Self-defense against threats to national security and individual citizens is a core right and duty of all nation-states. No one seriously disagrees. And yet this week, the Mediterranean Sea will once again be the site of a dangerous attack on this basic right.Activists from around the world, seeking to draw attention to the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, plan to launch a flotilla of shi

More than 255,000 women have served in the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Twenty-one percent of the 2011 graduating class of sailors at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis were women; of the Marines, 17 percent. The Air Force Academy and West Point graduated similar percentages: nearly 20 percent and more than 16 percent, respectively. All told, women account for nearly 15 percent of activ

In a country of hard men, Meir Dagan, the recently retired head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, is one of the hardest. He is the Siberian-born son of Holocaust survivors, an ex-commando who has arranged the assassinations of many of Israel’s enemies. He is devoted to the defense of his country, and, like most of Israel’s samurai class, sees Iran, and its Jew-hating, missile-o

In recent days, Greece’s parliament adopted new austerity measures and Europe’s finance ministers approved another round of Greek loans. So the European debt crisis is under control, right? Probably not. One obvious reason is Standard & Poor’s July 4 threat to declare a default if banks roll over Greek government bonds coming due over the next year. That could force everyone back to the drawing bo

Almost 30 years ago, I flew around New York State with its new governor, Mario Cuomo. He told me that at a gay and lesbian advocacy dinner that week he and Bella Abzug, a firebrand left-wing former congresswoman, were the only straight people in attendance. I offhandedly remarked that the issue made me a little uncomfortable. Cuomo pounced. Every time you think about that, he said, assume that you

In 2008, as financial crisis threatened the U.S. banking system, President George W. Bush asked Congress to approve an emergency bailout. Leaders of both parties blessed the idea; both presidential candidates ― Barack Obama and John McCain ― endorsed it. But conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats rebelled, the House defeated the bill ― and the stock market plummeted in real time during the

Like many of Asia’s antique cities, Istanbul is a palimpsest, continuously inscribed by new movements of people and ideas, even as older writings on its parchment remain faintly visible. Few Istanbul neighborhoods manifest a multilayered identity as much as Kuzguncuk, which lies on the Asian shore of the Bosporus. Legend has it that Jews expelled from Spain in the late 15th century first settled h