My Resolution for 2024

 Never to forget; always to honor these words of Henri Amiel:

"Life is short, and we do not have much time

to gladden the hearts of those who make the journey with us.

So, be swift to love, and make haste to be kind. 

And may the blessing of God who made us, 

who loves us and travels with us

be with me and with you now and forever"

The Centrality of LOVE

 We hear its all importance celebrated simply and singularly from two different eras:

"Love, and do as you will"--Saint Augustine.

"All you need is love"--John Lennon and Paul McCartney

War Is Hell--Let Us Never Forget. It

 This from Tolstoy's "War and Peace"

“War isn’t courtesy, it’s the vilest thing in the world, and we must understand that and not play at war.  We must take this terrible necessity sternly and seriously.  That’s the whole point:  to cast off the lie, and if it’s war, it’s war, not a game.”

We are being reminded of this yet again, in the carnage suffered by people in the Holy Land and Ukraine. Both conflicts must be stopped and a basis for lasting peace put in place. That's what the people want. Leaders must step up and face reality and do what is right to achieve peace. 

Don't Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater

 That proverbial cliche comes to mind as I read the deluge of over-the top criticism of so called "elite universities" following the misbegotten testimony before congress by three presidents of Ivy League schools. 

Yes, it is true that the faculty of most of these schools follows a liberal political bent. 

Yes, it is true, that many students and faculty members holding "conservative" views may feel uncomfortable in expressing them. 

Yes, it is true that group identify has taken on a greater significance than individual identity in recent years, in some cases excessively so in my opinion. 

Yes, there are always reasons to ask if we have the balance right between seeking truth and respecting our most important personal convictions born of learning and one's life experiences.

But lets please keep this in perspective. 

Peggy Noonan in her WSJ column of 12/16-17 captures the shrieking exaggeration we are seeing all too broadly. Universities "have gone from being centers of excellence to institutions pushing political agendas". 

Noonan writes that the idea of a historian attempting to "find the honest truth seems inapplicable to the current moment". She asserts, with absolutely no evidence, that "the good faith of the scholar is sacrificed to political fashion". 

Tell that to the Professor of History I have known at Yale for decades. Neither he nor I will know what you are talking about. He is seeking truth with all its complexity. So will the many other historian I have known. 

The same drive to find the truth, mine new knowledge, motivates every professor I have known no matter what their field.  I have agreed with some of them; I have disagreed with others. But I do not see their orientation to continue to learn in the search for truth to have changed.

Let's calm down. Improve where we should, keep an open mind, listen to and respect different points of view. But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. 

We Are at a Moment of Crisis: President Biden Needs to Address the Reality of the Moment

 

For a couple of months now, it has become clear to me that unless President Biden is willing and able to change the way he is communicating with the American public and what he is actually proposing and accomplishing, he’s going to lose big-time to Donald Trump or to whomever takes his place in the unlikely event that the criminal cases become so appropriately overpowering someone else does take his place.

 

The latest poll numbers this morning shout even louder that this is the truth.  He’s down in all the key states versus Trump; and if Haley would displace Trump (and she is the most likely candidate to do so) the gaps would be even higher.

 

It is clear that the 91 indictments against Trump and his outrageous self-revealing assertion that he’ll be a “dictator on Day One” aren’t moving the needle.  They will to some degree when voters are confronted with this reality in the voting booth, but not enough.

 

Biden’s challenges are two-fold as I see it:  1) Personal.  He is not seen as sharp enough; he is “too old for the job.”  2)  There are the policy issues, above all immigration; he and the administration have to take a decisive stand on this now.  The feeling that the economy is not going well is out there, too.  Time is going to have to take care of that.  I think the message that the economy is better will come through over the next year. 

 

However, the age and policy issues, particularly around immigration, won’t go away unless Biden does something differently.

 

I don’t know if he’s up to it, but he has to change the way he presents himself to and communicates with the American public.  I believe he needs to adopt informal fireside chats.  Perhaps with an interviewer; perhaps with a small group.  I’m not talking about town halls.

 

He needs to address head-on the issues that are on voters’ minds:  his age, his quickness, why he feels he is uniquely able to carry out the role of the presidency at this point in time.

 

I for one believe he is, above all because of the global challenges we face in Israel and Palestine, in Ukraine and Russia and in many other places, too.  We must hold NATO together.  We must have good relationships with our allies.  We must seek a relationship with China that doesn’t blink at the reality of competition but sees the opportunity and the need for collaboration.

 

Joe Biden is far more equipped by experience and temperament to carry out this critical function at this moment in history than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican.

 

He needs to make that clear.  Concretely. 

 

I wish I knew how to share this message with someone who might be able to make a difference in how Biden approaches this.  In fact, I don’t think what I’m saying here would be new to the inner circles of the White House or the Democratic Party.  What I don’t understand is why it’s not getting through. Or, perhaps if it is, why Biden isn’t acting on it.  I just hope he is up to it.  I truly believe the country’s future depends on it.  We are at a perilous moment.  Liz Cheney understands this.  Not enough other leaders do. The time to act differently is now. We can't just pretend that it will all work out. Life does not work that way. 

 

My Meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu Fourteen Years Ago--A Sobering Look Into His Uncompromising Mind

 

• 
  I recently returned to notes I made about my first and only trip to Israel in 2009. As part of the trip, we had a private session with Netanyahu. It was a chilling meeting. Netanyahu displayed not an iota of appreciation for the Palestinian predicament. Fourteen years later, the tragedy continues. While condemning without qualification Hamas' horrific murder of over a thousand Israelis and capturing hundreds of innocent hostages, Netanyahu has continued now for decades to work thwart a two-state or other solution that would respect the rights of Palestinians. Doing so, he has thwarted peace and incited violence and death to this very day.

  
  

  
  

  Israel was the last stop on my trip to the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel) in October, 2009.  I wrote about it in my journal at the time,  “How sad that these religions (Jewish, Christian and Muslim), all committed to one God, all beholden to the same basic values—whether those expressed by Jesus in the Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount, or the Jews in the six points of its star, or the precepts of the Koran, have spent so much blood and lives in fighting against one another.  What horrible evidence of man’s propensity to defile the ‘other’ in order to justify one’s self worth.  And it continues today,” I wrote in 2009 and as I write now in 2023. 

  
  

   

  On October 15, thanks to Eason Jordan, who had been leading CNN International News, we had a private meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu.  I wrote this after the meeting:  “This was more than a little interesting because, at this moment, there is a huge debate about the so-called Gladstone Report which accuses Israeli soldiers of human rights violations in the attack on the Gaza Strip a year ago.  Also, fierce debate about his policy urging the expansion of more Jewish settlements in the Palestinian-held West Bank, an action that makes peace talk discussions a non-starter.” 

  
  

  And so in 2023, it continues.

   

  I asked Netanyahu about this being a roadblock to negotiations.  He responded immediately (almost angrily) saying he did not feel they were the real issue—that he said was the Palestinians’ unwillingness to agree to a sovereign Jewish nation on agreed borders.  He went on to make the case that the land had really belonged to both religions over time (conveniently ignoring the reality that this area had been consigned to the Palestinians by the United Nations). He asserted that the Jewish settlements occupied only about 3% of the land area, conveniently side-stepping the fact that these are choice areas and non-contiguous sections of the West Bank, making a unified Palestinian state virtually “impossible.”

   

  The steely, unyielding character of Netanyahu was revealed to me in striking and stunning fashion in this meeting.  Little idea did I have at the time of the human trauma and death it was causing and would be causing today as I write this in December 2023.