In Charles Dickens’s novel “A Tale of Two Cities”, set during the French revolution of 1789, he draws the character of Madame Defarge. She along with other members of the Tricoteuse, the knitting women, perch every day next to the guillotine, knitting into hats and socks the names of those to be executed, while watching the upper aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie being dispatched to their death one by one. They were regarded as respected sisters of the revolution.   I trust I

I’m just out of the cinema having seen Kathryn Bigelow’s masterful film, “A House of Dynamite” about a nuclear missile found on the radar to be heading towards America. The film ends with the destruction of Chicago and the US president unsure of what to do.   In the Cold War days, some of us used to say, “Better red than dead”- to rebuff those who believed in nuclear deterrence as a means of giving the West security. We had powerful films about nuclear war exploding the myth

The Israelis are obsessed with themselves, with their history, with the present time and with their destiny. Every nation has some of this but Israeli navel gazing is something else. At this level of intensity it makes compromise difficult and condemns Israel to political paranoia and limitless inflexibility. We will see in the next couple of days if it's different this time. The Israeli notion that they can have this land and no one else can is so anachronistic by any contem