Words create conceptions and self-conceptions and ultimately nations. They can start and stop wars. They can would and heal. Choosing words carefully is a moral responsibility.

We got a wonderful present from Stalin and Hitler that they never meant to give us. We were immune for 60 years or so to aggression, racism and militarism. They made us partly immune to these things. Now it appears this Stalin-Hitler present has reached its expiration date. We were spoiled by this. So maybe we are just emerging out of a relatively golden age.

Things can be translated, but they become different.

In some of the Israeli media, but not all, they read about very nasty things done by Israeli settlers and soldiers to Palestinian Arabs. This is a pain in the neck for many Israelis. They say: Leave us alone, what can we do about it? Or they say: Look at Syria, look at Iraq, the West Bank is paradise by comparison. I was one of the first to say, shortly after the Six-Day War, that occupation is corrupting. It corrupts the occupier and, in a different way, it corrupts the occupied.

Israel is a fulfilled dream. Nothing that exists here existed here a hundred years ago. "The State of the Jews" was not a title of a country. It was a title of a futuristic novel. A little more than a hundred years ago, "Tel Aviv" was not a city. It was a title of another novel written by the same author. The "Return to Zion" was a name of another novel. There was a bookshelf. There was no state. There was no nation. All you can see, if you look through the window - everything you see is a fulfillment of dreams, different dreams.

My dream is much more modest than the dreams of the founding fathers. My dream is for Israel to live in peace with its neighbors and at peace with itself. This will be sufficient for me.

The opposite of compromise is not integrity. The opposite of compromise is not idealism. The opposite of compromise is fanaticism and death.