there is nothing in the world as morally binding as belonging to a minority. - Shulamith Hareven

I write about Israeli experience, and that experience, being so intense and concentrated, is probably a good background for distilling human experience anywhere.

If we insist on absolute justice, the reckoning of lives will never end. All we can talk about is beneficial justice, beneficial for both sides-that is, a territorial compromise and the continuation of the conflict at the negotiating table.

Today, we can discern from the vocabulary the underlying ideology of a text or a speech. No self-respecting liberal would freely use the terms "enemy," or "annihilate," or "avenge," which no fundamentalist can do without.