Simply to make a temporary security agreement now is both futile and immoral. Besides, no such agreement can last, so long as Israeli settlements are… - Edward Said

In a globalized world, in which politics and information are virtually equivalent, Palestinians can no longer afford to shirk a task that, alas, the leadership is simply incapable of comprehending. It must be done if the loss of life and property is to be stopped, and if liberation, not unending servitude to Israel, is the real goal. The irony is that truth and justice are on the Palestinian side, but until Palestinians themselves make that readily apparent—to the world in general, to themselves, to Israelis and Americans in particular—neither truth nor justice can prevail. For a people that has already endured a century’s injustice, surely a proper politics of information is quite possible. What is needed is a redirected and refocused will to victory over military occupation and ethnically and religiously based dispossession.

As a way of maintaining relative intellectual independence, having the attitude of an amateur instead of a professional is a better course.

The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States.