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.

Persecution of Christians is growing around the world, and Congress needs to pay more attention to it.

If you said to people you can cast a secret ballot on whether to turn back the clock and have Morsi in power again, I don't think very many people in Washington would turn back that clock.

Libya as a country is a relatively new concept. The period of Libya as a modern nation really starts after World War II.

We need to understand that an open society and free speech and press... really are the best weapons against al Qaeda and extremism.

Both Bibi and Obama realize that they are going to have to face the problem of Iran together.

It is a natural goal of Iran to try and expel the Fifth Fleet from Bahrain.

I don't think a Palestinian state is going to be created at a conference table; it will be created on the ground in the West Bank, and some day, a peace conference will ratify that which has been built on the ground.

The Assad regime is quite reliant on oil exports.

If you say to the White House, 'Obama has been very unfriendly to Israel,' they say, 'What do you mean? It's the best military-to-military relationship ever.' And that part is true.

You can easily see why the experience of Jews would be helpful if you're looking to get action on religious persecution.

The Pope is not a political figure.

Senator Kerry was fooled by Bashar al-Assad.

At Guantanamo Bay, we could create a West Berlin, a free small city within the Communist nation that could trade freely with the U.S. and elect its own officials.

I personally would not talk to a Jew for Jesus.

The threat that Syria might transfer more advanced weapons to Hezbollah has existed for a long time.

The Egyptian military plays positive and negative roles in Egypt, but the most significant single thing it did under Mubarak was to guarantee an Islamist victory once he left the scene.

We use American influence with Israel not to promote economic growth in the West Bank, but to try and impede Jewish - never Arab - construction in the capital city.

The United States needs to be far clearer: we cannot and will not support any government where Hamas has a real influence and the security forces stop fighting terror.

I well remember a leading Egyptian liberal saying to me in 2003 that she did not favor free elections right then in Egypt; she favored them in a decade's time if she and others had those 10 years to organize freely.

Evangelicals too often fall short in their actual teachings about Judaism.

You can do a no-fly zone without ground forces.

I think President Obama views Israel as a problem that needs to be solved.

After 9/11, we did see Palestinian terrorism in the context of all terrorism.

During the election campaign of 2000, it was generally thought that then-governor Bush didn't know much about foreign policy or national security affairs, and that Colin Powell would lead on that front, while the president's main concern would be domestic.

The Iranians don't want the same thing we do in Iraq, not really; they want to control Iraq... the Ayatollah hates the United States; the Iranians are enemies of the United States.

Obama isn't good off the cuff, especially when challenged; he is far better with a prepared speech.

Never fight turf on turf. Fight it on the basis of ideas.

The Sandinistas are dedicated Communists, and if they are going to make a compromise with democracy, it's going to be under pressure.

When the policy is controversial, you have to go out and defend it.

People are entitled to believe the government is constantly lying to them, but it isn't.

I want to be the first guy to reverse a communist revolution.

George McGovern and his supporters committed what, in a two-party system, are capital crimes: they did not compromise, they took hard ideological positions, they alienated a large portion of their party's traditional supporters, and they lost - very, very badly.

Legislation for the Caribbean basin has led to more jobs in the Dominican Republic.

Palestine, as Icelanders see it, includes the Western Wall of the Second Temple, Judaism's holiest site.

There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel's decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.

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 Fayyad cabinet may well be the best the Palestinians ever get. But whatever its good qualities, there is no democracy.

Israel and the Palestinians had been at the table together for decades until the Obama/Mitchell/Rahm Emanuel decision to demand a total end to Israeli construction froze not the settlements but the diplomacy.

When a deeply sympathetic American president asks for concessions and compromises and appears able to cajole some from the Palestinians, which was the Clinton/Rabin and Bush/Sharon combination, Israel must respond.

The Knesset is in Israel, and the Western Wall is in Israel, and the sooner the Obama administration realizes this, the closer it will be to a Middle East policy worthy of our country and its long alliance with our ally in Jerusalem - which is, actually, the capital of the state of Israel.

Fatah is a political party and movement, whose chairman is Mahmoud Abbas.

Immanuel Kant famously claimed that 'he who wills the ends wills the means,' but he never spent much time in Washington.

Turkey's solidarity with Hamas is not, of course, based on Arab nationalism, which as a non-Arab nation it does not support. It is instead based on a definition of the Mideast conflict as one between Jews and Muslims, precisely the position of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Needless to say, if the Arab-Israeli conflict is about interstate disputes and the need to resolve the future of the West Bank and Gaza, it can be solved; if it is a religious conflict, nothing but violence is ahead.

The anchors of the Arab consensus have long been Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and both are now weakened forces in Arab politics and diplomacy.

History may someday record that the Arab awakening that began with the Arab revolt of 1916 against the Ottomans ended about a century later with a whimper.

At the United Nations, a lynch mob for Israel is always just a moment away.

The U.S. has the power to block all anti-Israel moves in the Security Council, not just some of them, and to do so without agreeing to unfair, damaging compromises.

It is a keen measure of the fall of American influence in the region when a Palestinian leader responds to intense American pressure to go to the negotiating table by waiting to see if Arab League foreign ministers will let him take that step.