The July 14 massacre in Nice, in which a Tunisian-born man living in France, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, drove a truck through densely packed crowds celebrating Bastille Day along the waterfront, came just one week after a parliamentary committee called for an overhaul of the French intelligence services. That call followed an investigation by a nonpartisan parliamentary commission into the response to the two attacks France suffered in 2015: first at the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket that killed 17 in January; and subsequently at a number of sites in and around Paris, including the Bataclan [...]
No reasonable person would predict that a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians is in the cards in the foreseeable future. Even forecasting the most limited progress may seem like a fool’s errand. And yet, a series of recent events reveal an unexpected glimmer of hope and suggest that, despite the pessimism of the majority of both Israelis and Palestinians, modest steps forward may be possible in the coming months. This past Sunday, the region witnessed something that had not occurred in nearly a decade: an openly publicized, high-profile visit to Israel by a high-ranking Arab official. It was [...]
NATO leaders meet for their summit in Warsaw today buffeted by crises and conflicts on all sides. Many of them could have been averted. From the global refugee crisis to conflicts across the world, much of the current instability stems from world leaders’ failure to adequately respond to human rights violations, especially if other political or economic interests are at stake. Instead, when a crisis breaks out, when the bodies start piling up, and when refugees flee by the thousands, leaders say they didn’t see it coming, and start yet another discussion about the necessity of new, more advanced early [...]
