Israel’s new government is trying to dismantle a fragile but impressive democracy that has somehow survived despite the terrible circumstances of the West Bank occupation. Its goal is to turn the Jewish state into an authoritarian fake-democracy like Poland, Hungary and Turkey; down the road lies the Russia model. Israel…

Allow me to stray from global politics to tackle an issue much closer to most hearts: TV. Or more precisely how technology is changing TV yet again. Consider the evolution: Once there were just a few TV channels, even in the United States. By the 1980s there were hundreds, distributed…

Israel’s new far-right government is being welcomed the all the joy of a five-alarm fire by half the population and by many of the country’s traditional friends around the world. Its enemies might well rejoice at what looks like a significant step toward self-immolation. The natural inclination of sober-minded people…

One thing I have discovered in my travels is that people who reach the very top of any organization — a company, a government or even a newsroom — often lack a basic instinct that constrains the rest of us: they don’t mind looking ridiculous. I have been near the…

Volodymyr Zelensky emerges from this week’s riveting visit to Washington, and indeed from the year, as a master messenger who expertly deploys the foundational elements of plot and character. Ukraine’s president never strays from the message of good versus evil, David versus Goliath and democrat versus despot. With a straight…

Over dinner a few years ago a major political figure earnestly inquired about his prospects for a position in the news media: “After all, everyone knows that the internet has given you a bigger audience than ever, and so you must be swimming in money.” Despite the potential applicant’s stellar…

There is something about the current unrest in Kosovo that flies below both the radar of the media and the longtime zeitgeist in the West: the Serbs have a point. When the Kosovo province of Serbia wanted to break away in the 1990s, it was applying a principle that…

The avalanche of criticism about the corrosive impact of social media has tended to focus on the viral spread of lies. But social media — indeed technological progress as a whole — may be harming us no less by revealing unvarnished truth. To truly understand the contours of the problem…

One of the striking differences between the globally beloved game of soccer (or football if you prefer) and sports popular in the United States is its absence of precision timekeeping. The World Cup is a time to reflect on this divergence, which may hold the key to much else besides. …