Writing in Israel’s Haaretz, Bradley Burston outlines the ‘mideast traps’ that Barack Obama must avoid: “Listen to both sides with equal measures of care and incredulity.

Remember that their view of the Holy Land is no more objective that their view of America. Keep in mind that their view of both has to do with the status of Israelis and Palestinians as the most consistently disappointed people on the face of the earth. Not the most miserable, not the most oppressed, not the most denigrated – though they themselves may argue that they are – but certainly the people whose leaders, spiritual and political as one, have historically promised them the most, and delivered the least.

If they lie, and they will, never take it personally. For more than a century, the Palestinians national movement, no less and no more than the Zionist movement, have been based in part on the lies we tell ourselves here.

Prepare to cater to two parallel systems of self-delusion.”

Truth Serum

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