He alienated my cousin Grant. Ask him next time you see him.

You speak as a radical, and by that I mean that you are primarily critical, and disrespect the SKILL of mediation as if it were cooptation or betrayal.

Its not. Obama is doing EXACTLY what he is committed to, reconciliation, healing.

If you've ever experienced any therapy that includes respectfully hearing both sides, NOT buying either sides conclusions, but valuing the experience as persons' experience, and as information.

The radical approach makes that reconciliation process difficult if not entirely stopped.

Its the reason that Obama distances himself from radicals and radical process, even as he learns from the narratives and the persons.

The list of things that are objected to, add up to no intersection.

In the case of Israel/Palestine, a blaming approach (even if accurate), results in ONLY a pendulum swing from one injustice to another.

The art is to tell one's own story, so that it is heard, not to demean the others.

In Israel/Palestine, BOTH dominant story lines are accurate and relevant. To pick only one, is the wrong one.

To get to justice, it takes valuing the two simultaneiously.

Are you up for that? Or is cops and robbers, the McCainian/Bushian comic book polarity, the only possibility?

Khalidi did NOT invalidate the Zionist story. He explained that it was incomplete, qualitatively incomplete, prospectively criminally incomplete.

The Palestinian nationalist, nakba-only, story is also incomplete, qualitatively incomplete, prospectively criminally incomplete.

Of course, if Obama sways too far from his masters, won't he be risking his life?

I posted this before, but I'll put the link up again here, because I think it's important for people to know:

"On the street when I am approached by an Obama/Biden volunteer or someone who tells me they’re voting for Obama, I usually ask "What about the FISA vote?” And each time I hear in return "What’s that?” Or if I say, "You know he supports the death penalty,” I usually hear in response, "No he doesn’t.”

At what point will there be INTELLECTUAL HONESTY about what is happening? People are voting for Obama because they find him to be an engaging public speaker and like his message regardless of his history of being part of the very problem he professes to want to fix. Most people don’t want the actual facts to interfere with the desperate hope that he is everything they want him to be…"

http://www.votenader.org/blog/2008/10/29/what-do-they-have-to-do/

How would anyone know Richard? The majority of Americans don't know what the Nakba is. But everyone knows about Jewish suffering. We've heard it all ad nauseum. You are absolutely amazing when you write this stuff. It's as if you honestly believe that the two narratives share equal billing. When Palestinians are owners of media, editors of The NY Times and WaPo, movie writers and producers, etc. – when that situation comes to pass, THEN the arguments you make will have merit. Until such time, it's all nonsense.

Richard, something that is qualitatively incomplete, prospectively criminally, IS BY DEFINITION invalidated. Stop using fancy word play which says nothing and keeps the status quo intact.

I wish you enjoined the Palestinian narrative as an antidote. I sense that in your flirtation with anti-Zionism you adopt it as a spur, not a healing.

The narrative of Jewish refugees of REAL genocide (not dislocation), cursed and beaten on their return to hometowns in Poland, Ukraine, Hungary; prohibited from emigration to Great Britain, US; is real.

They returned to a community that welcomed them, NOT pariahs for surviving.

WE deserve a home, and if it means taking it, that is justice.

When my son and I built a sukkah a few weeks ago, we cut the branches of some evergreen trees. We thanked each tree for giving its branches.

The most enlightened of Americans THANK the Indians for accepting new neighbors (even as Indians did not accept them willingly).

The most enlightened of Israelis THANK Palestinians for doing the same.

They DON'T apologize for living though, or for living as community, or for living as nation.

There are 5 people, victims of this crime, who are trying to tell their side of the story. They have no megaphones, and due to the criminality of the first narrative, they are looked upon by the masses as unworthy, not to be trusted, dangerous. Their words are barely audible in the midst of the 100 megaphones, and what does get through is more often than not misunderstood by the masses because their reality has been shaped for so long by the people with the megaphones.

By Richard's logic, both narratives are on equal ground.