The list of "intellectuals" is simply of the self-styled elite of the extreme anti-Zionist Left. Of course they support Abbas and Hamas. Why not write a headline "Members of Kahana Chai urge Olmert not to talk to Hamas"

These "intellectuals" are schmendricks who need their citizenship revoked. Send this ilk of intellectual to teach in Tehran or in Saudi Arabia-but get them out of Israel. Israel needs to weed out the turncoats and put them in the gulag.

Ironically, Oz used to say , before Oslo, to make pece with our enmies not love. NAd, that it is easier to break the back of a young palestinian army than that of a pal. teenager. Now, after his Oslo "peace", we have war, we have a Hamas army, and we have Oz telling us to mkae love with the hamas,and not to break their back.

You can't do much better with Hamas than reach a ceasefire or Hudna.They don't accept a Jewish state. Question is, is Hamas ready to reach a deal just on Gaza when before they wanted a Palestinian state in return for a ceasefire. Meanwhile, how many people believe Abbas can control all the armed groups on the West Bank or make concessions.(on refugees,borders, Jerusalem) All we've heard about are Israeli concessions. Nothing has happened to encourage Jewish support concerning Gaza or the West Bank.

that you give ANYTHING to the PLO/Hamas (it doesn't make a freakin' difference), they will use it to .... (drumroll please) ... MURDER JEWS. Duh !!!

These people are no different from the Leftist Loonies of the U.S.!!!

good friend, we all know why it's news. and why we'll never see the opinions of others as news.

Move to Gaza, become official part of the Palestinians that you love so much, and leave Israel alone. There's a name for people like you.

These intilecuals dont live in the real world .. everytime there have been ceacefires or tempory hudnas reached with Hamas they use the oportunity to buy more weapons and when they are ready to go back to business Israel has a heavier armed Hamas and is no closer to peace. In November 2006 Olmert agreed a ceacefire on attacks from Gaza but within hours of the ceacfire coming into effect residents of Sderot were watching the rockets fall on their head. For months Olmert sat around doing nothing trynig to proove Israel is the nice guy when we do deals we stick to them even if Hamas dont. The initlectuals should also be reminded that the Hamas charter refuses to recognise Israels right to exist full stop and it must be liberated for the muslims. They might also like to look at the fact that when Hamas came to power because of their terrorist policies international sanctions were put in place and three reasonble cinditions put in place for anybody interested in peace. RECOGNISE ISRAELS RIGHT TO EXIST END TO TERROR ACCEPT PREVIOUS AGREEMENTS SIGNED BY THE PA The Hamas government flatly rejected all of these conditions and that is why there are still sanctions today. Olmert the idiot can talk to Hamas he can reach a ceacefire today Hamas will use the time to rearm and reorganise and when they feel ready the ceascefire will end in the name of legitimate resistence. Hamas and the rest of the terrorist groups need to be destroyed only when there are no terror groups running arond all with their own agenda can there be even a tiny chance at real peace. Peace will mean one and off ceacfires that are based on more concesions from Israel. Let these intilectuals write papers to circulate and discuss between themslves at conferences and meetings and keep out of real life politics. Time to wake up face reality Hamas dont want peace only the ocasional ceacefire to prepare for the next round of terror while Israeli politicians congraqtulate themselves.

i am an 'intellectual' and i say send hamas and these 'intellectuals' deep into the sinai with food and water for a month,under egyptian protection, and let THEM talk to EACHOTHER1.After a year or two together,let's see what they learn from eachother!else!

You don't talk with Islamist-Jihadist thugs, fanatics and terrorists!

themselves. If they are "intellectuals" as they and their Leftists buddies believe they are, they'd do a better job in talking to Hamas than Olmert would. After all, Olmert is no "intellectual". Or is he one of them too?

All morally bankrupt. None who care about our future. Dammit!

the french are telling us not to talk to them, the intellectuals are telling us to talk to them. i wish they'd get their stories straight

I fully support those intellectuals, that is exactly my opinion and there is actually no other solutions but holding talks with hamas and agree to a ceasefire. AND YES IT´S POSSIBLE! I don´t get you all people, how can you be so aggressive? so blind? whatever they are, let them take care of Gaza and reach an agreement with them, You don´t understand, Hamas is here to stay and neither the IDF nor somebody else will be able to destroy it in the near future. Finally reach an agreement with them and concentrate on domestic problems, Israel has enough of them..

can anyone give an example when it worked with arabs?

If the definition of "intellectual" is someone with a college degree who blames his own country in all disputes, we have a lot of intellectuals in the USA. Have any of these "intellectuals" ever expressed concern for the suffering of the people of Sderot?

My great mentor Winston Churchil defined appeasement as feeding your kids to the tiger sothat you will be eaten last. The so called Israeli intellectuals never learned anything from the history of WW II.

What about intellectuals of the right? Caroline Glick from the Jerusalem Post could surely come up with a list of her own. But, not worry, they won`t reach the press and surely won`t impress the upper echelons. In the meantime one should look for the 12th intellectual, behind the scenes, as usual. You guessed it: Shimon Peres.

The Bronze Rat A man walked into a curio shop in Haifa. Looking around at the exotica, he noticed a very life-like, life-size bronze statue of a rat. It had no price tag, but it looked so striking that he decided he must have it. He took it to the owner and asked "How much is the bronze rat?" "Twelve dollars for the rat, a hundred dollars if you bring it back," said the owner. The man gave the shop owner twelve dollars. "I'll take the rat; and I won't be bringing it back." As he walked down the street carrying the bronze rat, he noticed that a few real rats had crawled out of the sewers and began following him down the street. This was a bit disconcerting, so he began to walk a little bit faster. Within a couple of blocks, the group of rats behind him grew to over a few thousand, and they began squealing. As he trotted towards the harbor, he took a nervous look around and saw that the rats numbered in the millions by now, and they were all squealing and coming towards him faster and faster. Terrified, he ran to the edge of the water and threw the bronze rat as far out into the water as he could. Amazingly, the millions of rats all jumped after it, and were drowned. The man walked back to the curio shop. "Aha," said the owner, "You're bringing back the rat!" "Actually no," said the man. "I came back to see how much you want for that bronze Jihadist over there.

Igor, we aware that Gaza strip is Hamastan but, every time we negotiate, Iran torpedos the talks. Iran has been purposely delaying the release of our soldier. We are in the front against the islamofacism, it's so simple as your described. the main leader of Hamas is on exile, Khaled masheal. Iran stock it's cards to earn more time to build a nuclear bomb. The conflict between us and the palestinians including Iran, syria, Hizbullah, even if it's not obvious at the first place. We can't reach a real mutual understandings untill Iran and it's proxies will be defeated. Unfortunately, every kind of agreement untill then is useless. Fighting against Islamofacists demand a uprooting policy which has to be start with the main enemy = Iran. This is why, I resisted the war on Iraq, we had to get rid of the Iranian regime first of all.

That is exactly what the government wanted when it expelled Jewish families from Gush Katif - for the Arabs of Gaza to take care of themselves but THEY DIDN'T.. They continued to shoot rockets at us!!! They don't want an 'agreement' with us - they want to destroy us!!!