Touching a nerve

I sense a touchiness and crankiness amongst those radicals and self-defined "progressives" who aren't anti-zionists but still primarily blame Israel for the continuing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Well, I don't just sense it, I've been on the receiving end of some of it on the Engage web site where I questioned seemingly uncritical support for a highly emotional appeal by Sari Nusseibeh suggesting that the Israeli government is using what he calls the "security wall" to bar Arab teachers and pupils from their schools. He states that Israel is using a procedure which he cites as "selective" (his quotation marks), and refers also to "security" in quotation marks. It seemed to me that Monday's Jerusalem Post editorial raised some very pertinent questions about why the current strategy of the Palestinian Authority is to focus on campaigning against the security fence, and on deflecting the focus away from their obligation to disarm terrorist groups. It seems to me anyway that there's something of a charm offensive going on by the PA, aimed at making better links with potentially sympathetic Israelis and at incorporating Palestinians like Nusseibeh who have established golden reputations for their readiness to oppose stronger arm Palestinian tactics . Now, I might be right or seriously wrong about the validity of the JP analysis. But then I'd expect to see some readiness to look for evidence one way or another-- for example, did any of the commenters think to look for the Israeli government's vew of the situation? But the primary tone of the comments is anger, scorn and dismissal. Unfortunately typically of left discussion circles, there's the commenter who dismisses the JP editorial because it's unsigned and (she says) produced and read mainly by Americans. This seems to be regarded as a decisive reason to disregard it. None other of the commenters questioned Nusseibeh's rhetoric.