...The problem of course, is that when you bring Arab concerns with honor and shame to the attention of egocentrist liberals, they try as hard as possible not to further bruise that wounded pride, not to embarrass them, not to criticize them publicly. It may work for children some of the time perhaps, but not with hostile adults who take our unwillingness to criticize them and our corresponding eagerness to “affirm” them through our own self-criticism, as an invitation to further violence. And the demopaths and their enthusiasts know how to play on our unwillingness to confront the touchy Arab pride, know how to mobilize our moral indignation with accusations of racism, apartheid and colonial subjection not about their own morally base behavior, but Israel’s.

(I remember vividly a session in an Arab-Israeli dialogue group I was in during the worst of the suicide terrorism. I was looking to the Arabs to condemn it simply and clearly, and not excuse it or explain it. In vain. And when I voiced my opinion that encouraging children to blow themselves up in the midst of civilians was a moral abyss that linked child-abuse to mass murder, one of the nicer participants got vehemently indignant, and accused me of de-humanizing the Palestinians. I thought I was pointing our how the Palestinian leadership was dehumanizing its people; the Israeli/Jewish participants jumped on me for being so critical, for not validating our Arab interlocutors.)...