Words matter. These are the best Ian Lustick Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Americans should be wary of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt but not scared of them.
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.
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.
International peace and security depend on certain taboos that are easily recognized when they are broken. It can be more important for an intervention to take place because nuclear or chemical or biological weapons are used as opposed to just measuring how many people are killed.
From a social networking point of view, Pakistan is not very far away.
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.
The disappearance of Israel as a Zionist project, through war, cultural exhaustion or demographic momentum, is… plausible… Many Israelis see the demise of the country as not just possible, but probable.
The ability to calibrate risk doesn’t happen rationally.
I think about terrorism in terms of popcorn. You can’t tell which kernels are popcorn and which are not, but you assume you’ll always have some kernels that are going to pop.
Israeli governments cling to the two-state notion because it seems to reflect the sentiments of the Jewish Israeli majority, and it shields the country from international opprobrium even as it camouflages relentless efforts to expand Israel’s territory into the West Bank.
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?
For the U.S., as the largest player in the global environment, unintended consequences are magnified.
If you put too much pressure on the Palestinian Authority, it will collapse – it will disappear – and Israel will have to formally re-occupy the West Bank and assume responsibility for the Palestinians there. The United States doesn’t want that. Israel doesn’t really want that.
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.
Democracies domesticate religious groups to become political players. That’s how it works.
Most Israelis do want to keep Israel safe. The question is how do you do that.
My academic specialization is Arab-Israel relations.
