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.

No one can find inner peace except by working, not in a self- centered way, but for the whole human family.

The change began in Somalia, where we discovered that we were involved in an operation where there was no peace, so there was no more a peacekeeping operation because there was no peace.

To say I was near our president, performing at the Nobel Peace Prize... I think that's an amazing thing.

And if there was one title that could be applied to all my films, it would be 'Civil War' - not civil war in the way we know it, but the daily war that goes on between us all.