I am reading Brokers of Deceit about the role of the United States in the Middle East peace process. Given the lock-step views on Israel of many who comment here, I never planned to say a word about the book lest we have another outbreak of cut and paste frothing and foaming. But what luck! an Israeli has read the book, interviewed the author, and has given it a fair reading (reporting that it is full of "ire and irony," which it is).Carlos Strenger is professor of psychology at Tel Aviv University who writes a column for Ha'aretz. Here is a paragraph of his assessment: "Reading Khalidis book was difficult for me because it showed, once again, how catastrophic the settlement policy has been not only for Palestinians, but also for Israel. Khalidi at some points mentions Israeli fears of extinction and the fear that another Holocaust is around the corner. While, as a historian, he takes these fears seriously, he mostly emphasizes their use as a pretext for a colonization process that has nothing to do with Israels security, but is just a means of manipulating the international community, and particularly the U.S., into acquiescing to Israels expansionism." Whole thing here.The author of the book, Rashid Khalidi, professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia, has written many books on the conflict, and if anything has been as critical of Palestinian leadership as of Israeli leadership. Khalidi was recently on "Charlie Rose."