LONDON: In her brilliant book, “The Uses and Abuses of History the historian Margaret Macmillan tells a story about two Americans discussing the atrocities of September 11, 2001. One draws an analogy with Pearl Harbor, Japan’s attack on the US in 1941. His friend has no idea as to what this means. “You know, the …

GIVAT ADA, Israel: “There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action . This universal lesson was articulated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Germany more than two hundred years ago and it has remained relevant for anyone involved in intercultural dialogue, particularly Jewish-Arab intercultural dialogue. Givat Haviva, which is marking its 60th anniversary, always …

PARIS: Humanity’s future, to say nothing of its prosperity, will depend on how the world tackles two central energy challenges: securing reliable supplies of affordable energy, and switching to efficient low-carbon energy. The Reference Scenario – in which no new policies are introduced – in the International Energy Agency’s 2008 World Energy Outlook sees annual …

In the last six months, the world has watched with interest and at times fascination the rearrangement of practices and strategies of American foreign policy. The new administration has articulated exciting bold principles and laid out new strategic parameters for how to tackle the urgent, the important and the long-term all at once . With …

JERUSALEM – Over the decades, Israel has repeatedly asked the Arab countries to recognize it and form peaceful relations. Most of the Arab countries rejected this appeal, with the exception of Egypt, following the peace initiative led by Anwar Sadat in 1977, and Jordan in 1994. However, in 2002 the Arab League, which is composed …

NEW YORK: When I was 20 years old I boarded a train for Auschwitz. The year was 1992. Courtesy of 10 years at a predominantly Jewish summer camp in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I was probably the only Arab child who ever grew up fearing the Holocaust. I took the initiative of seeing …

HAMBURG: Sami Adwan was born in 1954 in a village near Hebron on the West Bank. He spent his childhood under Israeli occupation, and for a long time thought of the Israelis the same way most do in Palestine: They are the reason for all my misery, for all my suffering. When studying in the …

PRAGUE: One of the fundamental pillars of Europe’s political architecture is a strong and enduring belief in the universal validity of equal, universal, and inalienable human rights. At the core of this is a belief in the rights of human beings to a life of freedom and the protection of their dignity. In the years …

BEIJING: Now that the “green shoots of recovery have withered, the debate over fiscal stimulus is back with a vengeance. In the United States, those who argue for another stimulus package observe that it was always wishful thinking to believe that a $787 billion package could offset a $3 trillion fall in private spending. But …

ARLINGTON, VA: President Obama will not give in to Israel when it comes to settlements. Both he, Secretary Clinton and Special Envoy Mitchell have made it abundantly clear: “not one more brick . Israel’s refusal of this demand could potentially lead to a level of tensions between Washington and Tel Aviv that we have not …

CAIRO: In his July 26, 1952 speech calling on Egypt’s last monarch King Farouk to abdicate, General Mohamed Naguib, who headed the Free Officers that overthrew the king said: “In view of what the country has suffered in the recent past, the complete vacuity prevailing in all corners as a result of your bad behavior, …

NEW YORK: The G-8’s $20 billion initiative on smallholder agriculture, launched at the group’s recent summit in L’Aquila, Italy, is a potentially historic breakthrough in the fight against hunger and extreme poverty. With serious management of the new funds, food production in Africa will soar. Indeed, the new initiative, combined with others in health, education, …

NEW YORK: As Asia emerges from the global economic crisis faster than the rest of the world, it is increasingly clear that the world’s center of gravity is shifting from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It is equally clear that Asian states are not yet ready to assume the more meaningful leadership in global affairs …

TINTON FALLS, NJ: Fear haunts Palestinians and Israelis and disfigures their psyche and spirit. Both have imprisoned each other in a circular trap of claims and counterclaims, violence and retaliation, with conflagrations every decade or so as if they are fulfilling a biblical injunction. We have spent much time coming to terms with our own …

LAHORE, Pakistan: Today in Pakistan there are two extremes: there are those who wish to impose a rigid, literalist interpretation of religion and then there are the world-weary agnostics who are blindly averse to anything having to do with religion. Both mindsets are dangerous as they both lead to a spiritual vacuum. There are many …

LONDON: Mainstream economics subscribes to the theory that markets “clear continuously. The theory’s big idea is that if wages and prices are completely flexible, resources will be fully employed, so that any shock to the system will result in instantaneous adjustment of wages and prices to the new situation. This system-wide responsiveness depends on economic …

RAMALLAH: The sixth round of national dialogue, a two-sided round of talks between Fateh and Hamas meant to produce an agreement that would restore Palestinian national unity, has ended in failure. This failure has eroded Palestinian dignity and reduced the chances that the next round of talks, scheduled for July 28, will succeed. The dialogue …

KUALA LUMPUR: The juxtaposition of the views of President Obama and President Sarkozy on the wearing of the veil by Muslim women can tempt us into easy condemnation of one position and praise of the other. Through one prism, their positions could be characterized as respect for religious freedom on the one hand, and unwarranted …

BRUSSELS: For years, the European Union has called loudly for the closure of the Guantánamo Bay detention center. Now that US President Barack Obama has taken the decision to do so, the EU stands ready to provide political and practical support to the United States to help achieve that goal. We share President Obama’s assessment …

WASHINGTON, DC: After more than six decades of conflict in the Middle East, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men still can’t find the right formula to bring about an end to the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. And neither could the United States, Russia, the Europeans and the United Nations. Nor could the Arab League …

JERUSALEM: Some people say that Jerusalem is a microcosm of Israel and perhaps of the whole world and the focal point for the thoughts and prayers of three billion Christians, Jews and Muslims. But East Jerusalem (or more accurately, the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem) is the focal point for the tensions, conflicts and challenges …

BEIRUT: When it comes to democratic development in the Arab world, the ball is now squarely in the court of Islamic opposition movements. US President Barack Obama has spoken. Defying expectations that he would downplay domestic affairs and democracy promotion in favor of a more realist outlook, Obama used his platform at Cairo University to …

CAMBRIDGE: The United States government is now permitting ten of America’s biggest banks to repay about $70 billion of the capital injected into them last fall. This decision followed the banks having passed the so-called “stress tests of their financial viability, which the US Treasury demanded, and the success of some of them in raising …

MELBOURNE: In April, Germany’s parliament placed limits on the use of genetic diagnosis. Is the new German law a model for other countries to follow as we grapple with the ethical issues posed by our growing knowledge of human genetics? Some provisions of the German law draw on the widely shared ethical principles of respect …

CAMBRIDGE: Goldman Sachs announced this month plans to provide bonuses at record levels, and there are widespread expectations that bonuses and pay in many other firms will rise substantially this year. Should the good times start rolling again so soon? Not without reform. Indeed, one key lesson of the financial crisis is that an overhaul …

BAGHDAD: On 30 June, Iraqi tanks and vehicles rolled out to participate in a national celebration of the withdrawal of American forces from Iraqi cities. Article 24 of the security agreement set this date as the deadline for US combat forces to withdraw from all Iraqi cities, villages and localities. The agreement also calls for …

NEW YORK: Contrary to popular opinion, fear is not inherently a negative sentiment. The object of our fears may be negative (hence the confusion), but the emotion itself is indispensable. Fear allows us to be mindful of real dangers that exist in the world. Without it, our ancestors wouldn’t have been able to tell the …

PARIS: Since the 1970s, France has been evolving into a culturally and ethnically diverse country, though this has gone largely unnoticed. Yet throughout this process, entire populations on the margins of the privileged circles have been left out of the country’s economic progress, and in the 1980s and 1990s, rampant unemployment increased marginalization and tensions …

BERKELEY: On July 10, one very important descendant of black Africa made a triumphant return to the motherland. Scholars speak of “the empire striking back, referring to former colonized peoples, such as immigrants from Africa and India, settling in Europe and North America and then challenging norms of race and identity. In his first official …

VIENNA: US President Barack Obama has injected fresh momentum into efforts – stalled for a decade – to bring about nuclear disarmament. He has committed himself to the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and acknowledges the link between nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament by the nuclear-weapon states. Obama has pledged to revitalize the …