Like Pakistan, Israel's enemies are the radicals within its own borders.

Israel's radicals in its government and in the settlement community are a threat to its continued viability as a democratic nation.

I don't know how much longer the US media can continue ignoring the fact that several of our own citizens have been murdered by the IDF while protesting the racist policies of Zionism.

Nor do I understand how the media was allowed to ignore the fact that a former US Congresswoman and a Nobel laureate were illegally detained by the Israeli government while delivering aid to the Palestinians.

But, I believe that the trustworthiness and viability of President Obama's entire Foreign Policy agenda and indeed the ultimate success of his presidency will be determined by his ability to stand against the radical right in Israel and the US.

In a broader sense the future of America's relationship with the international community will be influenced by the President's ability to deal effectively with Israel's settlement issues and anti-Arab policies.

Whoever can watch this 7 minute video and remain unmoved has no soul. The encounter between Israeli peace activists and militant settlers plays itself out as graphic documentary, but also as a morality play in miniature; it comes to us with a hero, his powerful adversary, and the endangered one he strives to protect at his own peril. It would be too sentimental if it were not terribly real.

Idan Goldberger, an IDF veteran who still carries the pain inflicted years ago by a Palestinian sniper’s bullet, works these days to alert Israelis to a menace in their own backyard - the settlements that threaten to perpetuate without end the horrors of the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is the hero, and the adversary is not a Palestinian threat but the growing settler movement that pushes peace further into the distance with each new building it constructs. The endangered one is the nation he loves, Israel.

The segment that starts about 5:55 into the video informs us that an angry settler has assaulted Idan, inflicting injury. We are not shown the assault, but we learn that Idan required medical treatment. Then, in the aftermath, he confesses that confronting the settlers frightens him, but he feels compelled to continue his efforts to protect Israel - preserving it less from physical threats than the danger of further forfeiting its moral credibility with each lost opportunity to move toward peace. He explains that in basic training, he took an oath “even to sacrifice my life for the sake of the state of Israel.” In the next frame, he applies that sense of commitment to these confrontations, telling us “I feel that this is sacrificing for the sake of the state of Israel.”

I suppose one reason this video moved me so deeply is that it is a love story, not a hate story. Too much of what we read and see - in blogs, media, and elsewhere - emanates from those so consumed with anger that it becomes the only emotion they communicate to others. They ask us to revile the person, group or nation they revile. Each of us has a capacity for hatred that these appeals seek out. I try to resist. Resisting what I saw in this video was so much harder because it appealed to something so much softer. Others may want to view it to make their own judgments.