American - Historian | 1949 -
Do I trust Yasser Arafat? Of course not. Why should I? Why should anyone trust a politician, whether Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Benjamin Netanyahu, George W. Bush, or Yasser Arafat?
Ian Lustick
TrustWhyPoliticianCourseShould
Whether we agree with them or not, politicians aren't for trusting. They are for getting done what can be done to make really horrible problems into plain old lousy problems.
ProblemsDoneOldPoliticiansAgree
What we have really now is a one-state outcome in which Israel is the one and only state between the Jordan River and the sea. It can do whatever it wants virtually throughout the area. But that's not the kind of a state that's going to be a basis for peace and stability in the region.
SeaPeaceRiverNowKindWhatever
The fact is that democracy anywhere in the world, including in the United States, is not something that comes easy. And yet, we are committed to it, and equality and democracy are the only ways in the long run that Jews will be safe in the Middle East.
EqualityDemocracyWorldLongEasy
Most Israelis do want to keep Israel safe. The question is how do you do that.
YouWantQuestionSafeIsraelKeep
As long as Hamas needs the support it could conceivably get from the international community through the Palestinian Authority, it has an interest in playing nice with Fatah. And Fatah has an interest in playing nice with Hamas because it needs some source of legitimacy on the West Bank.
CommunitySupportLongNiceBank
The leadership of the Palestinian Authority is not held in high regard by most of the population of the West Bank. They're seen as living relatively high off the hog and certainly not accomplishing anything vis-a-vis the Israelis.
LeadershipLivingAuthorityHighOff
When people today say 'racism,' they mean it's a nationalism they don't like. Racialism used to be a good thing, a looking-out for what was best for one group... Israel comes out of that 19th-century idea of nationalism. Many Arab states also have preferences. It's fundamentally unfair to decide that one is racism and the others aren't.
GoodTodayBestRacismPeopleGroup
There's still a role for the Association for Israel Studies. But not as the endpoint of scholarship and not as a fortress to defend Israel.
ScholarshipDefendIsraelRoleStill
The ability to calibrate risk doesn't happen rationally.
RiskAbilityHappenRationally
There is some big thing about the world that produced all these people willing to kill themselves just to hurt us. On 9/11 we learned we're part of that world, in the same completely crazy, drastic and arbitrary ways it hits other countries.
PeopleCrazyWorldHurtSameBig
Strong Islamist trends make a fundamentalist Palestine more likely than a small state under a secular government.
GovernmentSmallStrongMoreTrends
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Ian Lustick quotes