I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.

W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

Understanding the seven decades of Israeli – Palestinian conflict, including the recent violence in 2021, starts and ends with three words. All of it.

Jewish refugees arriving Haifa 1947

Zionism,…

On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin launched a massive military assault, a war, on Ukraine, because he claims, Russians and Ukrainians are “one people, a single whole,” and Ukraine is not a real country, only a part of Russia that has fallen into the hands of “fascists, nationalists and…

Most Americans were appalled, horrified, by the Trump-instigated January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, in which five people were killed and 140 injured. But it could have been worse, much worse. Contemplate what the toll would have been if the Trump mob had invaded…

Twenty-nine years ago today, I sat knee to knee with the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, at his home just outside Dharamshala in Northern India. We talked for one hour. 

The road there was long, five years and thousands of miles. It started in Chengdu, Sichuan province, April 1986. I…

After majority leader Mitch McConnell rammed Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination through the Senate only eight days before the 2020 election, Senator Ed Markey (D. MA) declared, “When Democrats control the Senate in the next Congress, we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court.”

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer…

Donald Trump will stop at nothing to stay in power. For starters, despite the pandemic, and putting self-preservation above public health, he is trying to make it more difficult to vote by mail because, he says, “Mail ballots, they cheat.” 

For the last six months Trump has repeatedly…