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You've written about the anti- Semitism that is behind some of the arguments against Israel. There is more at work here than geopolitics. There is more than You are sitting on our land, get off and everything will be fine.' What is at work here is Jewish hatred, anti-Jewish sentiment, and that has to be addressed. You can't assume that just because we help establish a Palestinian state, and some sort of temporary pre- peace between those two parties, that everyone is going to live in harmony. There is an ancient hatred here that is very much at play. You still hear very disturbing comments — mostly among the Arab nations and their offi- cial press, but also from Arab American groups in this country — that express vehement comments against Israel and anti-Jewish senti- ment. You can't gloss that over. What of the threat of Islamic extremism? We don't want to deal with it because we are so absorbed now in embracing Arab Americans because of our fear they will be unfairly persecut- ed for what happened on Sept 11. We lose sight of the fact that there are some very dangerous hate messages coming out of certain segments of that community. We can't lose sight of — and this always gets me in trouble — that these were Islamic extremists who attacked America on Sept. 11, they weren't ran- dom terrorists. They were Islamic extremists and you have to deal with Islamic extremism to get to the root of this terrorism. Osama bin Laden was- n't acting in his own name, or some type of financial or territorial greed. He was motivated by this dangerous brand of Islamic extremism, that there are good indications has branches in this country. As we reach out to the mainstream Arab American community ... as we are embracing them and making sure they are protected you can't lose sight that there is a segment, let's assume it is narrow, that is still very, very dan- gerous. How do you walk that line? Not very well, obviously [he laughs]. There are two separate messages, and one doesn't affect the other ... The Muslim American groups feels that any criticsm of any segment is a criti- cism of all, but I don't know how you get away from criticizing the segment that supported the folks that carried out the attacks on Sept. 11. Many of them came from that radical segment of the community and there are still schools and mosques in this country that are preaching hate and the byproduct of that you can see in New York City today... What do you see as the most useful role the United States can play? The U.S. should enter the situation very, very cautiously, given what hap- pened a year ago. I think Bill Clinton made every effort to make peace and invested a lot of personal capital, failed, and the result was more vio- lence, not less violence. I don't know that the conditions have changed so much to make a new effort worthwhile. I think it is good that the U.S. is trying to broker a cease-fire, but peace has to come from the Israelis and Palestinians. There is no way the United States can force peace. I think this is what some of our Arab allies in this war against terror- ism expect from us, and I worry about the consequences when that doesn't happen. I think we have no business trying to pressure Israel to accept a peace deal that is not in its best interest, that leaves its defenses less certain, just to appease nations that are uncertain friends. Nolan Finley's columns and editorials can be read on www.detnews.com