Dan Perry

When Hamas places a command center in tunnels under the main Gaza hospital, that is a feature, not a bug.

For Israel to topple Hamas by means of a ground invasion of Gaza would probably result in more casualties on the Israeli side than Oct. 7 itself.

The contours of idiocracy are coming into view as populist politicians all over the world are elevated by a fashion for disdaining experts, "elites," and education.

The new cold war is not between countries but within them—between two organizing principles that cannot possibly get along.

I was awoken by rocket fire over central Tel Aviv, with the Iron Dome system zapping the incoming missiles out of the sky, leaving debris to rain down on nearby streets.

No matter where one stands on the complex and emotive dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region, it is safe to say the West comes away looking ridiculous from the sudden exodus of its 120,000 indigenous people.

The most self-defeating prejudice is the one that's treated with least urgency: ageism.

President Biden's long-delayed agreement to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly has sent many Israelis into a tailspin.

Some "democracies" don't look like democracies to Western eyes at all.

As the immigration reform debate heats up in the United States ahead of the 2024 election, a binary caricature can be expected: One side wants to build a wall; the other loves diversity, without limit or question.

Defenders of the country as it has been for its first 75 years are fighting a desperate rear-guard action, and they need a little help from their friends.

Americans—or at least those among them who care about the world beyond their borders—tend to scoff at the parliamentary systems. Maybe they shouldn't.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been on a blitz of foreign media interviews this week to diminish global shock at his project of turning Israel into an authoritarian democracy.

The "special relationship" between the United States and Israel has been defended on the grounds of "shared values." While not everyone agreed the values merited all the specialness, only the unkind ever doubted they were shared.

France marks Bastille Day this coming weekend, but amid rounds of rioting and widespread malaise, the mood is hardly celebratory.

Moscow is the world capital of smoke and mirrors, which is why the odd events of recent days may amount to more than meets the eye.

It's an ethical dilemma as old as civilization: When do you muscle in on somebody else's business? What gives you the right?

Trump's colossal miscalculation on Iran may be the greatest sin of them all. It is in the realm of foreign policy that idiocy can most easily beget the End of Days.

Why are elections so tight almost everywhere? It's a metaphysical mystery of our time.

Artificial intelligence is the first technology since the dawn of the nuclear age to have us truly terrified.

The most remarkable thing about last month's Senate vote blocking ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment is how unremarkable it was.

The basic assumption that is so widely held in the West—that people want freedom and democracy—does not always hold. Many want something else.

Not clearly evil, but posing a menace to liberal democracy, figures like Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan take on a confounding and oddly popular shade of gray.

Many Americans will be asking themselves this weekend how the indictment of former President Donald Trump will influence their country's future. Will he remain one of the two main candidates for the presidency in 2024? They might cast their gaze eastward, to Israel and its own criminal defendant-in-chief, Trump's good buddy Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week Putin has helped kill off of the fictitious language of Moldovan, thus reducing the sum of nonsense in the world.

Journalists covering global events face a constant buzzing in the ear: what words to use when there's a narrative dispute. The issue is ever more acute in our frenzied era of societal polarization, entitled grievance politics, and never-ending spin—like efforts to brand an invasion of Ukraine as a "special military operation."

The outrage spread on WhatsApp after Sara Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife) was seen at a high-end hair salon in Tel Aviv. It was a day when hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets, braving stun grenades and water cannons to protest her husband's efforts to install authoritarianism. Dozens had been arrested, and one man lost an ear.

While getting on the ballot can be difficult, nothing in the law excludes a third party, or even a ninth. And with both parties leaning toward extremes, creating a large centrist party could change the country's dysfunctional politics.

What was the Chinese leadership thinking in flying an easy-to-spot low-tech balloon over U.S. nuclear installations? Did they want to get caught? Was one branch of a fragmented autocracy trying to embarrass another?

Criticism of democracy is not new: thinkers from Plato to Socrates to Voltaire to Hobbes have expressed such sentiments, united by a common skepticism that average people possess enough of a clue to be trusted with any influence.