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Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the Courage to Name Evil
Daniel Patrick Moynihan at the UN Security Council. Photo: Wiki Commons
On Nov. 10, 1975 — almost 50 years ago to the day — Daniel Patrick Moynihan did something that few diplomats or public figures would dare attempt today: he told the truth in public, when the world preferred a lie.
As the United States ambassador to the United Nations, Moynihan rose before the General Assembly to condemn Resolution 3379 — the infamous measure that declared Zionism to be “a form of racism and racial discrimination.”
Moynihan saw, with prophetic clarity, that this was no ordinary resolution. It was a calculated attempt to turn antisemitism into international law and an effort to delegitimize the Jewish people’s right to self-determination under the guise of anti-racism.
Moynihan warned plainly, “The United Nations is about to make antisemitism international law.”
And then, in words that still thunder half a century later, he declared: “[The United States] does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act … A great evil has been loosed upon the world.”
I frequently open lectures with that story. I tell my students and audiences that if they remember nothing else from my remarks, they should remember this: courage begins with naming things truthfully. It’s why Moynihan remains one of my heroes. At a time when global institutions and elite opinion had succumbed to moral cowardice, he reminded the world — and America — that truth is not negotiable.
The Corruption of Language
Moynihan once wrote, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”
That line, often repeated but rarely understood, expressed his deepest conviction: that words must map to reality, not be twisted to serve ideology. When the United Nations turned Zionism — a movement of liberation — into a synonym for racism, it wasn’t merely lying about Israel. It was corrupting the moral language on which civilization depends.
That corruption of language is what Moynihan fought so fiercely against. His 1975 speech was not only about defending Israel; it was about defending truth. He understood that words matter; that they are the means by which we give order to the world around us, and that once institutions redefine words to suit politics, they lose moral legitimacy.
In Jewish terms, what Moynihan did that day was Kiddush Hashem, sanctifying the divine name by standing for truth before the nations. He refused to let a lie pass unchallenged, even when doing so made him unpopular among diplomats and intellectuals. For him, the duty to speak truth outweighed the instinct to please.
Echoes in Our Time
Half a century later, his words feel hauntingly relevant. The same moral inversion that he condemned at the UN now reappears across Western institutions.
On elite campuses, students chant that “Zionists don’t belong.” Faculty resolutions describe the murder of civilians as “resistance.” Jewish students are told that their identity is oppression and their longing for homeland a form of violence. The language of “decolonization” has become the new euphemism through which antisemitism cloaks itself in moral respectability.
Moynihan foresaw this. He understood that the battle for truth is never merely political; it is cultural and linguistic. His stand in 1975 was not only a defense of Israel but of liberal civilization itself.
As he argued, culture, not politics, determines the success of a society — yet politics can change a culture and save it from itself. At the UN, he embodied both truths and proved that culture and politics alike can be redeemed when courage and clarity converge.
Many in the diplomatic corps thought him reckless; others accused him of inflaming tensions. But Moynihan knew that civility without conviction is just another form of surrender.
In refusing to “tone down” his words, he restored to American diplomacy something that had been fading for years: moral seriousness.
On Dec. 16, 1991 — 16 years after his speech and in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse — the United Nations repealed that infamous resolution. The reversal did not erase the damage, but it vindicated his courage and exposed the Soviet motives he had identified all along.
Geopolitical Tensions Today
Today, Moynihan’s moral framework faces new tests as the Abraham Accords expand into uncharted territory. As debates swirl over bringing Kazakhstan into the Abraham Accords, commentators like Amit Segal argue the move has little to do with Israel and everything to do with containing Iran and Russia.
Kazakhstan, a Muslim-majority state and the world’s largest uranium producer, accounting for about 40% of global supply, sits in a crucial corridor between Moscow’s weakening sphere and Tehran’s growing ambitions. For Washington, its inclusion symbolizes an attempt to expand the US-Israel-Arab alliance into Eurasia — a rebuke to authoritarian revisionism.
But others, like Shay Gal, warn that such moves may blur the moral map Moynihan fought to preserve. By tethering Israel’s normalization efforts to a bloc still tied to Moscow and influenced by Ankara — a government that has positioned itself as Hamas’ diplomatic advocate — the United States risks trading moral clarity for geopolitical convenience.
Moynihan would have understood this tension. He knew that alliances built without a moral spine eventually fracture under pressure. As historian Gil Troy recently wrote, Moynihan “backed Israel for reasons that had almost nothing to do with it.” He was defending the West’s moral vocabulary from Soviet distortion — the same “totalitarian mind” that “reeked of the totalitarian state.”
That distortion is visible today when democracies hesitate to call terrorism by its name or confuse appeasement with diplomacy. Whether in the UN, universities, or Washington’s corridors of power, the temptation to “tone down” the truth — to be “polite” in the face of lies — remains.
Moynihan mocked that instinct in 1975: “What is this word ‘toning down’; when you are faced with an out-right lie about the United States and we go in and say this is not true. Now, how do you tone that down? Do you say it is only half untrue?” he asked. “What kind of people are we? What kind of people do they think we are?”
He asked that question then. We should ask it again now.
The Lesson for Us
In my lectures, I tell students and audiences that moral courage isn’t about volume or virality. It’s about standing for something when every incentive points the other way. Moynihan didn’t posture. He told the truth in an unfriendly room — and did it with moral gravity. His example reminds us that education and citizenship alike begin with facts, not feelings, and that democracy cannot endure if we lose the courage to call things by their right names.
When Moynihan declared that “a great evil has been loosed upon the world,” he wasn’t speaking only of 1975. He was naming a permanent temptation: to believe that truth is negotiable, to mistake moral complexity for moral cowardice.
Moynihan’s life proves that civic courage and Jewish moral witness are inseparable. The fight against the world’s oldest hatred is not only Israel’s fight — it is the test of whether the West still believes in truth itself.
When the powerful grow timid and relativism reigns, we must remember Moynihan’s example: a man who refused to be silent while the world applauded a lie.
Because when a great evil is loosed upon the world, truth must be spoken aloud. Daniel Patrick Moynihan did just that. And that is why, half a century later, I begin my classes with his words and count him among my heroes.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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21 Arab, Islamic, African States and Entities Condemn Israel’s Recognition of Somaliland
The signatories’ flags enclosed in the statement in Arabic. Photo: Screenshot via i24.
i24 News – A group of 21 Arab, Islamic and African countries, organizations and entities issued on Saturday a joint statement condemning Israel’s recognition of Somaliland sovereignty.
The statement’s signatories said that they condemn and reject Israel’s recognition of Somaliland “in light of the serious repercussions to peace and security in the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea region, and its serious impacts on international peace and security, which also reflects Israel’s clear and complete disregard for international law.”
It was signed by: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Comoros, Djibouti, Gambia, Maldives, Nigeria and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
The joint statement voiced support “for the sovereignty of Somalia and reject any measures that would undermine its unity, territorial integrity, and sovereignty over all its lands.”
The signatories also “categorically reject linking Israel’s recognition of the territory of the land of Somalia with any plans to displace the Palestinian people outside their land.”
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Nvidia, Joining Big Tech Deal Spree, to License Groq Technology, Hire Executives
A NVIDIA logo appears in this illustration taken Aug. 25, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Nvidia has agreed to license chip technology from startup Groq and hire away its CEO, a veteran of Alphabet’s Google, Groq said in a blog post on Wednesday.
The deal follows a familiar pattern in recent years where the world’s biggest technology firms pay large sums in deals with promising startups to take their technology and talent but stop short of formally acquiring the target.
Groq specializes in what is known as inference, where artificial intelligence models that have already been trained respond to requests from users. While Nvidia dominates the market for training AI models, it faces much more competition in inference, where traditional rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices have aimed to challenge it as well as startups such as Groq and Cerebras Systems.
Nvidia has agreed to a “non-exclusive” license to Groq’s technology, Groq said. It said its founder Jonathan Ross, who helped Google start its AI chip program, as well as Groq President Sunny Madra and other members of its engineering team, will join Nvidia.
A person close to Nvidia confirmed the licensing agreement.
Groq did not disclose financial details of the deal. CNBC reported that Nvidia had agreed to acquire Groq for $20 billion in cash, but neither Nvidia nor Groq commented on the report. Groq said in its blog post that it will continue to operate as an independent company with Simon Edwards as CEO and that its cloud business will continue operating.
In similar recent deals, Microsoft’s top AI executive came through a $650 million deal with a startup that was billed as a licensing fee, and Meta spent $15 billion to hire Scale AI’s CEO without acquiring the entire firm. Amazon hired away founders from Adept AI, and Nvidia did a similar deal this year. The deals have faced scrutiny by regulators, though none has yet been unwound.
“Antitrust would seem to be the primary risk here, though structuring the deal as a non-exclusive license may keep the fiction of competition alive (even as Groq’s leadership and, we would presume, technical talent move over to Nvidia),” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote in a note to clients on Wednesday after Groq’s announcement. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s “relationship with the Trump administration appears among the strongest of the key US tech companies.”
Groq more than doubled its valuation to $6.9 billion from $2.8 billion in August last year, following a $750 million funding round in September.
Groq is one of a number of upstarts that do not use external high-bandwidth memory chips, freeing them from the memory crunch affecting the global chip industry. The approach, which uses a form of on-chip memory called SRAM, helps speed up interactions with chatbots and other AI models but also limits the size of the model that can be served.
Groq’s primary rival in the approach is Cerebras Systems, which Reuters this month reported plans to go public as soon as next year. Groq and Cerebras have signed large deals in the Middle East.
Nvidia’s Huang spent much of his biggest keynote speech of 2025 arguing that Nvidia would be able to maintain its lead as AI markets shift from training to inference.
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Russian Drones, Missiles Pound Ukraine Ahead of Zelensky-Trump Meeting
Rescuers work at the site of the apartment building hit by a Russian drone during a Russian missile and drone strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine December 27, 2025. REUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi
Russia attacked Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine with hundreds of missiles and drones on Saturday, ahead of what President Volodymyr Zelensky said would be a crucial meeting with US President Donald Trump to work out a plan to end nearly four years of war.
Zelensky cast the vast overnight attack, which he said involved about 500 drones and 40 missiles and which knocked out power and heat in parts of the capital, as Russia’s response to the ongoing peace efforts brokered by Washington.
The Ukrainian leader has said Sunday’s talks in Florida would focus on security guarantees and territorial control once fighting ends in Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two, started by Russia’s 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbor.
The attack continued throughout the morning, with a nearly 10-hour air raid alert for the capital. Authorities said two people were killed in Kyiv and the surrounding region, while at least 46 people were wounded, including two children.
“Today, Russia demonstrated how it responds to peaceful negotiations between Ukraine and the United States to end Russia’s war against Ukraine,” Zelensky told reporters.
In Russia, air defense forces shot down eight drones headed for Moscow, the city’s mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Saturday.
THOUSANDS OF HOMES WITHOUT HEAT
Explosions echoed across Kyiv from the early hours on Saturday as Ukraine’s air defense units went into action. The air force said Russian drones were targeting the capital and regions in the northeast and south.
State grid operator Ukrenergo said energy facilities across Ukraine were struck, and emergency power cuts had been implemented across the capital.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said the attack had left more than a million households in and around Kyiv without power, 750,000 of which remained disconnected by the afternoon.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said over 40% of residential buildings in Kyiv were left without heat as temperatures hovered around 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) on Saturday.
TERRITORIAL CONTROL: A DIPLOMATIC STUMBLING BLOCK
On the way to meeting Trump in Florida, Zelensky stopped in Canada’s Halifax to meet Prime Minister Mark Carney, after which they planned to hold a call with European leaders.
In a brief statement with Zelenskiy by his side, Carney noted that peace “requires a willing Russia.”
“The barbarism that we saw overnight — the attack on Kyiv — shows just how important it is that we stand with Ukraine in this difficult time,” he said, announcing 2.5 billion Canadian dollars ($1.83 billion) in additional economic aid to Ukraine.
Territory and the future of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant remain the main diplomatic stumbling blocks, though Zelensky told journalists in Kyiv on Friday that a 20-point draft document – the cornerstone of a US push to clinch a peace deal – is 90% complete.
He said the shape of U.S. security guarantees was crucial, and these would depend on Trump, and “what he is ready to give, when he is ready to give it, and for how long.”
Zelensky told Axios earlier this week that the US had offered a 15-year deal on security guarantees, subject to renewal, but Kyiv wanted a longer agreement with legally binding provisions to guard against further Russian aggression.
Trump said the United States was the driving force behind the process.
“He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,” Trump told Politico. “So we’ll see what he’s got.”
Trump said he believed Sunday’s meeting would go well. He also said he expected to speak with Putin “soon, as much as I want.”
FATE OF DONETSK IS KEY
Moscow is demanding that Ukraine withdraw from a large, densely-urbanized chunk of the eastern region of Donetsk that Russian troops have failed to occupy in nearly four years of war. Kyiv wants the fighting halted at the current lines.
Russia has been grinding slowly forwards throughout 2025 at the cost of significant casualties on the drone-infested battlefield.
On Saturday, both sides issued conflicting claims about two frontline towns: Myrnohrad in the east and Huliaipole in the south. Moscow claimed to have captured both, while Kyiv said it had beaten back Russian assaults there.
Under a US compromise, a free economic zone would be set up if Ukrainian troops pull back from parts of the Donetsk region, though details have yet to be worked out.
Axios quoted Zelensky as saying that if he is not able to push the US to back Ukraine’s position on the land issue, he was willing to put the 20-point plan to a referendum – as long as Russia agrees to a 60-day ceasefire allowing Ukraine to prepare for and hold the vote.
On Saturday, Zelensky said it was not possible to have such a referendum while Russia was bombarding Ukrainian cities.
He also suggested that he would be ready for “dialogue” with the people of Ukraine if they disagreed with points of the plan.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Kyiv’s version of the 20-point plan differed from what Russia had been discussing with the US, according to the Interfax-Russia news agency.
But he expressed optimism that matters had reached a “turning point” in the search for a settlement.
($1 = 1.3671 Canadian dollars)