Leon muses:
People who wish to change the world have a special responsibility to acquaint themselves with the world, in the manner of scouts or spies. The realist, by contrast, has no conscience about being complicit with the world. For the realist, the world is all there is to work with. He sees no virtue and no glamour in adopting a standpoint outside reality: it would only diminish his efficacy, which is his highest wish. He does not promote his goals into ideals. Aspiring to less, the realist may accomplish more. Aspiring to more, the idealist may accomplish less. And yet even the failed idealist adds to the store of the world’s sense of possibility. Idealism is futural: it is never completely defeated because it is never completely satisfied.
And elsewhere, he seems finally able to articulate what I and others have been saying for five years or so:
Unless there is a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there will not be a Jewish state for very long … Nobody lifted a finger to help Salam Fayyad, who was the Palestinian leader we were all waiting for. No Palestinians and no Israelis. He came and went. It’s a historical scandal of the first magnitude.
This essential argument he deemed worse than anti-Semitism when I made it. Still, it’s good to see him finally see the point – in a trip to Israel to get a million-dollar prize without bothering to visit the West Bank.
The Dish 