"Since the mid-1970s, there's been an international consensus for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. It's called a two-state settlement, and a two-state settlement is pretty straightforward, uncomplicated. Israel has to fully withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza and Jerusalem, in accordance with the fundamental principle of international law, that it's inadmissible to acquire territory by war. The West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, having been acquired by war, it's inadmissible for Israel to keep them. They have to be returned. On the Palestinian side and also the side of the neighboring Arab states, they have to recognize Israel's right to live in peace and security with its neighbors. That was the quid pro quo: recognition of Israel, Palestinian right to self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in Jerusalem. That's the international consensus. It's not complicated. It's also not controversial."

“Since completing this memoir in 1995 I've returned to Palestine every year. In fact, apart from traveling abroad to lecture, Palestine is the only place I've been since I first journeyed there 15 years ago. I sometimes fantasize vacationing in Greece or Italy but never do. If I have time and cost isn't prohibitive, I always return to Palestine. I do so mostly from a sense of duty - do I have a right to be elsewhere? - relieved by the authentic affection I've developed for friends. I cannot say I enjoy going back. From the moment I arrive, even before arriving, I count the minutes left before I depart. The eminent Hebrew University sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Gaza as "the largest concentration camp ever to exist." The West Bank ranks only a mite less awful. Once the Israeli wall currently under construction is finished, the West Bank will replace Gaza with top honors. Bordered on both sides by four meter deep trenches, fortified with guard towers at regular intervals, and topped with barbed wire, this massive barricade will stretch across fully 347 kilometers - twice the size of the Berlin Wall.”

“Noam Chomsky: "I'm delighted to hear that I'll be followed shortly by Norman Finkelstein and would very strongly advise you to come listen to him. Not only an old personal friend but a person who can speak with more authority and insight on these topics than anyone I can think of. So that should be a memorable occasion and I urge that you not miss the opportunity.”

“Daniel Jonah Goldhagen: "Finkelstein’s work is, from beginning to end, a tendentious series of inventions. …he examples from his article that are deemed to be the strongest are thoroughly misleading and without merit. Finkelstein’s writing is the sort of transparent political polemic that—had others not cynically propped him up as an expert and a champion of truth—would not even merit a response. This is a man who has made a career of attacking Israel’s legitimacy…. His documented inventions about my book, it is worth noting that Finkelstein has never before written anything on the Holocaust or German history and cannot read German…which means that he cannot read many of the sources on which he is passing his ‘expert’ opinion…. man who has arrived overnight to a scholarly field made up of massive scholarly literature, not to mention all the documents, who, to boot, cannot read most of the sources because they are in German.”

“That said, sometimes I feel that Israel has come out of the boils of the hell, a satanic state.”

“Articulating the key Holocaust dogmas, much of the literature on Hitler's Final solution is worthless as scholarship. Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not sheer fraud.”

“Whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle such as the Intifada or international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, American Jewish organizations orchestrate this extravaganza called the 'new anti-Semitism.' The purpose is several-fold. First, it is to discredit any charges by claiming the person is an anti-Semite. It's to turn Jews into the victims, so that the victims are not the Palestinians any longer. As people like Abraham Foxman of the ADL put it, the Jews are being threatened by a new holocaust. It's a role reversal – the Jews are now the victims, not the Palestinians. So it serves the function of discrediting the people leveling the charge. It's no longer Israel that needs to leave the Occupied Territories; it's the Arabs who need to free themselves of the anti-Semitism.”