"Activities that we think of as fringe setters' activities - illegal settlements, violence - seem to have become more and more mainstream. To any Jew who cares about our laws, our history, our legacy of oppression, this is tragic."

"There are people who say, why should Israel be held to a higher standard than other countries? Higher standards, than, for example, the United States. The answer for me has always been: because we're Jews. I embrace the double standard. Our legacy of oppression demands that we be attuned to the oppression of others. While other peoples and other governments may see little problem with, for example, throwing people out of their houses and bulldozing their fruit trees, we as Jews -- specifically as Jews -- cannot tolerate that."

"When I debate issues of Israel I am sometimes accused of being naïve. As if what I am saying is that Israel is the villain and the Palestinian people are innocent victims. The truth is, I don't have any illusions about the Palestinian government. I don't have any illusions about the Palestinian street as we like to call it. But I don't care. I don't care what is being said or done by the Palestinian government. I don't care what's in the textbooks that Hamas prints. What I care about is Israel, and the Jews, and the toxic effect of allowing ourselves to tolerate and accept violent behavior on the part of our own people. Whether in America or Israel, once we allow fear of threat, fear of the suicide bomber, to be our defining emotion, to dictate our behavior, to justify the worst, then we lose ourselves."

"I have always said that you are allowed more freedom of dissent in Israel, that Israelis can express a broader range of opinion than what's considered acceptable in the mainstream American Jewish community. I worry now that the American intolerance of progressive thought and action has spread to Israel. This recent rash of the rhetoric against Shalom Achshav, the rhetoric against the New Israel Fund, against J Street, is incredibly pernicious and destructive."

"When the government is controlled by people who either accept that narrative of the return of the Messiah or don't seem to even have in their mind an endgame that results in anything other than a bloodbath, that's when I am frightened."

"In the absence of a government that even plans or speaks the language of peace, of negotiation, where do we go? What can possibly be the outcome?"