If you stand with the Customs and Border Protection officers who staff the passport booths at Dulles airport near the nation's capital, their task seems daunting.

The Holocaust never quite leaves Israeli Jews alone. Arabs use it against them and they use it against Arabs. Jews use it against other Jews. Even the president of the United States, it seems, can use it against the prime minister of Israel.

Here among the constant ruins and rebuilding of civilizations lies the coexistence of diversity and intolerance.

Watching foreign affairs is sometimes like watching a magician; the eye is drawn to the hand performing the dramatic flourishes, leaving the other hand - the one doing the important job - unnoticed.

Jerusalem is a festival and a lamentation. Its song is a sigh across the ages, a delicate, robust, mournful psalm at the great junction of spiritual cultures.

Obama behaves like a centrist who leans tentatively left on certain social programs but boldly right on military force and civil liberties.

If you have never been tortured, or locked up and verbally threatened, you may find it hard to believe that anyone would confess to something he had not done. Intuition holds that the innocent do not make false confessions.