I have been a long-time advocate for a just Arab-Israeli peace and for Palestinian refugees. Today, as you are aware, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan and Iraq are being overwhelmed by those fleeing the conflict in Syria, often with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Many are severely tortured - abused women and their traumatized children whose husbands, fathers, and brothers have been killed or permanently disabled.

Everyone I knew, including my new friends in Jordan, expressed horror at the realities of the Holocaust. But they resented, as I was growing to, how Arabs were cast as the aggressors in the dispute between Israel and the Arab countries, when it was their land that had been seized to resolve a European political problem.

The idea of public service was instilled in me by watching my father, who shared that he was far more fulfilled in his public service than by his former lucrative corporate jobs.

I think there are many experts who say, in fact, the most powerful nations on earth are more vulnerable today than the weaker nations because they're the targets of so many of these groups that are trying to steal, to buy, to build nuclear weapons.

Of course, in our country, developing in a region with somewhat conservative traditions, women were desperately needed to be more engaged - socially, economically, politically.

You can see that in people around the world who struggle to survive with little or nothing. Whether they've been inspired by faith or by loving relationships, or whether it's just something innate that gives them that ability to shine and inspire others.

The sheer folly of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought. Nuclear capability must be reduced to zero, globally, permanently. There is no other option.