We are in the process of constructing a new myth: that of the "fall-of-the-wall-that-no one-predicted."

Because finally...

That no one knew the exact moment it would happen, yes, of course.

That the playing out of the episode itself, the chain of causes and circumstances that ultimately made it happen, remains...

Time is passing. And Roman Polanski is still in prison, goes to bed and wakes up in prison, sees his wife one hour a week in the visiting room of a prison -- all while his 11 and 16-year-old children, when they have the courage to go to school, have...

Marine Le Pen wasn't enough: the young Socialist Guard, Benoît Hamon in the lead, had to rush to the aid of the new moral order that, for the past two weeks, seems to be turning the heads that one thought immune to the morally correct dear to our Fathers and...

It is said that Obama has received the Nobel Peace Prize without having any concrete accomplishments. To the contrary, in his eight months in office he has worked for peace in very concrete ways. Take the race question in the United States, still a purulent, throbbing wound that stirs up...

Sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl is obviously a serious crime.

And being an artistic genius never constituted, for any crime, an attenuating circumstance.

Having said that, and considering the wave of madness currently sweeping the country, we should also remember the following:

1. The "illegal sexual intercourse" that Roman Polanski...

My journal, La Règle du jeu, is working in support of Roman Polanski and mobilizing writers and artists through the following petition:

Apprehended like a common terrorist Saturday evening, September 26, as he came to receive a prize for his entire body of work, Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison....

Co-authored by Claude Lanzmann

The election of the Director General of UNESCO has entered its last phase. And the designation of the Egyptian Farouk Hosni, thought to be a given just a few weeks ago, seems to be less assured than previously believed. Three rounds of voting haven't been enough...

Co-authored by Richard Rossin, Mohamed Sifaoui and Pascal Bruckner

We the undersigned appeal to the heads of state of the 58 countries responsible for the election this month of the future director-general of UNESCO and to the heads of state of the 193 members of the U.N. General Assembly responsible...

Thursday, September 17, the 58 voting countries will say whether or not they will designate as the head of UNESCO a man who is now famous for having promised to burn with his own hands any book written in Hebrew that might have slipped, despite the Islamists' vigilance, into the...

The following is an exchange between Jean Daniel, the founder and editor of the Nouvel Observateur, the premier intellectual and political magazine of the left in France, and me on the state of the French Socialist Party. First is Jean Daniel's editorial, titled "Socialist Party, Get Up and March"...

First station of the cross: things. The holy horror of things. An entire apparatus of masks, breastplates, umbrellas, nomadic objects, an entire bubble at once suffocating and over-oxygenated, cloistered and overexposed, operating like a greenhouse and preserving him from the great contamination of things. Not only, as has been said,...

Here is an open letter I have co-signed with the following people: Marjane Satrapi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Reza, Samira Makhmalbaf, Javad Djavahery, Atiq Rahimi, Thomas Johnson, Jean-Claude Carrière, Manon Loizeau, and Ariane Mnouchkine.

On June 12, 2009, the Iranian people voted overwhelmingly for the two reform candidates, deftly using the ballot...

Whatever happens from this point on, nothing will ever be the same in Tehran.

Whatever happens, if the protest gains momentum or loses steam, if it ends up prevailing or if the regime succeeds in terrorizing it, he who should now only be called president-non-elect Ahmadinejad will only be an...

I met Barack Obama exactly five years ago.

It was the evening of the official nomination of his predecessor, John Kerry, at the Democratic National Convention.

All of the party heavyweights had spoken.

The party loyalists were audience to fiery speeches by both Clintons, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter,...

Mr. Farouk Hosni is making his case worse.

Backed by the Arab League, the African Union, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Egyptian candidate for Director General of UNESCO has just responded (May 27, 2009 in Le Monde) to a piece by Claude Lanzmann, Elie Wiesel, and...

Here is an open letter I have co-signed along with Elie Wiesel and Claude Lanzmann:

Who declared in April 2001: "Israel has never contributed to Civilization in any era, for it has only ever appropriated the contributions of others" -- and added almost two months later: "the Israeli culture...

Part failure? Part success? The outcome of Durban II could be debated ad infinitum.

For me, an anti-racism conference that was organized by Libya, kicked off by Iran, and concluded with a speech whose only merit is, they gloat, the avoidance of a frontal attack on women, Jews, religious...

This speech was delivered April 20 at Place des Nations in Geneva.

Here I am, for the third time in thirty years, charged with the dreadful honor of speaking on this day that is, for Jews all over the world, a day of grieving and remembrance. And here I am,...

Yovan Diskin is the head of Shin Bet, Israel's storied and formidable Security Agency. He has, to my knowledge, never spoken. Not since the beginning of this war, at any rate. He is about forty years old. He is tall. Massive. A military man belied by jeans, tennis shoes and...

In just fifty days you will be, in theory, the most powerful man in the world.

I say "in theory" because your first challenge will in fact be your country's decline in power. It's been so long that we have been hearing about this decline -- and now it...