that this fine story in the LA Times about the growing fears of a civil war inside Israel over the diehard "settlements" is written by a man named Ashraf Khalil, who I'm assuming has some Arab background (yet is able to visit a settlement and report on attitudes)? It says that We are a more evolved country than Israel, it says that Jews who have the great good fortune of living in this country must try and extend their understanding about minority freedom to the Israelis rather than running the clueless blind Israel lobby and signing off on the oppression of Palestinians. Also: Khalil's story begins with a bris. I visited a settlement, Eli, 2 years back for the Observer to go to the shiva ceremony for an officer killed in Lebanon. When you spill blood in the Occupied Territories and call it home, that's a powerful connection, when you bury your dead there, a powerful connection. How soon before we Americans must help Israelis begin to imagine, and then body, a one-state solution?
I gather from Dan Sisken that Khalil is an Arab-American.
