But His Conclusion, Oiy

Left-wing Zionists, like Yossi Alpher, are not bereft of commonsense.

Here he is in the NYTimes today:

...when the Palestinians’ quarrel with Israel touches on fundamental issues of ownership, whether in the claims of 1948 refugees or in the competing claims to the Temple Mount, the question of legitimacy comes to the fore.

This is how even moderate Israelis view the public rejection by the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s peace offer in 2008 — a set of proposals that Israelis deemed extraordinarily generous.

That rejection followed on the disappointments of Oslo, Camp David II and the unilateral withdrawals. And it dovetailed, in Israeli eyes, with the growing radicalization of the intellectual and political leadership of the Israeli Arab community in its calls for Israel to become a binational state — a formula Israelis view as the effective end of the Jewish state.

Israelis, then, feel that the peace agreements they do have, as well as those they may achieve, are premised at best on an Arab readiness to accept them at a superficial and conditional level, one that is little different from tactical non-belligerency.

This in turn reinforces the sense that Israel’s security depends far more on its military might than on any peace agreement.

But it is the matter of solutions, based on wishful-thinking that is so silly - and dangerous:

...with the right “marketing,” Israelis can be turned on by the prospect of peace even if this means heavy sacrifices. Peace — even cold peace — is so important that, in the absence of Arab initiatives, marketing should begin at home.

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not seem to realize that the demographic thrust of his settlement policies contradicts his insistence that Israel be recognized as a Jewish state. Yet the real problem is not a hypocritical prime minister, but the support he draws from a skeptical Israeli public.

That leaves Barack Obama. To enlist Israelis he has to address us directly. And he has to deliver not only justified demands about settlements but reassurances regarding Israel’s security and integrity in a less than welcoming neighborhood.

Marketing?

But if the goods are rotten, stale, inimical to one's health, what marketing does is fool the consumer.