In salvaging the image of a beleaguered country like Israel, it’s not merely the justice of the case which counts, and not only how convincingly it’s made in private. The key is to ensure listenership. Even the most effective of arguments is useless without an audience. Continue reading →

From the outset it was unrealistic – if not altogether foolish – to look for any show of emotional empathy or heartfelt contrition from the German pope during his historic address at Yad Vashem. Those who harbored such expectations didn’t base them on Benedict XVI’s actual personality but on a kindly spiritual Santa, a figment of their wishful thinking. Continue reading →

Dreams, when they serve as wish-fulfillment vehicles, are hard to give up. They become sources of comfort and confidence – even if, all too often, false ones. They are the gossamer pedestals on which dreamers base their prestige and self-possession, even when these contradict empirical evidence and coolheaded realism. Continue reading →

It’s doubtful Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) ever delved into Protagoras’s philosophic slyness when he was enrolled at Moscow’s communist-era Russian University for Friendship between People (aka the People’s Friendship University of Russia, also aka the Patrice Lumumba Friendship University). Continue reading →