A new documentary highlighting the efforts of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to build the framework of a Palestinian state opens May 17 in New York and Los Angeles on limited release. One hopes the distributors send it nationwide so that more Americans can see it.

State 194,...

I recently reread Leon Uris' novel Exodus -- and found it disturbing and unsettling in many ways.

I first read the book in 1970 around the time of my first visit to Israel and fell in love both with the book and the country. I was swept away...

Washington - It's way too early to get excited, but Secretary of State John Kerry has made solid beginning in his Middle East diplomacy.

Kerry has already visited three times with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. According to Israeli reports, he has said...

President Obama's decision to visit the Middle East this spring has focused new attention on what he might say about Israeli-Palestinian peace in next Tuesday's State of the Union Address.

Israel may be one of the United States' closest allies but a review of State of the Union speeches for...

As President Obama prepares to be sworn in for his second term, this is the season for pundits to draw up lists of what they think his priorities for the next four years ought to be.

In foreign policy, there are myriad challenges awaiting him, from withdrawing U.S. troops from...

Israel's upcoming Jan. 22 parliamentary election had been expected to be a status quo affair leading to an easy victory for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Instead, it's turned into a race to the extreme right that is threatening to kill the two-state solution. And Washington seems oblivious.

The

Naftali Bennett, who could emerge as leader of Israel's third largest political part after elections on Jan. 22, is charismatic, media- savvy and super-rich. But his ideas are highly dangerous for those of us who care about the future of a Jewish democratic Israel and a two-state solution.

In modern America, the heyday of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, also known as the WASP, is some decades behind us. But in American literature, WASPs continue to fascinate -- perhaps because the publishing industry is one of their last redoubts.

Wealthy Manhattan publishers, editors and literary agents still apparently revel...

In the upcoming Israeli election, the one thing most parties seem reluctant to discuss is the deadlocked peace process with the Palestinians and the whole painful, tangled and conflicted issue of relations between Jews and Palestinians. Israeli authors have no such qualms, as four recent works demonstrate.

The...

A couple of recent books, one a memoir and the other a novel, illustrate our fascination with the arcane world of art forgery. Perhaps, in this Internet age, when so much can be cut and pasted, recycled, refurbished and refitted, and so little seems to be truly original, the subject...

One of the pleasures offered to readers of the Wall Street Journal is the weekly political column by Karl Rove. Rove, as is widely known, heads the American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS organizations that between them, according to the National Journal, have spent $120 million on advertisements in...

At a recent recital of works by Franz Schubert by pianist Joseph Kalichstein, some lines from the Cole Porter song "Every time we say goodbye" came into my head:

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little,
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder...

Two recent books by very different women whose lives have unfolded in very different circumstances bear witness to the amazing power of music to transcend unimaginable difficulties and to inspire hope in the human spirit.

Zhu Xiao-Mei's memoir "The Secret Piano" (Amazoncrossing 2012) and the forthcoming...

What does it mean to be faced by an existential threat?

It means you, your family, your community, your city, your country and your nation could cease to exist at any moment based on the decision of another actor, over whom you have no control.

Add to this the fact...

The morning after another stirring night of action at the Olympics, I tune into my local sports radio station on the way to work. They are discussing whether Eli Manning deserves to be elected to the Football Hall of Fame.

Yes, that might be a valid topic of discussion some...

In the debate about how to deal with Iran's nuclear weapons program, a steady stream of voices have argued that the best response would be adopt a policy of "containment," as the United States did with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.

For example, Daniel Larison...

As the death toll mounts in Syria and the country slides deeper into civil war, the world should be thankful that the Assad regime never succeeded in developing nuclear weapons -- which almost happened in 2007.

The danger presented today by the presence of Syrian chemical and biological...

Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got a rude shock when he arrived in Rio for a U.N. sustainability conference known as Rio+20. Instead of being the center of attention, he found himself snubbed by many of the world leaders in attendance who passed up the opportunity to...

What does the Polynesian island nation of Tuvalu have to do with efforts to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapon?

Quite a lot, it turns out. As the United States and its allies restrict Iran's ability to ship and sell its oil around the world, the Iranians have turned to...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is again playing politics with a United Nations agency, this time meddling with the status of Jesus' traditional birthplace to score points against Israel.

The Palestinian leader's latest move is to seek to have the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and indeed the entire city,...