A friend accused me of being Anti-Semitic for my condemnation of Netanyahu and the rightwing parties in Israel

[eppur_se_muova]

14. Every now and then, one needs to take inventory and re-count one's friends. Occasionally, one turns missing.

Perhaps this should be a New Year's tradition, like making resolutions.

I don't want people to think I get my morals or philosophy from comics, but Jerry Seinfeld (whom I do not otherwise 'get' all that much) once remarked that "someone who is nice to you and rude to the waiter is not a nice person". This clarified my thoughts re. someone I know who was "trying not to get involved" in ongoing antagonism by one of their friends against me. It wasn't a matter of taking sides to the extent of saying "you're right, he's wrong" but just a matter of recognizing that one of use, and only one, was being a total dick about it for no clear reason other than a streak of dickishness which seemed an essential aspect of his character. If you're his friend, you're not my friend, so I lost a friend then. A shame, really, because it was someone with a lot to admire otherwise.