The quote that begins the article just cited by Michael Rubin is so astonishing it deserves its own separate blog entry. It’s the Israeli novelist Amos Oz speaking in March 2000, just before Israel pulled out of its security zone in Lebanon: “The minute we leave south Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hizbullah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hizbullah was sheer folly from the outset. It most certainly will no longer be relevant when Israel returns to her internationally recognized northern border.”

Amos Oz is no crank. He’s perhaps Israel’s foremost intellectual, the grand old man of Israeli letters. This deserves to go down in the annals along with “peace for our time” and the notorious headline on a 1975 New York Times story: “Indochina Without Americans.: For Most, a Better Life.”