The ransoming of captives has been practiced by Jews for many centuries and has been regarded as a greater obligation than charity for the poor.

The way for the Palestinians to get a state is to go ahead and build it.

The story of the Jews in the Bible is replete with incidents of their ingratitude to God for His gifts to them: incidents that just as repeatedly merit and receive punishment.

Oil policy, policy toward the United States, policy toward Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, very unlikely, I think, to see significant change. These policies were the policies that had a wide family consensus. The question I think would be if the king becomes sick, whether you have weak Saudi leadership in the Arab world and the Middle East rather than strong Saudi leadership, but I think the fundamental policies will continue, the ones we’re familiar with under King Abdullah.

There are examples of fraternal dictatorships, or one, anyway: the passing of power from Fidel to Raul Castro.

The ultimate goal is to change Syria's behaviour on a variety of issues - on its interference in Lebanese internal affairs, on its support for Palestinian terrorist groups that oppose the Palestinian Authority, on, most importantly, acting as a land bridge between Iran and Hezbollah, where Hezbollah gets all its arms.

For the entire first term, Obama and his people blamed Bush for everything - which is another way of saying they felt Bush and the Bush years were the inescapable reference point for everything they were themselves doing.