Ofira Seliktar, The Changing Identity of American Jews, Israel and the Peace Process, in Danny Ben-Moshe e Zohar Segev (a cura di), Israel, the Diaspora, and Jewish Identity, Sussex Academic Press, 2007, p. 126, ISBN 978-1-84519-189-4. URL consultato il 20 gennaio 2016.
«The 1993 Oslo Agreement made this split in the Jewish community official. Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin's handshake with Yasir Arafat during the September 13 White House ceremony elicited dramatically opposed reactions among American Jews. To the liberal universalists the accord was highly welcome news. As one commentator put it, after a year of tension between Israel and the United States, "there was an audible sigh of relief from American and Jewish liberals. Once again, they could support Israel as good Jews, committed liberals, and loyal Americans." The community "could embrace the Jewish state, without compromising either its liberalism or its patriotism". Hidden deeper in this collective sense of relief was the hope that, following the peace with the Palestinians, Israel would transform itself into a Western-style liberal democracy, featuring a full separation between the state and religion. Not accidentally, many of the leading advocates of Oslo, including the Yossi Beilin, the then Deputy Foreign Minister, cherish the belief that a "normalized" Israel would become less Jewish and more democratic.
However, to some right wing Jews, the peace treaty was worrisome. From their perspective, Oslo was not just an affront to the sanctity of how they interpreted their culture, but also a personal threat to the lives and livelihood settlers, in the West Bank and Gaza AKA "Judea and Samaria". For these Jews, such as Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist organization of America, and Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, the peace treaty amounted to an appeasement of Palestinian terrorism. They and others repeatedly warned that the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA) would pose a serious security threat to Israel.»
