"From the heights of my 85 years, I want to call all those to whom our future here is close to the heart, Jews and Arabs, and especially the young, to mobilize for a joint effort to prepare the ground for the big change, for the Other Israel, for a state where it will be fun to live, an Israel we can be proud of."

"Every time one of our bombs falls on a wedding party in Afghanistan, this incites more young men to join the ranks of the guerillas. We may eliminate one fighter but in the process we may be creating tens or hundreds more. This is an untenable process, eventually we will run out of soldiers, money and resources. But the most important point is that by acting unilaterally and displaying such disrespect for the innocent lives we are taking each and every day, we have opened the Pandora box of terrorism."

"Realizing the horrific mistake they had made, the pilots dropped white phosphorus bombs with the intention of incinerating all evidence. The entire North Pole lit up and Santa and Prancer could be seen in the distance on a huge block of ice drifting off into the dark sea, the ice everywhere cracked and weakened by the combined effects of white phosphorus and years of global warming."

"We are living on borrowed money and time, neither of which can be repaid under presently collapsing capitalism. We need to organically transform our economy before its synthetic malevolence totally poisons the earth and destroys civilization. That calls for a democratic structure we still need to create. Once we begin that process and join the emerging global culture of change we not only can believe in, but absolutely need, 2009 could turn out to be a significant turning point in history. But we need to work fast."

"While the Obama Administration, itself, may not want to open this file, and while the next Congress will have so much on its plate that it may not want to divert its attention by engaging in a full-fledged investigation - a "special prosecutor" ought to be appointed to pursue the matter."

"Hamas appears to be here to stay--on the Israeli, Palestinian and Middle East Islamic scene. Under these circumstances, whether we are now entering into an informal ceasefire, a new round of conflict or something in between appears to be largely irrelevant to the big picture. That Israel has difficulty acknowledging this fact--that it's ineffective leaders continue to bluster day in and day out with an utter lack of credibility about what Israel is going to do to Hamas rather than acknowledging strategic bankruptcy as a first step toward more constructive thinking--is part of the problem."

"The upcoming Israeli elections are another factor strongly influencing the behavior of the two parties. The different Israeli political leaders are using the Gaza escalation as a way to ensure that in front of voters they look tough on Hamas and are seen to act to end rocket fire and make progress in bringing Shalit home. At the same time, those political leaders in government know that if they overplay their hand, it could backfire. Hamas too understands that while an Israeli government can be violently dangerous around election time, it is also vulnerable, and the normally harmless rocket and mortar fire will be magnified enormously under the lens of elections."

"They must start a new intellectual and organizational effort to realize these important aims. No longer to be satisfied with voting for the “lesser evil” but finally to vote for the greater good, and - together with sectors that have not been partners up till now - to work out solutions that have not yet been tried in ways that have not yet been tried. To bring about an Obama-like miracle."