Day of Atonement

Hope everyone had an easy fast. It was also my anniversary with Jill today (fabulous timing, that) -- we broke the fast at Flaco's Tacos.

In any event, in honor of Yom Kippur, Rabbi Ovaida Yosef has issued a pretty strong apology after previously calling for the death of Mahmoud Abbas and a plague to fall upon the Palestinian people.

One of the hardest things for people to realize, I think, is that the peace process is probably going to have to rely on folks like Yosef -- folks who have taken some risible stands in the past, but may yet be willing to sign on the dotted line in the future. It is so easy to permanently disqualify folks from the public sphere in conflicts like these, for virtually everyone has a skeleton in their closet: Abbas' Holocaust denial, Netanyahu's rampant rejectionism towards Palestinian peoplehood. But ultimately, we need to look for routes to success, not excuses for failure.