This talk radio campaign is one of the more innovative efforts to reach heartland audiences.

http://info.jpost.com/C002/Supplements/AmericasVoices/

And of course AIPAC…

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/aipac-we-make-sure-that-pro-israel-candidates-take-over-government.html

And this one designed to orchestrate comments on the internet.

http://www.giyus.org/

Scenario 1: Israel disarms and renounces violence, becoming a pacifist state.

What happens in the next year?

Scenario 2: All of the Palestinians groups (Fatah, Hamas, etc.) disarm and renounce violence, becoming pacifist advocates for their people.

What happens in the next year?

Well, which scenario (yes, both are unlikely) leads to true peace?

I’m not a licensed historian, but there does seem to be something quite unscientific about your method of explaining how public opinion has evolved.

You don’t provide much quantitative data about what public attitudes were at any particular point in time. You further assert that certain opinions were held by certain imprecisely defined ideological groups and these opinions changed and then you tell us what events occurred which caused those ideas to change! All with little or no data to back up these claims.

You might be right on some of these ideas, but you might be wrong also. You really don’t provide much evidence, just a nice narrative.

All sorts of pseudo-scientific disciplines from psychoanalysis to Feng-Shui use similar narratives to explain events. It’s easy to create a just-so story to explain things when you don’t have to prove causal connections.

It all makes for interesting reading and there are some insightful descriptions of ideas, but given that it is not based on empirical / scientific / testable and falsifiable claims, it is not really scientific.

Sadly, given the complexity of this world, most of the causal connections you mention to explain how the thinking of certain groups evolved are probably just not correct.

Mike

Successful Nation States require many things the Palestinians don’t yet have. A balanced and positive identity is a major one. Hate and victimhood will not build civic institutions or a productive economy.

My feeling is that the only way there will ever be peace is if Palestine become a functional Nation State. That can only happen if we build a positive identity in the next generation of Palestinian children. Give them some world class soccer coaches, and the best nutritionists. Tie it to the best school programs and industry. Bring in a minority of outside talent to keep it from becoming completely tribal. Nothing succeeds like success.

I think a lot of the love-hate relationship many people I know have with Israel come from the fact that people are still basically tribal, and Israel is the last ‘tribe’ standing in a historically long process of tribal attrition and assimilation.

Palestine is never going to compete ‘tribally’ with Israel. They can sidestep that whole thing though and advance directly to a more pluralistic and successful modern state.

No, I would not count General Petraeus as a bigot. But he merely listed the unresolved I/P conflict as one among many factors increasing anti-Americanism in the Middle East, literally one in a list of a dozen factors. Petraeus did not put it out as a primary reason as Mark Perry, that Hizbullah flunky, tried to make us all believe in his Foreign Policy blog post. In fact, General Petraeus regards it as so far from a primary factor that he didn’t mention it at all in his introductory remarks to Congress at all.

The idea that Muslims hate us because the I/P conflict is unresolved is one of the oldest cons in the book. The ones who hate us on that account would hate us much WORSE if there were a settlement, which they would regards as a treacherous sell-out.