This is ultimately what happens to parties and people that have no principles and put foreign causes and agendas ahead of their own countries. In my view, it’s just-deserts for both. The problem is that one of the two is still going to take the White House, and both will still take Congress. So the Zionists win either way.

I don't think so Ed. Although Zionism and its agenda are starting to finally be outed in many "left" circles, it hasn't been infiltrated enough yet to cause any widespread disillusionment among his base. Most of his base knows next to nothing about Palestinian suffering and Israeli brutality.

It will pass.

They are playing the bigotry card, in the last week, in desparation.

Powell's condemnation notwithstanding.

It is a dividing issue, and you PHIL are making it moreso.

You are taking your version of a low road on it, and one can only hope then that the population that listens to your voice is small.

If you took a high road, rather than the idiotic "Dershowitz supports Obama, silence him" track, I'd have more respect.

Sometimes you speak like McCain, reckless, from the hip.

Sorry but that's the truth. And I'm voting for him, too. I'm just not starry-eyed about him.

What sickens me about all of this is how a decent man, Rashid Khalidi, is being vilified in the press. My father went to his grave believing that Americans and Israelis just want to grind Arabs into the dust, destroy Arab culture, and humiliate and subject all Arabs everywhere. Dad kept account of all the Arab-American professors he knew, men of the generation before Khalidi, who were blacklisted or denied tenure or never hired at all because they were too Arab. He felt that anti-Arab racism was a huge assault on the dignity of Arabs everywhere. I used to argue with him about his fears. I felt he was exaggerating. I believed things were getting better in America.

I am just sickened that Khalidi is suffering this public excoriation based on NOTHING. Glad to see Scott Horton speaking out on his behalf in Harpers' today. I hope we hear from Juan Cole by tomorrow, too. He usually publishes in the middle of the night.

Where are Khalidi's colleagues? The president of Columbia? When is the academic community going to stand up for him?

If a Jew were excoriated like this the Anti-Defamation League would be all over it. It's grotesque.

But Richard Witty's untroubled. He thinks it's no big deal; we're making too much of it, he says.

What a creep.

I have not heard Obama EVER state that he disrespected Khalidi. (I don't know Khalidi at all.)

In reading about him last night, I also found info on Edward Said's friendship with an Israeli conductor, Daneil Borenbeim, with whom he founded the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

It takes a focus to cut through the either/or approach.

"I personally have trouble with the knowledge that he cheered on Israel in its butchery of July-August 2006."

Did he in fact? Or, only in nuance?

The most difficult job for a therapist is to retain that focus, so that realizations about others' feelings aren't subsequently used as a weapon.

A confidence betrayed.

Its difficult in a bad marriage to not do that, to instead remember that the goal is mutual respect (respect of oneself AND the other).

Politics of invocation of angers and pains don't accomplish healing particularly well.

But, if you are on a healing track re:Israel, and NOT on a resentment track, then I hope that when revelations of Israelis' feelings (as feelings) are uncovered, that you respect them (as feelings), as I hope you confidently convey your feelings (as feelings) assuming that they will be heard and respected.

These are of course basics to some of us.