The long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict serves as the backdrop for the potent Lebanese drama The Attack, which charts the personal journey of a prominent Arab surgeon in the wake of a devastating suicide bombing. Born in the West Bank town of Nablus, Dr. Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman) has lived and worked in Tel Aviv for years. A self-described “secular Muslim,” he is respected by his Jewish colleagues and has a solid and happy marriage to Siham (Reymonde Amsellem), a Palestinian Christian. As the film opens, Jaafari…

Hannah Arendt was one of the 20th Century’s great intellectuals. A refugee from Nazi Germany, the political theorist (a description she preferred over “philosopher”) is perhaps best known for coining the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi functionary responsible for implementing Hitler’s meticulously planned “Final Solution” of the Jews. Covering Eichmann’s 1961 trial in Jerusalem for The New Yorker (she was there just for the opening few weeks), Arendt was confounded by how completely ordinary the defendant appeared to be.…

You may want to slit your wrists after watching the documentary Dirty Wars; at the very least you will hang your head in shame at the egregious missteps made by the United States in its global struggle against terrorism.