"Contrary to their gown-wearing counterparts, the suit-wearing extremists are more sophisticated and more illusive. They consult with image-makers and PR specialists and speak the language of the dominant with seductive eloquence. As such, the suit-wearing extremists are more prone to fly under the radar of public sensibilities and media scrutiny, and this not only gives them the leverage but the impunity to go for the kill- painting all Muslims and Islam on one broad negative paintbrush."

"In Israel, 25 per cent of the population is non-Jewish, severely discriminated against and denied basic democratic and social rights. The bill prompted Israel's newspaper, Ha'aretz, to publish an editorial titled, "A racist Jewish state".

"Since Kasrils correctly asserts the need for Israel to confront the past, one wonders whether Chief Rabbi Goldstein will have the courage to recognize that “without dealing with the agony it has caused, there can be no healing and no solution”. Equally it would be futile for local Zionist lobbies to rubbish Kasrils as a “self-hating Jew”, as his reading of the “bloody thread that links Israel’s shameful past with that of today” is spot-on."

"Pappe’s scholarly treatise is equally compelling on two profoundly significant levels, which he refers to as manifestations of denial. The first, he says, was the denial exercised by peace brokers as they consistently sidelined, if not altogether eliminated, the Palestinian cause and concerns from any future peace arrangement. The second was the categorical refusal of the Israelis to acknowledge the Nakba and their absolute unwillingness to be held accountable, legally and morally, for the ethnic cleansing they committed in 1948."

"...on this anniversary, my thanks to Abu Dhabi TV for their continued support, and to my U.S. carriers and my faithful viewers. From the hundreds of guests I've hosted and thousands who've called in, I have learned so much. It continues to be an honor and a privilege to be a part of this continuing conversation."

"Given the politicians’ crass opportunism and lack of commitment, the optimism generated by recent elections is likely to prove short-lived. Some observers have gone so far as to opine that the present arrangement will not last even a year and that people will be forced to go to the polls again. Both leading parties--the PPP and PML-N--will aim to get a clear mandate to rule on their own; power-sharing is neither familiar to them nor something they enjoy. Pakistani politicians, feudal to their bone-marrow, want everything for themselves. It would take a very great optimist to predict any light at the end of the dark tunnel in which the hapless people of Pakistan are trapped."

"Sometimes, as in the Second Lebanon War of summer 2006, we muddle through rather inelegantly. But we muddle through. Recently, most of us have concluded that our settlement policy in the West Bank and Gaza threatens to compromise the Jewish nature of our state and that our Palestinian neighbors also deserve a state. We dismantled the settlements in Gaza and we'll do the same in most of the West Bank. We won't allow ourselves to be trapped by either demography or geography."

"...it remains the responsibility of critical intellectuals to deconstruct seemingly primordial identities all the way down to their foundations, to the ideational residues that are so very different from the cocktail of myths, inventions and utter lies presented to us on a daily basis. In relation to Israel, the "new historians" have begun this endeavor and Palestinian intellectuals have long been engaged in a similar project."