Growing up in Israel, how can I not be an optimist? When you remember what Israel was 50 years ago and you see Israel now, one of the most successful countries in the world, stable, democratic, with an enormously stable economy despite everything that has happened in the global economy in the last few years, how can I not be an optimist?

There is nowhere I encounter greater understanding for Israel's existential issues than in the Oval Office.

The military operation in Lebanon was the most successful military operation in recent Israeli history. Many in Israel don't recognise that.

From the end of 2006 until the end of 2008 I think I met with Abu Mazen more often than any Israeli leader has ever met any Arab leader. I met him more than 35 times. They were intense, serious negotiations.

In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.

Congress will pass a law restricting public comment on the Internet to individuals who have spent a minimum of one hour actually accomplishing a specific task while on line.

It's an exciting time in the world - democracy, in all its different shapes, is rolling around to new countries all the time. To have a chance to shape the democracy in my home country is an honor.

It is hard to know exactly when the Arab Spring, a phrase used to describe the beginning of the Arab peoples' demand for democracy and human-rights reform, started.