And, if we didn't do it for guilt, we would do it because it is the right thing to do, consistent with how one treats a friend.

Phil,
I've never heard you criticize Finkelstein here, for the last six months that I've read and posted.

The phenomena of who shows up and yells at Finkelstein's lectures is a little misleading. Who cares about the numbers of yellers, of hecklers?

If the content of the talks is some intellectual inference, its what people come to question or conclude, what they think about, that is relevant.

One great thing about Finkelstein's mentor, Noam Chomsky, is that Chomsky stated over and over, that his goal was to inspire his audience to think, to research themselves, to question their own assumptions (even if it differed from his).

That is what is relevant. Even taking in Finkelstein's theses at a lecture, its an "if", a possible explanation, a possible understanding from which to act.

Finkelstein got a settlement for leaving Depaul? Did he sign a non-disclosure contract?

Do you think if he is saying that the Depaul issue is past, that it is anything but self-embellishment to continue to bring it up?

Or, is he, like Podhoretz, using his life as palette to understand history and politics?

I agree that when Israel was offered confident peace (sort of) in exchange for Palestine at the green line (or consented modifications), Israel should have and should jump on it, do it.

There is no good reason for occupation.

The Jordan River now sites early warning radar to alert Israeli cities of missiles from formerly Iraq, and now prospectively Iran, which they could contract to retain, if they formed a confident peace.

A nuclear strike (even just material, not necessarily an explosive) would harm Palestinians nearly equally, especially if levied at Jerusalem, and have an interest in early warning as well.

This reminds me of a scene Scorsese’s brilliant “Last Temptation,” when the angelic siren who has been steadily working on Jesus to abandon his destiny and live a “normal” life (poof!) disappears into the ether once Jesus embraces his fate.

Diaspora Jewish Zionists are, at heart, cowards, which is why they dwell in the diaspora instead of putting their money where their mouths are and moving to Israel. Once seriously challenged, they, too, will disappear.

This is why I support the existence of Israel: it separates the Jewish Zionist men from the boys, and clarifies for those that don’t already know it that someone who is a Jewish Zionist but not living in Israel should be ignored as a craven, gutless, coward. Had that simple truth not been suppressed by the Marxist/Capitalist construct of political correctness, the mostly Jewish Zionist Neocons never would have gotten traction, 4,000 US soldiers and about a million Iraqis would still be alive, and America would still be semi-respectable.

America’s problems run far deeper than gutless diaspora Jewish Zionists. The entire edifice is rotten from top to bottom.

It will be fought, but if the argument is confidently framed as security, peace, rule of law in both states with minorities experiencing equal due process, it will be convincing.

It will call the US and Israeli right's bluff.

But only if sincere. Opportunism and shifting positions won't cut it.

Now, how does the P-I conflict fit in here?

There's certainly no interbreeding.
There's no World opinion suasion–even Barak Obama has to really watch his P & Qs here.

I think the right wing nuts of all persuasions have it right. The aging force of the Enlightenment holds no sway in the Middle East.

Ron Paul has the answer. Too bad the USA is a plutocracy.

This is a type of difference of views that I've had to deal with in my own life. I've sometimes tried to be respectful and considerate of people who I thought were intelligent and well-meaning even though I also thought they were wrong and weren't looking at things in a sufficiently profound way. Other friends of mine dismissed these people as idiots, and over time I came to realize that, yeah, they kind of are. They're book-smart in some ways, but they're ineffectual and their track record shows they'll never get to the real meat of an issue or deal with it effectively, so in a very real sense, their intelligence, such as it is, is wasted. I suspect Finkelstein would agree that that's true of Miller.

"The other fascinating thing about this interview is Finkelstein's new line supporting the two-state solution and financial compensation to extinguish the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Finkelstein says that the two-state solution has a lot of political support right now, all over the world, and who can fight those politics. (Well Finkelstein fought them for many years)."

That's part of what Finkelstein said, in the context of what's politically possible. However, as the interviewers noted, Finkelstein wrote in "Image and Reality" that the inevitable future is a unitary state. And his views have not changed:

"NF: Well, basically the Palestinian state will be such a piddling state, and the Jordanian state is barely viable, and I think the point that Meron Benvenisti makes; he's all along claimed this two-state idea is a chimera. Because, he says, Palestinians and Israelis share everything, that Palestine is an integral whole. They share the water, they're on the same electricity grids, the geography is, to break it up, would be artificial, and I recognize that. So at some point this artificially fragmented whole – assuming people can get along – will peacefully integrate.

"The demographics are such that it's hard to imagine these ethnically-pure states – especially there – being viable. So for material reasons as well as demographic reasons, it seems to me that Benvenisti is right, that the two-state quote/unquote settlement is very makeshift, is jerrybuilt, and is fundamentally artificial."

"Makeshift" — "jerrybuilt" — "artificial." Hardly a ringing endorsement of the two-state solution. At best, he's calling it a necessary but doomed stepping stone on the way to an eventual unitary state.