The mood's changing

Am here in Jerusalem where maybe there is the beginning of a less aggressive mood from the Israeli public following their "defeat" in what they call the "Second Lebanon War" and what the Arabs call the "Summer War". Actually nobody won and everybody lost that terrible conflagration - but it is just past remembrance day and we need to remind ourselves that there are no winners in any war. The cost is always too great. I once saw a tombstone in France to a boy soldier from the first World War which read only those who have loved and lost know war's awful cost" - it was signed "mother".

Wish we could all be more accommodating of "the other". I am reminded of Bernard Shaw's words paraphrased from the play Pygmalion a.k.a. "My Fair Lady". He wrote: "The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: In short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another."
George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Playwright