One of the core phenomena in these matters is the characterization of one’s perceived opponent in a very extreme fashion, based on very few basic conceptions. Why does this feel real to you?

I personally resent implications from Phil and his audience, that the liberal politicians and columnists that they savage (including Ethan Bronner), are manipulated puppets.

I appreciate your “I personally resent” the problem is the extreme coinage “manipulated puppets”. Ultimately you describe “Phil & his audience” as conspiracy theorists. Do you have any evidence to support your point? When did Phil call Ethan Bronner a “manipulated puppet”, when did his readers?

You carefully mix a truthful statement about yourself with the old humiliation of “Phil and his crowd”. So your basic perception hasn’t changed one jota over the years.

I don’t agree. You have no problem condemning Hamas for their record of suicide bombing, so apparently that form of honesty is okay with you, but when people are as honest about Israel’s crimes you start talking about the need for mediation.

One of the big problems on the Israeli side of the fence is precisely this–the double standard on which crimes can be forthrightly condemned. It is what leads to people on the pro-Israeli side thinking (and maybe some of them are sincerely deluded) that Israel at least has made some real attempts at a peaceful solution, only to be met with Palestinian or Arab intransigence. There are likely to be continuing atrocities committed by people on both sides of the conflict, and so long as the pro-Israeli side continues to think like this, they will always find an excuse for blaming the Arabs and dodging responsibility for their own crimes.

Solidarity with resistance continues war. Solidarity with expansion continues war. Commitment to mutual recognition, creates peace.

In fact, Israel never withdrew from Southern Lebanon — it still hasn’t. The IDF maintains outposts all over the Kfar Shouba hills, conducts illegal violations of Lebanese airspace on a near-daily basis in what can only be construed as a combination of reconaissance flights and intimidation, and illegally occupied the northern half of the village of al Ghajar at the end of the 2006 July War, the northern half of the village having been allocated to Lebanon in 2000. Israel maintains troops in the entirety of al Ghajar today, and mans outposts outside the town’s limits on the Lebanese side. In addition to all of this, Lebanon still claims the Sheba’a Farms region as its own, and Israel has been occupying the area since 1967, ignoring calls from the UN and the Arab world to disengage and let the Syrians and Lebanese resolve the border demarcation issue on their own.

Do you support an immediate freeze of settlements in the OT, including East Jerusalem? ”

Yes to both, which you would be aware of if you bothered to read.

Do you support an independent, sovereign Palestinian state?

Do you support an immediate freeze of settlements in the OT, including East Jerusalem?

“Its an insult to him, and in situations where I have any credibility, I state that I don’t think that is the case, that he has multiple concerns and experiences, that add up to more than merely a puppet or one-dimensional approach.”

I think that Phil has expressed one overriding concern and that is simple justice for the Palestinians. And he expresses that in a direct, straightforward way without engaging in psychobabble and elevating form over substance or process over outcome.

Can you tell me what your concerns are in 50 words or less?

It is significant that there finally is a political tide that reaches into the Beltway and media establishments. I have no doubt that it will ebb in the not unlikely event that Israelis and the Lobby manage to politically break or severely wound Pres. Obama by cutting his foreign policy objectives off at the knees, but that will only stir the tempest for the next round. Every battle the Lobby is forced to fight in public is one they lose strategically even if they win it tactically.