In the summer of 1990, my family flew from Kuwait to Berkeley, California for our annual summer vacation. A few weeks later, Saddam Hussein sent his troops across the desert and invaded Kuwait, where much of my family remained, at the epicenter of invasion.

I was six years old at the time and...

Egypt is as divided as it has ever been.

On December 15, a historic referendum is set to be held on a draft consitution that has further polarized the country, pinning supporters of President Morsi, backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, against a galvanized opposition made up of liberals,...

More than half of the 163 Palestinians killed last week during Israel's Operation Pillar of Cloud in Gaza were civilians, including 37 children. In Israel, six were killed in the latest eight-day escalation; fortunately, no children were among them.

But the real human cost in these cycles of killing is...

A convoy of about 500 Egyptian activists crossed into the Gaza Strip last week to deliver medical supplies and show solidarity with Palestinians as the conflict between Israel and Hamas raged on.

According to participants, the convoy of activists, many of whom were at the frontline of protests that...

To ignore the role of Israel's occupation of Gaza is to ignore the fundamental fact needed to frame the latest escalation in reality rather than rhetoric and propaganda.

To do otherwise flagrantly falsifies the reality of the ongoing humanitarian crisis on the ground in Gaza.

The reality is complicated;...

Fears of a full-scale ground war are increasing as fighting continued even during Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Qandil's three-hour visit to Gaza Friday morning. The United States has asked countries that have contact with Hamas, including Egypt, to urge the group to stop firing rockets from...

Everyone's got a drone, or so it seems.

It wasn't long ago that the U.S. had a monopoly on drones, but that is no longer the case. In fact, Israel -- not the U.S. -- is reportedly the world's largest exporter of drones, selling Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and...

I was alone in my bedroom in Brooklyn as the wind howled and tree trunks tore apart outside landing on my neighbor's front stoops.

I watched from my window as Hurricane Sandy stormed through America's northeast, killing at least 60 people in its path. Although I had declined several...

Millions of pilgrims are arriving in Mecca for Islam's annual Hajj pilgrimage that began on Wednesday, a journey all Muslims must perform at least once in their lifetime, if they are able to make the expensive, difficult journey.

To give you a sense of what it entails,

If you thought Egypt's revolution was chaotic, than you haven't been following its constitutional process, which is all the more confusing.

Battles once predominantly fought in the streets during the days of the revolution have now evolved into a more fundamental battle -- one of identity.

The stakes...

In America, it is all too easy to forget about the millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation - and it should come as no surprise.

During Monday's foreign policy debate Obama and Romney fought throughout the debate over who was a more staunch supporter of Israel. The word...

"A tool of Wall Street, a man who's decriminalized torture and is still complicit in it, a drone assassin, someone who's launched an unconstitutional war, supports kidnapping and indefinite detention without trial, and has prosecuted more whistleblowers like myself than all previous presidents put together."

That's how Daniel Ellsberg, the...

When the mainstream media decides to cover the Obama administration's drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas and surrounding Muslim countries, they tend to neglect the human cost of drones.

The word "militant" is frequently sprinkled into headlines, but missing always, are the names of those killed. Many, including

Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Danny Danon joined me on HuffPost Live Thursday for a discussion about his new book, Israel: The Will To Prevail, in which he advocates for Israel to annex all the Jewish-occupied and uninhabited land in the West Bank to its Arab neighbors, and for...

Were it not for YouTube, perhaps Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, would still be alive.

For as much as I've hailed the Internet as a powerful platform to connect like-minded individuals and groups in the Arab world fighting for their right to self-determination, today we are reminded...

Just as the fighting heats up once again between government forces and protesters in Bahrain, a virtual brawl nearly broke out between the daughter of a human rights activist that was imprisoned and tortured in Bahrain, and government representatives on HuffPost Live.

Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy's fifth...

We can call the war in Syria a civil, regional or proxy war, but either way it remains the biggest threat to regional and global security.

In the first visit - even if just a few hours - by an Egyptian leader to Iran since 1979 revolution, President Morsi...

A study released Tuesday revealed that Americans throw away 40% of the food supply annually, a 50% increase since the 1970s that totals to roughly $165 billion annually. The average American family of four throws away $2,275 each year in food alone. Even a 15% reduction in losses...

Last week the Miami Herald reported the 168 remaining inmates at Guantanamo Bay had stopped checking out Harry Potter books from the prison library and instead were clamoring for episodes of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Later in the week, news hit that one of the...

"It's all about oil," Thomas Friedman told me, summing up the main motivation behind U.S. foreign policy in the Arab world in just five words.

In a wide-ranging conversation with the HuffPost Live community, Friedman urged that we, as Americans, have missed an opportunity presented by the Arab uprisings to...