Perhaps I'm humble – or suffer from low self-esteem – but I tend to regard self-criticism as a virtue. Those who gain my respect acknowledge the flaws in their own arguments, concede the superior points in their opponents', and admit that no side has a monopoly on goodness.

I tend to agree with the philosopher who said, "One reason a Manichean view of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with one side all light, the other all darkness, is impossible to take, is that just when you are happily convinced of the total justice of your position and conversely of the bestiality of your opponent's, your own side shoots itself in the foot, while the enemy actually does something right for a change."

I'm not surprised I agree with the sentiment – I am just surprised at the source: Sari Nusseibeh, the longtime member of the PLO and current president of Al Quds University in Jerusalem. Let's just say that self-criticism, and a non-Manichean worldview, has not been the hallmark of the Palestinian nationalist movement. So to see a figure like Nusseibeh – once jailed by Israel for his participation in the first Intifada – reach out a conciliatory hand in his new book, Once Upon a Country, is an occasion for tempered gratitude. Gratitude, because Israelis and Palestinians will never make peace until each side begins to see the justice in the other's position. Tempered, because, well, Nusseibeh hardly represents a groundswell among the Palestinian leadership or its rank and file.

And if that sounds one-sided, I plead guilty. Nusseibeh's book deserves, and has received, attention because it represents a voice rarely heard among Palestinian leaders or academics. Nusseibeh supports the two-state solution without qualifications and dares to declare Palestinian Arabs and Jews as "natural allies." He criticizes Arafat for failing to make some sort of a deal when he could and recognizes Hamas for the violent, anti-Semitic theocrats that they are. He's no Zionist, and his account of Israel's War of Independence is specious, but at least he acknowledges the humanity, and aspirations, of the Israelis.

I suppose that's a pretty low bar, but how many Palestinian or other Arab leaders can clear it? Granted, there was a cadre of Palestinian academics and technocrats, often Western-educated, who worked closely with their Israeli counterparts throughout the long process that was born at Oslo and died at Taba. But they were squeezed from above and below – from a leadership and population that fed each other's maximalist fantasies. Even Nusseibeh, although a scion of one of Jerusalem's most honored and august dynasties, is hardly in the front ranks of Palestinian leadership.

If self-criticism among Palestinians is rarely heard, self-criticism among Jews is rarely acknowledged. Few societies are as self-lacerating as Israel's, and among its supporters in the Diaspora there is a regular rataplan of chest-beating when it comes to admitting Israel's flaws.

Of course, it never seems enough for Israel's critics, as Leon Wieseltier found out again after writing an extremely favorable review of Nusseibeh's book for the New York Times Book Review. In the course of praising Nusseibeh's memoir as "the most naturally democratic book to have emerged out of Palestinian nationalism," Wieseltier includes a litany of Israel's flaws. "The futility and the brutality of some of Israel's actions beyond its borders are abundantly clear," wrote Wieseltier, while "almost the entirety of the Israeli settlement of the West Bank has been a moral and strategic blunder of historic proportions."

And yet that didn't stop a letter writer in a subsequent issue from calling Wieseltier a "disappointing choice to review" Nusseibeh's book. According to John Kearney of Brooklyn, Wieseltier offers a "backhanded compliment" to Nusseibeh by calling him "exceptional." Meanwhile, Wieseltier's "discrete criticisms of Israel" do little to offset the critic's "intellectual defense of Israel and the consistent impugning of Palestinians."

It's a quite a charge: Wieseltier is an unqualified reviewer because he has shown a willingness to impugn both sides in the conflict.

Or is it because he consistently offers an "intellectual defense of Israel"? Unfortunately, we've come to a point where defending Israel – not the settlements, not the occupation, but Israel – is to a certain chattering class a sign of intellectual dishonesty. And no amount of self-criticism makes one immune from this charge.

In a New York Times review of a new exhibit of Israeli photography and video at New York's Jewish Museum, Holland Carter describes a show ripe with Israel's patented self-deprecation. Works depict the bunker-like reality of the security wall, soldiers disbursing demonstrators on the West Bank, videos of downtrodden Palestinian day laborers. And yet, because the show includes only one Palestinian artist, it is, according to Cotter, less "a critical report on pressing issues than a sightseeing tour with some tensions and bumps."

The expectation that a Jewish museum would present a "critical report on pressing issues" is itself a back-handed compliment. That Jews and Israel's supporters would be self-critical is a given, not "exceptional." And that's a good thing. The despairing thing is that the Jewish willingness to acknowledge Israel's shortcomings is so often overlooked, or taken for granted, or seen as an opportunity to expect even more.

A Palestinian intellectual like Sari Nusseibeh understands that peace and reconciliation begin with meeting the other side halfway.

If the kibitzers really want to help move the process forward, they would encourage those gestures, on both sides.