Circumstances change; so do the names of the leading players. Peace negotiators come and go; so do the details of their agreements. But in the end, one aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the same: When all else has failed, you can be absolutely certain that someone, somewhere, will issue a statement calling for peace. Read on »

On Christmas morning, my husband found a CD of “The Greatest Speeches of All Time” in his stocking. It was, if I may say so, an inspired gift. Read on »

Fires burned in courtyards, shops were looted and Molotov cocktails whistled through clouds of tear gas. Hundreds of schools and campuses were occupied by students and, for more than two weeks, riots brought a major European capital to a halt. The police seemed powerless, the politicians helpless, the media confused. Read on »

Scene One: We are buying an apartment in Warsaw, sometime in the early 1990s. At every stage of the transaction, my husband and I have to turn up in person, stand in line, present identity cards. We appear at the notary’s office, more than once. We appear at the tax office, more than once. Finally, we are asked to hand over a briefcase full of dollars. The seller will not accept a bank transfer and does not want to be paid in his country’s currency, either. Read on »

Gdansk, Poland — The president of the European Commission was there; so were the Iranian activist Shirin Ebadi and former South African president Frederik Willem de Klerk, both recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize. Read on »

“Nyet! Nyet!” That’s what a Russian bodyguard told a McClatchy news reporter when the latter asked for comment on an incident aboard the Admiral Chabanenko, a Russian destroyer that carried President Dmitry Medvedev to Venezuela last week. Read on »

As I write, the world’s security experts still have no idea which organization carried out this week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and I have no idea myself. Read on »

The New York Times has done it; so, recently, have European cease-fire monitors, the BBC and NPR. They, along with a host of other investigators, have looked once again into the events surrounding the Georgian incursion into South Ossetia on Aug. 7, the incident that led to the massive Russian invasion of Georgia on Aug. 8.

Their most important conclusion? Georgia started it Read on »

Rather faster than I would have expected — sometime around the close of play last Wednesday — I began to get a familiar creepy feeling: It was that old “Princess Diana is dead and the media coverage is too much” sensation. Read on »

Way back in January, soon after Barack Obama won an improbable victory in the Iowa caucuses, I wrote an article arguing that—despite the conventional wisdom and the snide “white Americans will never vote for a black man” comments from my European friends—it was not a disadvantage to be a black presidential candidate. On the contrary, it was an enormous advantage. Read on »