans to partition Palestine, he works to trace a line from the earliest Palestinian and Arab opposition to Zionism directly and consistently through to today’s Palestinian proposals for full statehood and an end to the conflict. Morris, in his attempt to draw that direct line, makes no attempt to adjust his reading for circumstances. Thus, he sees the absolute rejectionism of Zionism by the Arab world before 1948 in the same light as he does the PLO’s gradual acceptance of a two-state settlement through the 1970s and 80s. For him, it cannot be possible that the Palestinians have come to accept the two-state solution as the only option, despite still believing that this is an unjust solution.

It seems that for Morris, Palestinian acceptance of a two-state solution can only be sincere if they recognize the legitimacy of the Zionist movement. That hardly seems a realistic standard. No Palestinian I have ever encountered, including the many who completely acknowledge that Jews have a historic, cultural and religious connection to the land, endorses a two-state solution on that basis. They do so because they recognize it is the only feasible solution.

This shouldn’t be such a leap. Morris himself has documented the fact that the acceptance by the Yishuv leadership, under David Ben-Gurion, of the Peel partition plan of 1937 was a tactic, and that Ben-Gurion never intended to settle for that small patch of land. It was a pragmatic decision. This is true today as well, for a great many Israelis—they don’t want to give up the West Bank, and certainly not any part of Jerusalem, but most remain willing to do so in order to end the conflict.

It is very telling that Morris’ analysis of the decline of the Oslo process makes no mention of the massive expansion of settlements. He pays a great deal of attention to the issue of expunging parts of the PLO charter (the amendments made have never been deemed sufficient by Israel) and the ongoing terrorism in the 90s. But he sees no role in the failure of the peace process for the massive explosion in the number of settlements and settlers in those years or the sharp decline in the Palestinian standard of living. This was due, in part, to the Palestinian Authority’s own corruption. However, the most direct factors were the increasing restrictions placed on Palestinian freedom of movement due to the settlements and their accompanying bypass roads, combined with the elimination of most of the jobs in Israel for Palestinians, as Israelis shifted to employing foreign guest workers from the Philippines, and Thailand, among other places, for menial labor.

Morris offers no alternative to the one-state or two-state solutions. He only suggests the revival of an old idea of subsuming, either by confederation or annexation, a Palestinian entity under Jordanian rule. The notion is far from the table, as it is an option that no one but a few Israelis desire. Beyond that, and not surprisingly, there is no constructive thought here.

In the final chapter, Morris does make some very important points about the problems with a two-state solution. The geography of partition has always been a major issue, one that has generally been understated. From the Peel Commission partition plan in 1937 to the Clinton Parameters in 2000, when one actually looks at the proposals on a map, they certainly don’t look like very practical alternatives. Also, the process of building an independent Palestinian economy is going to take a very long time, and even if successful, that economy is not likely to be on a par with Israel’s. And that will always be the comparison.

There are other problems with a two-state solution, and they’re getting worse every day.  Morris demonstrates one of the biggest: the anger and bigotry that decades of conflict have spawned. One example: “Israeli Jewish society remains largely secular, with Western, democratic values predominating. This can hardly dovetail with the authoritarian and religious values of Palestinian Arab society…”

Morris includes in his division Israel’s Palestinian citizens, pointing out the greater crime rates among Arabs than Jews within Israel’s borders. He conveniently ignores the universally accepted correlation between wealth and social status with crime rates and instead attributes the difference to the distinction between the Jewish culture and the Arab.

There are real reasons on the ground that a two-state solution is a lot more difficult than many people believe it to be. And I certainly agree that any one-state formulation is a non-starter. But Morris demonstrates what might be the greatest obstacle to any resolution: the irrational, bigoted hatred of the other. For him, there is no such thing as a trustworthy Arab.

Too many Israelis and Palestinians, as well as their supporters throughout the world, hold views of this type. Morris typifies the Israeli version. We’ve all heard a great deal about the Palestinian one, in places like the Hamas charter, or the Muslim one that Mahmoud Ahmedinejad displayed again so well in Geneva a few weeks ago. Until that mindset is overcome, hope is, indeed, in very short supply.