As a person that has worked over two decades for a two state solution and who firmly believes true political and civic leadership on both sides of the Israeli Palestinian divide is essential if we are to rescue the people of the region from a fate like today’s Syria. I also find the thought of a 13 year old Palestinian boy stabbing a 13 year old Israeli boy coming out of a candy store to be the saddest, most depressing and most deplorable warning of the descent into hell this region will experience if we allow violent absolutism to take society over.

Whether it is the Palestinian terrorists that have been rampaging through Israel and killing innocent people throughout this month, or the Jewish terrorists that burnt the Dawabsheh family – including an 18 month old baby – to death, we must all uniformly condemn, confront and apprehend all these murderers.

And we must educate all our children, on both sides, that the dehumanization of the other is going to be our undoing. Enough self righteousness on either side. We both have plenty to own up to and take responsibility for. Anyone who just thinks the other is to blame and their side is flawless lives in denial and lacks necessary information and introspection.

We are running out of time.

Moderates need to rise up, lead, and empower each other on both sides. Everyone of us has the power and responsibility to do so. And if we abdicate that power and responsibility, the fate of our peoples will stand on our shoulders – just as it does on failed leaders that have brought us to this point so far.

By Fareed Zakaria, Thursday, October 8, 2015

Recent setbacks in Afghanistan — from the fall of Kunduz to the errant U.S. bombing of a hospital in that city — again raise a question. Why, after 14 years of American military efforts, is Afghanistan still so fragile? The country has a democratically elected government widely viewed as legitimate. Poll after poll suggests that the Taliban are unpopular. The Afghan army fights fiercely and loyally. And yet, the Taliban always come back.

The answer to this puzzle can be found in a profile of the Taliban’s new leader, Akhtar Mohammad Mansour. It turns out that Mansour lives part time in Quetta, the New York Times reports, “in an enclave where he and some other Taliban leaders . . . have built homes.” His predecessor, Mohammad Omar, we now know, died a while ago in Karachi. And of course, we remember that Osama bin Laden lived for many years in a compound in Abbottabad. All three of these cities are in Pakistan.

[Read more →]

“You must have long term goals to keep you from being frustrated by short term failures.”

- Charles C. Noble

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