A group of intellectuals can unwittingly become an arrogant anti-intellectual group if it does not give a good shake once in a while to itself and it… - Shulamith Hareven

Sara, attuned to the vibrating city, went back to work. Not to the hospital: the thought of that great dungeon of suffering oppressed her. She looked for, and found, a job as a field worker, visiting needy homes on welfare all over the city. The work came to several hours a day. She was usually paired with another nurse, a Christian Arab named Thérèse. Neither of them had known before what depths of misery there were in the city, what poverty holed up in burrows, buried in mildew, stirring amid the huge stones covered with slobber and moss. An age-old underworld of poverty. Holes in the walls. Stinking puddles on the ground. (chapter 7 p144)

The first things that get lost in charismatic leadership are facts.

More than anything, we must understand that this was not a battle of strength against strength, but of weakness against weakness; throughout the whole Arab-Israeli conflict, each side has felt itself to be far weaker than its opponent, and acted accordingly. We must understand that there was no "Jewish justice," as Golda Meir said in one of her less sterling moments, nor was there "Arab justice," a claim that also has proponents; rather, there were two deep traumas, on which a completely new life, a different world, new hope must be built.