“the ruling Likud Party, has done nothing but just expand settlements on the West Bank”—while I don’t fully agree with this statement, here’s a question: what did the Labor Party do? Other than Oslo Accords, which very few in Israel see as any success? While in the early days Labor was an inspiring party, no doubt, it seems to have been reduced to a lack of personalities (with all due respect to Shimon Peres!) and lack of ideas in the last two decades or so…

As for the question of returning settlers to within pre-1967 borders, why is it that it is acceptable to have Palestine as a Jew-free country? Can you see three political parties representing Jewish settlers in Palestinian parliament? Isn’t this sort of double standards the crux of the problem?

In the Hebron Massacre of 1929, 19 Arab families took in and hid 435 Jews. Jews were welcomed back in 1931, by the Arab Hebron Chamber of Commerce. They remain there until the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Haj Amin el-Husseini was a Nazi collaborator, but so were the Finns. Do will still have present-day bad feelings towards the Finns for that? But we obviously do for the Palestinians. If we can disregard the pro-Nazi activities of the Finns and Italians. Then we should be able for the Palestinians.

Despite joining the Germans in their invasion of the Soviet Union in 1942, Finland did not allow their Jewish population to be deported. Great Britain was the only ally to declare war on Finland in 1942. Italy very much allowed their Jewish population to be deported, even though Mussolini was ousted by the Fascists in 1943. In 1993, the Palestine LIberation Organization recognized the State of Israel. The Palestinian Authority has been in negotiations with Israel, but Hamas is a separate political wing that still advocates violence against Israel. A Palestinian is not just a Palestinian. Just like the Axis Powers, were not just the Axis Powers. The United States never bombed Finland, and went into Italy to oust out the Germans in control of the country. Also in the Hebron Massacre of 1929, the Arabs killed 67 Jews, but saved 435. So evil cannot be just defined in blanket terms.

Arabs killed them, but were also saving them. It is like the Lithuanian Iron Wolf was helping the Nazis round up Jews, but there were also Lithuanian citizens that were hiding Jews. Let us not glamorize Europeans, and demonize Arabs. Because bigotry will just deflect away from peace.

Ultra-nationalists parties are rising in Hungary, Romania, Greece, and Ukraine. They are not the ruling parties yet, but very Anti-Semitic. Even Hamas Charter, will do a great deal of name calling, but it is not calling for the mass murder of Jews. I am not fearful that Hamas will come and murder me. But Jews are leaving Hungary, because of a difficult lifestyle there. You are Arab-stereotyping again.

If you have not read yet Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” I hight recommend it. Because it explains that Anti-Semitism is not just random behavior, but has a political structure to it. You will see that more with the European ultra-nationalistic parties, than with Hamas. The weakness of Hamas’ Anti-Semitism is that it lacks a political structure. It more resembles mob behavior. Greece’s Golden Dawn Party has more fearful verbiage in it, than Hamas Doctrine. Also, get on the website of Hannah Rosenthal, the President’s Envoy on Combatting Anti-Semitic. Because she knew how to confront Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education on Anti-Semitism in their curriculum.

If we look at deeds, then there was the recent rocket firings into Israel. They stopped, but Khaled Meshaal made a point, when he said Gazan farmers need to go out into their fields close to the Israeli border, and Gaza fishermen need to go out further into sea, to make more catches. Not Gazans firing rockets into Israel, or performing terrorist acts, but doing something economically to survive. If Israeli-Palestinian peace is to materialize, then all Palestinian political factions need to be included, it just cannot be Mahmoud Abbas. So will Tzipi Livni be able to have a meeting with both Abbas and Meshaal? Will John Kerry will able to help? Right now those questions are unanswered. But that does not mean they cannot be answered.

The Arabs do not murder Jews because they are Jews. If that were the case, then all of the Jews now living in places such as Yemen and Morocco would be dead. It is modern politics. Arabs have never tried to kill me, in fact I have been in a great deal of ecumenical dialogues with Muslims. Just do not rely on what the media tells you, because does it talk about ecumenical dialogue between Arab/Muslims and Jews. No, they want a story. So violence will be the story. I one time tried to get the media to do a story about a joint Muslim-Jewish picnic I was involved in. They told me they were not interested, because it was not a story that interested them. If i had spent more time, I probable would have found a media that would cover it. It was the Nazis that killed Jews because they were Jews. Are you getting your information off the website of the Jewish Defense League? Because there are Jewish extremist websites out there.

I was in Israel in 2006, when the country was just rocked by suicide bombings. That has stopped. I talked about this subject with a Palestinian Christian minister. He told me “a suicide bomber is not born, they are created.” I later found out that there were a high number of Palestinians with advanced degrees, who were not in occupations equal to there education levels. Capital is very slight for Palestinians to start there own businesses. But I was able to forward them over to the Grameen Bank and Mercy Corps, for capital to start their own businesses. When I checked back on them, their businesses were viable and thriving. Sectarian conflict has to be addressed by the two side involved in it. You can feel the personal pain of losing people that you know. But the death rate in the sectarian conflict is 6 Palestinians for every 1 Israeli. To me, all deaths are bad. But it cannot simply be clouded because Jewish is in my background. But because of that, I have had Jewish extremists just say horrible things to me, they have called me an Anti-Semitic Muslim Nazi. But the answer is not make Jews victims, and the Palestinians cold blooded killers. They both have to be human beings.

The Israeli and Palestinian economies are very closely linked. Together they do over U.S. $6 billion dollars worth of business with each other. If the Palestinian economy were to collapse, it would pull Israel down along with it. Israel would not be able to decouple from it. The future potential of joint Israeli-Palestinan business ventures is absolutely enormous. But there has to be peace to developed them. Its not that the Palestinians do care if their people are employed or not. No one becomes a professional suicide bomber. But somebody has to have a future, to not want to commit suicide. People always send me on-line the Hamas Doctrine, and say “read it.” I have read it so many times. But what they are doing in Gaza now is expanding the teaching of Hebrew in Gaza schools. Not to tell an Israeli you are dead, but it seems as though Hamas is looking into the future, when Israelis will be their customers. Gazan farmers were at the Eshkol Agricultural Expo, to learn the latest about farming techniques and marketing. So we have some type of business exchange between Gaza and israel. Now it needs to be expanded. Remember Germany was in political and economic alliances with Great Britain and France 7 years after World War II. So we cannot say it is different with the Palestinians simply because they want to kill Jews. For extremists will use that.

I do not have information on greenhouses being destroyed. Were they destroyed because they were “Zionist” greenhouses, or was it because the Gazan farmers could not use them? Any farmer wants to make as much money as they can. I do not think the hatred towards the Israelis would be so great, as to destroy something that could make money. Is it because when the Israelis withdrew they took the temperature regulators with them? If so, then the Gazans could just get them from Egypt.

Obviously, the Palestinian Constitution would have to be amended, while Israel has never had a constitution. India has two sets of civil codes: one for Hindus and the other for Muslims. Israel has accepted the fact that it has an Arab minority, so Palestine would have to accept the fact that is has a Jewish minority. Because that is the given for that region of the world. Israel will only be a Jewish state, because it has a Jewish majority, and Palestine will only be an Arab state, just because it has an Arab minority. We must return back to the 1947 United Nations partition. Mahmoud Abbas said it was a mistake, not to accept it. It is never too late to go back and correct mistakes.

The Palestinian Constitution does not pertain to a nation-state, only to a political entity. The Labor Party, and other political parties within Israel, propose a two-state solution. But we do not know yet, if that will include land swaps. The catalyst for a Palestinian state would be what we know as the borders which define the West Bank and Gaza.

Hamas Charter is not a part of the Palestinian Constitution. It is just a charter for a political organization. It is like saying the charter of the Boy Scouts is the U.S. Constitution.

Hamas was the winning party, that eventually got exiled to Gaza. It shows how much the Palestinians are a disunited people. Also, Hamas recognizes the pre-1967 borders. So they will have to eventually say the border with who. The Hamas toughness will be dropped in the future. So we all need to watch what we say. But what really gets me about Hamas is how factual inaccurate their charter is on Islamic history, and their paranoid and xenophobic economic policies that have devastated the economy of Gaza.

Israeli-Palestinian peace requires perseverance. We saw Yitzhak Rabin shake hands with Yasser Arafat. Both are dead now. There must be new figures that will be shaking hands, and having that hand shake transpire into permanent peace. Turkey wants to end its decades old conflict with its Kurdish minority. The Turkish Government-Kurdistan Workers’ Party negotiations are just as touchy as the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Will Turkey legalize the use of the Kurdish language in media and education?

Anwar Sadat’s hand shake has never been rescinded. Not even by the Muslim Brotherhood, which assassinated him.

I do not interpret in mass hysteria, that the Arabs say “the only good Jew, is a dead Jew.” Jewish extremists will use that more than Muslim extremists. Mohammed Morsi has been challenged within his own party, to be belligerent towards Israel, but he has kept the 1979 peace accords with Israel. As Yasser Arafat said “Extremism exists on both sides.” For Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist.

When Anwar Sadat was assassinated that was a terrorist attack. Which babies are you talking about? Israeli or Palestinian. I have seen bodies pulled out from underneath rubble in Israel and in Gaza. So pulling out a dead Palestinian body, is to make me cold and unfeeling. While an Israeli body is to make me break down and cry. I cannot justify either, except that a death is a death, and none of them is right.

What I am saying is that I am involved with stopping the sectarian violence that is killing both Israelis and Palestinians. I have seen the victims, and I have worked with their survivors. To me both Israelis and Palestinians are human beings. I cannot dehumanize a Palestinian, just because I had a Jewish mother. A spade is a spade, if I dehumanize the Palestinians, and victimized the Jews, I would just be a fascist.

Can I say that every Palestinian I have met is a terrorist, who wants to kill a Jew? Many Palestinians are working with Jews on behalf of peace and coexistence. Would it be appropriate to say these people “You hate Jews, and want to kill them!” It is like race relations in the United States, the Nation of Islam for awhile advocated the killing of all whites. But Martin Luther King, Jr. did not advocate the killings of whites, He advocated the coexistence with whites.

The Labor Party won a substantial number of seats in the Knesset. But the Hatnuah Party will be in a coalition with the Likud Party, with Tzipi Livni as Minister of Justice, and as chief negotiator for Israeli-Palestinian issues. I do not think Mahmoud Abbas is going to kill her, but it will be interesting to see if the non-direct negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Cairo, turn into direct negotiations. That is the reason why we just cannot hang onto “the Palestinians want to kill every Jew.” Because it is not factually correct. Even the Jewish Home Party does get that extreme.

Golda Meir was involved in secret negotiations with King Abdullah of Jordan, which what led to his assassination. Jordan and israel have diplomatic relations now. In fact, Israeli companies in Jordan are employing 1,200 Jordanians. Hamas and Israel are just now starting to communicate with each other in Cairo. It is not unthinkable to see that turn into direct communications. For a long time, Israel had a bounty on Yasser Arafat’s head.

Not in 1967, did they. In 1967, King Hussein’s speeches sounded just like Hamas. Then King Hussein’s was at Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral, wiping tears out of his eyes, referring to Rabin as his “brother.” It is just that you are thinking that Khaled Meshaal was expelled when he lived in Jordan, and in 1970 Jordan expelled the Palestine LIberation Organization.

Sooner or later Hamas will have to accept the State of Israel, because it is not going anywhere. That is the reason why King Hussein accepted Israel. Despite all the past cries for it destruction, after 64 years it has not been destroyed. But many Jewish extremists will claim that there be another Holocaust. Remember when the United States and Soviet Union were going to blow each other of the map. Did it happen? I lot a people in the 1980′s sure thought it would.

What led to Khrushchev to withdrawal those missiles from Cuba, was that he was a veteran of World War II in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had the highest civilian death rate of any other country during World War II. Villages that supported the partisans were completely wiped out. Khrushchev as traumatized by war.

I think you are dehumanizing Khrushchev a little bit too much. If he was that cold and heartless, he would have kept Joseph Stalin the icon he was after his death. But the Soviet Union wanted to erase the memory of Stalin, despite he was the leader during the Nazi invasion. But the Soviets could not forget his purges from 1936 to 1939, all the Soviet leaders who opposed him executed, and his Doctors Plot from 1952 to 1953. If Khrushchev was not traumatized by World War II, then he had to be from the Great Purge, which left the Soviet Union so weak to stand up against Operation Barbarossa. Sometimes it is hard to classify the lesser of two evils. Which also applies to the Palestinians, but I think as a historian you have to try to justify that all the time.

But they changed the name from Stalingrad to Volgograd, and Stalin’s corpse was removed from Lenin’s tomb. So his esteem was lowered, before that of Lenin’s. Apparently, it has been an ongoing debate about whether to remove Lenin’s body and bury it.